Entry tags:

char: alicia masters, char: the thing/ben grimm, creator: jack kirby, creator: stan lee, publisher: marvel comics, title: fantastic four

Figure this one out. It's a sequence from "The Return of Doctor Doom!" in THE FANTASTIC FOUR# 10, January 1963. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.




So. Alicia Masters is a talented sculptor (well, her father was the Puppet Master, so you can see how she grew up with the materials around her), despite the fact that she's blind. She touches people and things to get a sense of what they look like and carves statues that are quite accurate. So far, okay, not out of the limits of the possible and (by comic book standards, quite modest a claim).

Yet how does she create these little figurines of finks like Dr Doom, the Sub-Mariner, the Skrulls? The Fantastic Four had only met the Mole Man once at this point, certainly hadn't taken any photos of him.(The statuettes are in great poses, by the way, very expressive of the subjects' personalities). Did Ben talk her through the process? How long would that take? Weeks, months? ("Naw, honey, the Miracle Man's waist was slimmer...")

There's only one answer that makes sense to me. Despite the fact he had fingers as thick as cigars, with only three fingers and a thumb on each hand, Ben was actually the sculptor! He was using Alicia as a front, because he thought his artistic inclinations were too sissy for a guy in 1963...