Fantastic Four — and the Marvel age of comics — turns 60

The Fantastic Four debuted in 1961. By 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had created an integrated comics universe

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the first issue of the Fantastic Four.

The modest Marvel Comics, which relied on much-larger rival DC Comics for distribution, decided it needed to get back into superheroes after years of publishing monster and science fiction stories.

The FF were created by Stan Lee (1922-2018), handling scripting and editing, and Jack Kirby (1917-1994), performing penciling and at least half (if not more) of the plotting. The FF at least partially resembled Challengers of the Unknown, a title Kirby worked on for DC.

The title generated sales to encourage more super hero attempts. In 1962, Marvel came out with the Hulk, Thor and Spider-Man. The following year saw the debuts of Iron Man, X-Men and the Avengers.

During the 102-run Lee-Kirby run, the FF proclaimed itself to be “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!” For much of that time, at least to impressionable young readers, that wasn’t hyperbole.

By 2008, Marvel decided to make its own movies after years of licensing its characters to others. Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. was the first attempt and it was a hit. Walt Disney Co. later bought Marvel to take over the characters.

The FF itself has had mixed results in the films. 20th Century Fox (now a Disney property itself) had licensed the FF for films in the 2000s and 2015. The Fantastic Four, once the flagship of Marvel Comics, was almost an afterthought.

But in its prime, the FF was used to introduce characters such as the Black Panther and the Inhumans. The title also became a way to do crossover stories with the Hulk, the Avengers, Nick Fury, Spider-Man and others.

Marvel, the Disney-owned studio, is at a crossroads. It is now about to bring out lesser-known characters. It now controls the fate of any future Fantastic Four movies. How that turns out remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, none of that would even be an issue without the efforts of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, whose collaboration saw the light of day 60 years ago.

CBC carries NTTD ad during Olympics telecast

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. logo

There’s no telling how signficant this is but the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. ran a No Time to Die spot during the network’s coverage of the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics.

The spot ran between 9:45 a.m. and 9:50 a.m. eastern time.

There wasn’t any new footage (or if it was new it was significiantly different) compared with earlier trailers. For example, star Daniel Craig delivers his “Bond, James Bond” line to a security screener at MI6 who clearly doesn’t know who the former agent is.

Because this is part of the North American release, the spot had an Oct. 8 date for the movie’s debut. The U.S. and Canada release is being handled by United Artists Releasing, the joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Annapurna Pictures. The movie is getting an earlier release (as things stand now) in the U.K. and other countries where Universal is handling distribution.