Memorabilia: 1979

• A set of puffy stickers were released that included Iron Man, Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America and the Human Torch. Each set included one sticker with character art and one with each character's logo.
• The Fanastic Four in "Doomsday" by Marv Wolfman was published by Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster in May with a cover by John Buscema and Peter Leager. This was an original story that pit Dr. Doom, who was trying to resurrect his mother using the Negative Zone, against the Fantastic Four. It was one of a series of books the Simon and Schuster made for Marvel using various characters. The story fits very neatly (and unobtrusively) into the FF's continuity. As I understand it, it is a good read. Mark Johnson supplied this synopsis...

  I used to have the book and it was a very good read. You really didn't need to know alot about the characters before hand because it had the customary fill in the new reader stuff.

  The four are separated by Doom and placed in deathtraps suited to their individual talents.

  Sue - Trapped in a small room that first has a sleep candle, she extinguishes, then lasers are fired from the ceiling but everything in the room has been given a refractory coating. She hides under the table then uses a force field to break down the door.

  Johnny - Finds himself in a dark room having been dipped in a flame retardant solution. He eventually scrapes enough off to start a flame then goes Nova to burn the stuff off (the last part is very vague and fuzzy)

  Ben - Attacked by several robots wielding extremely high voltage lances. He eventually overcomes the pain of the shocks and smashes his way out.

  Reed - Placed in a maze, he gets to stretch up above it for only a second before the roof drops down and the maze starts to fill with highly concentrated sulfuric acid. He stretches down each path before going but at the last fork it goes past his ability to stretch. Reed chooses the wrong path. He escapes because Doom has miscalculated the amount needed to fill the maze by a tiny amount. Reed presses himself paper thin against the roof of the maze and makes his way back to the exit. He then uses his boot, because the unstable molecules are thicker in the boot, as a glove to reach down into the acid to open the door. Reed also says that the acid would slosh around in the maze grazing his body as he made his way causing much pain.

  Reed definitely had the best deathtrap experience. The novel made you want pictures to go along with the dialogue. You could imagine the Buscema and Sinnott art.

  
• Whitman Published tried a little too late to cash in on the previous year's Fantastic Four cartoon by releasing a Fantastic Four coloring book. It stands pretty much on par with their other coloring books of the same period, both in terms of art as well as writing.
• Topps released a set of 33 comic nearly identical (down to the artwork!) to the previous years'. In fact, the only notable differences were the addition of two Thing cards and Namor card and there was no #30. For the record the FF cards were:
  • #8 - Thing
  • #9 - Fantastic Four
  • #13 - Fantastic Four
  • #20 - Fantastic Four
  • #33 - Thing
• Hanna-Barbera made another animated attempted with Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. The title is decidedly misleading. The only place the three characters "met" was the opening credits. And it wasn't really the Thing as he is commonly known. He was changed to a teen-ager named Benji Grimm who could transform into the Thing using a magic ring by declaring "Thing-Ring, do your thing!" The Yancy Street Gang were now motrocycle clowns who were generally the Thing's biggest threat in the series (next to the ratings, at least). Not surprisingly, the show didn't last long and the show was changed to Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo. Doug Wildey did some of the early production work and Tex Avery was hired to help with the Thing's jokes and gags. The Thing was voiced by Joe Baker, while Benji Grimm was done by Wayne Norton. Noelle North, John Erwin, and Marilyn Schreffler also contributed their vocal talents.
  For the record, here are the episode titles:
  • Beach Party Crashers
  • Decepto the Great
  • Dude Ranch Rodeo
  • Junkyard Hijinks
  • Out to Launch
  • The Big Bike Race
  • The Day the Ring Didn't Do a Thing
  • The Picnic Panic
  • The Thing and the Absent-Minded Professor
  • The Thing and the Captain's Ghost
  • The Thing and the Queen
  • The Treasure Hunt
  • The Thing Blanks Out
  • The Thing Goes Camping
  • The Thing Meets the Clunk
  • The Thing's The Play
• The Rainbow Emblem Company of Dallas, TX released a Fantastic Four patch using the then-current logo. It measured roughly 2.5" x 3".
• A set of seven rubberized stamps was made by the Multi Print Co. of Italy. The set included three colored pencils, Spider-Man, Thing, Hulk, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Thor and Spider-Woman (no ink pad). Each stamp is approxroximately 1.5 inches square.
  
• Fireside published a compilation of FF stories in the obviously titled "The Fantastic Four" with an original cover by Bob Larkin. It reprinted issue #s 4, 49, 50, 51 and 87. Strangely, however, they published the cover of #86 with the story from #87 and this has obviously given rise to some confusion.
  Special thanks to Paul Horn for pointing out this little inconsistency.