Script: Stan Lee
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
Lettering: Art Simek
It's been a while since we've had a nice big Kirby panel to drool over, so I'm very happy to be able to post this one today. Grab a napkin and join me after the break!
Namor's grand plan to humiliate and defeat the Fantastic Four is to use the ruse of filming a movie starring the four heroes as an excuse to split them up and take them down one by one. Here, Namor has flown Johnny all the way to the heart of deepest Africa to face off against a tribe who have a potion that makes them immune to fire. If only it was liquid asbestos that they were drinking...
Deepest Africa and the tribe is, of course, playing off popular pulp tropes rather than anything approaching reality. Which is why we get the strange visual of a man wearing a crocodile head over his own head. And, later on, there are totemic dances and giant cauldrons, and when Johnny escapes he explodes a volcano all over them.
But the best thing about today's panel is that, because the panel takes up two thirds of the page, the FLAME ON balloon is allowed plenty of space to breathe, and is a great focal point for this panel.
Check out our coverage of Fantastic Four #9 on our seventh episode: S(&)M Studios
[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/FF_Episode_7.mp3]