Strange Tales #89 Is a Pre-Fantastic Four Masterpiece From a Very Different Marvel

Marvel Comics is one of the premiere purveyors of superheroes. While the House of Ideas is no longer the bestselling company, the successes of the publisher have made their characters some of the most well known in pop culture. Marvel’s road to that success is quite interesting, because there was a time when the company was nowhere near as important as it would become. They joined the superhero bubble after the success of Superman and Batman, creating numerous heroes, including Captain America, Namor, and the original Human Torch. However, only Captain America caught on and Marvel would eventually leave the superhero game.

However, that doesn’t mean they left the comic game. Marvel still put out comics after the end of their superhero books in the ’50s. Back then, there were Western comics, horror comics, crime comics, romance comics, sci-fi comics, and monster books. Marvel went more for the Westerns, romance, and monster comics, playing off the monster movie craze of the ’50s. Strange Tales was one of the numerous anthology books of the day, with talent that would one day make Marvel into a juggernaut doing stories that would eventually be folded into the new Marvel Universe. Strange Tales #89 comes from a very different time in the history of Marvel, dropping a few months before Fantastic Four #1 would change the company forever. It introduced one of Marvel’s best monsters with a story from the masters that would make Marvel, well, Marvel.

Fin Fang Foom Was Just One of Many Marvel Monsters

Marvel Comics in the late ’50s and the very early ’60s was a different place than it would be. Creators like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others were all there, telling stories that took readers to all kinds of places. The 1950s were a time of great societal change. The United States had taken its place atop the world powers and the Cold War had started with the Soviets. Suddenly, the country was all about beating the Russkies, with science fiction stories acting as a way to work out the anxiety of the changing world This is what led to the rise of monster stories in the ’50s; people were scared of the future and monsters were able to personify those fears in a new way.

Marvel was all about Cold War anxieties back then; a look at the early Marvel superheroes and their American exceptionalism reveals that. Their monster comics were usually about invading alien monsters or people trying to mess with forces that they shouldn’t, awakening a monster and leading to disaster (although this one would go in another way; stay tuned). Both of these kind of stories played into the fears of the time, when Americans were worried about a Russian invasion and the new technology that made the end of the world an almost foregone conclusion. These stories were everywhere back then, and Marvel created some of the best monsters in comics. At least one of them has become a superstar in modern Marvel – Groot was once an invader from space out to destroy the Earth – and several of them would end up appearing in Marvel’s superhero comics in the future.

Fin Fang Foom was always the best of them, though. This massive Chinese dragon would end up fighting Iron Man numerous times over the years, as well as other heroes, and got his debut in the cover story of Strange Tales #89, from Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby. It followed Chan Liuchow, a Chinese teen who learns the legend of Fin Fang Foom and decides to use them to free his nation from the communists who had taken control in the wake of World War II; Stan Lee loved making communists his villains back then. The teen lures him to the communists and they are destroyed, with Chan using a sleep herb to put the monster back to sleep.

This story was something of a modification on the usual Marvel monster story; instead of the monster raging out of control, he was a weapon that could be used against the communists. Lee was definitely saying about the Cold War with his story and it would lead to the idea of Fin Fang Foom as a weapon, one that would be used against Iron Man and other heroes. The book has several other stories in it written by Lee and Larry Lieber, with an interesting one from Steve Ditko that followed a thief robbing a rich man who encounters something they never figured, but Fin Fang Foom’s story is easily the best. It won’t get confused with the best stories of Stan Lee, but it’s an important part of Marvel history, one that would play a role in the future of the company.

Strange Tales #89 Is the End of A Marvel Era and the Beginning of a New One

Fantastic Four #1 would change comics forever. It brought Marvel back into the superhero game after years away, using ideas from the real world to inform its story. The Cold War drama of the early Marvel Universe wasn’t a new thing in comics, but it was rarely as important as it was to the House of Ideas. Fin Fang Foom’s introduction is, in some ways, the genesis of it. Lee and Kirby would go all in on anti-communism, as was the style of the time, and it would help birth the Marvel Universe. These old monster comics don’t get a lot of attention today, but they were the proto-Marvel Universe.

When I first started reading comics, I bought the Marvel Universe Series II trading cards (they were the equivalent of the Marvel Wikia site back then) and pulled a Fin Fang Foom. The monster’s unique design grabbed my attention immediately and I actually thought he was an important character because he had a card. I would learn otherwise as the character barely appeared in any books and would eventually learn the history of Marvel’s monster comics. Monster books like this one aren’t often talked about, but they are such an integral part of the publisher’s history, where their future legends could create new characters and try out concepts that would eventually be brought to their superhero comics. Strange Tales #89 is a forgotten piece of Marvel history and a wonderful addition to any collection.

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