Self Sacrifice and the Fantastic Four

Welcome to the podcast where I invite you on a journey to explore meaning vulnerability and purpose through the lens of a life lived in geekdom. I'm David Monteith and I am the Naked Geek.

Hello, welcome back to the boudoir. And today in the boudoir, I am accompanied by a lovely single malt whiskey and get this. It's a fantastic name. It's called the Singleton of Dufftown. How'd you come up with a name like that, it's a 12 year old whiskey. It's a deep golden colour. It's matured in casks from, Europe and America, so it's got tones of Sherry and tones of bourbon in there as well. Let me just take the lid off. It's got a lovely smell. It's a bit nutty, it's a bit fruity. And like a lot of the Speyside whiskeys, they've got a little fruity sweetness to them and that's what you've got here. So let's just have a little taste.

Lovely. Um, it continues that sweet smoothie richness actually it's quite firm. Um, one, one of the review sites, it says it's, um, it's an undramatic whiskey I think is a really nice solid whiskey. And it's actually quite an accessible one. If you find some single malts, a bit hard to get into, that's not the Singleton it's I think it's fruitiness makes it quite accessible. It's warm. It's pleasant. It's it's really nice. I'd recommend you give it a go.

So. What are we talking about today?

Today, I want to talk about one of my comics that had a big influence for me, and it was actually the first ever American comic that I bought. Uh, not sure how old I was. I want to say eight. But I realised that every major thing that happened in my life as a child, I seem to think happened when I was eight.

So that just could be nonsense anyway. Anyway about eight, my mother and I were in a place in London called Brixton, and we were shopping in Brixton market, which was a fantastic place, and I was looking through some comics, at a stall, and I saw this particular comic and I just had to have it and my mother obliged. The comic was Fantastic Four number 109 from 1971, titled Death in the Negative Zone.

And where is it? Here it is. I'm actually I'm holding it in my hand. Now the original comic that I bought way back when. Yeah. So how old is this? Um, 21. So this comic is 50 years old. I'm holding it in my hand. 50 year old comics. That's older than a lot of my friends. Um, fantastic for number 1 0 9 from 1971 titled death in the negative zone.

And it was written by Stan Lee himself. The artists were John Boscema and Joe Sinnott and the lettering was done by Sam Rosen. Now the cover reads

"Fantastic Four featuring Annihilus, the Living death that walks"

It was something about the cover that just drew me in. It's separated into three parts and then I'll put the picture in the show notes, but, uh, yeah, the bottom has Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl watching in horror from a control room in the fantastic four headquarters.

Then there's a diagonal strip of grey cutting across the page. And then the top, the biggest part of the page is Annihilus in the Negative Zone. Cutting across all of those zones on the page is Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch and The Thing flying into the negative zone to face someone, Annihilus who they are not sure that they can beat. It is a fantastic cover. It's full of action. There's no fighting on it. It is the promise of action. There's this? Uh, Th there's this potential energy just sort of brimming at the seams there, but it's also full of doom and desperation. The lettering is fantastic, and on the cover Annililus is saying,

"once you have found me, you will never return."

And the important words "found" and "never" are in red while the Torch is saying,

"he's "waiting" for us, but we can't turn "back"

And the words waiting and back are in blue. The Thing says, "say something Stretch

[referring to Mr. Fantastic. Who has a stretching palace?]

"How do we get within "clobbering range?" "

And the last two words are also in blue. So I'm going on about this stuff because I'm holding it in my hand as I speak. And I'm just in total admiration of the composition of the artwork on the front cover, there is so much storytelling going on in just the colours used and the way they are used.

There is storytelling in both the art and the words. There is storytelling in the structure of the page and the urgency of the moment is communicated so well.

So I bought it.

So in prep for this podcast, I re-read the comic and I absolutely loved it. I mean, you have to get past the mountains of exposition that the characters do, but to be fair, though, that kind of thing was pretty standard for the seventies.

Some of the dialogue is glorious and by glorious I mean, hilarious. In one bit, the men are going off to battle leaving Sue, the lone woman behind and you get this brilliant conversation

*dramatic reading*

Sue: Reed, what's about me? You can't keep me behind.

Reed: You must stay. Sue. Someone has to remain at the visi - screen to monitor our journey.

Ben: Something tells me you ain't better than on us coming back stretch.

Reed: Ben, shut up.

Sue: That's the real reason you won't take me. I know it. Oh Reed, Reed, if anything should happen to ...

Reed: Don't say it darling, there's more than our little lives at stake.

*End of dramatic reading

And this is a pretty thrilling issue where the FF have to battle Annihilus in his own realm in order to stop him finding a way back to earth.

And there's a fantastic couple of panels as rReed, Um, Mr. Fantastic imagines, the ravaged wasteland that earth would become, if they allow this to happen. It's a great image. Easily up there was some of the modern day apocalyptic imaginings, and it all adds to the sense of urgency and danger and the need to act.

It turns out that Annihilus really is all that, and our boys are not doing well. Towards the end. Reed shares out the devices that are going to get them all home and decides to hold the bad guy off while the others, who in pretty bad shape, make their escape. And he's saying that, you know, he would catch up to them. Now, Ben and Johnny make it back through the portal, but Reed is nowhere to be seen, turns out he lost his device in the battle, which means he can't get home.

The last panel of the comic has Reed alone on a piece of rubble drifting towards something called the exploding zone. He's on his knees. His head is dropped. He's beaten and he's alone. His final words are,

*dramatic reading*

"Think kindly of me, Sue my darling. I'm giving my life to save our world. No man could give more"

*end of dramatic reading*

And this panel, this final hopeless panel was what stayed with me for years.

I never forgot the image of Mr. Fantastic drifting to his death, having made decisions, knowing that those decisions will cost his life. And the image was, is , pretty striking, but it's what it represented that touched something really deep inside me. Self sacrifice that ability to look death in the face and follow through on your actions for the greater good, regardless of what it means for yourself is something I've never been able to shake.

In fact, if you make a movie and put a decent amount of self-sacrifice in it, then I'm in, I'm just in, I'm watching that movie. I suppose the biggest example that comes to mind is the third matrix movie, The Matrix Revolutions. Now this is film is generally much maligned and with some very good reasons for that, but there are 20 minutes of this film, which are just glorious to my mind.

And it's the battle of the dock,in which the rebels try to defend their home. And the soldiers are gathered in big weaponized exoskeletons, and the machines are pouring in to the dock yard and they all know they are going to die. Every now and again, one of these guys in the exoskeleton will call for more ammo and some poor schmuck has to run out into the battlefield with the ammo in a wheelbarrow.

We have a couple of guys defended him just running alongside with guns, and every single one of those people on foot know that when the doors open and they have to go that they are not coming back, but they do it anyway.

I want to know that I have that mindset. I want to know that if there's a hard call to make that I can make it for the good of my family and my friends.

And this has been put to the test in some ways, but I don't know what I do in a bigger scenario. I hope I could do what I needed to do. Um, I think it might be kind of easier in a high risk situation where there's not much time to think you've just got to go and do it, but how does that translate to my everyday life?

I was wondering. You know, there's things where I want to make myself available, where I want to give as much as I can. But when you balance it up with self care with the fact that you're just human, how, how does that balance out in a way you live your life every day? Um, I tried to at mindset affect the other areas in my life where I interact with people with a service.

I'll give him my podcast business. Trust me. If you sign up to anything, get in my podcast business. You want me to edit your podcast or manage your podcasts? Trust me, you hot. Get in probably more than you pay for, or when I'm coaching actors, I kind of go above and beyond. I give a lot. I think as I've matured, I probably don't do that at the expense of my time or my pocket, because that impacts negatively on my family.

So where I can give can give, what I can, I do? And it's not the same really, but it's, it's a knock on effect. There is. It's also why, if I read about a hero, you know, a pilot, one of the nine 11 planes, a neighbor dashes in the fire to save another neighbor. What ever it may be. It brings a lump to my throat and I'm just all over the place.

Cause I've got nothing but respect and admiration for a hero, whatever circumstances that hero comes in. And I think it's, what's kept me coming back to comics, uh, is one of the things that I mark out about comics. It's inspired a certain type of moral center in there. A certain type of. Superhero comics are fed that desire to want the right thing for people come.

What may it's fueled my sense of social justice, maybe though I shouldn't project that on to other people. Once I asked the policeman, what super inspired him to join the force and he just gave me a really dirty look and he didn't even have to say the words move along, sir. I've got the message out and clear.

Anyway, it only just occurred to me about seven years ago that I had no idea how the Fantastic Four story ended. So went out and bought issue 110. Spoiler - he survives, which is probably why I can't remember anything about it. I might have to probably get that one out and read that one too.

Why don't you let me know what comic was influential for you and in what way was it influential for you?What way did it shape some of the ways that you are be really interested to know?

So easy way to do that? You could go join a Facebook group. I'll put the link in the show notes to just have that conversation, or send me a comment to, um, to send me an audio comment as well. If you want to, I might even just include it in the show.

You can email me at David at then I could get. So, yeah. Thank you for spending time in the boot block till next time. I'm the naked.