Fantastic Four 12 (March 1963) offered something rare at the time — a superhero battle that enabled readers to root for either side.
Gen. “Thunderbolt” Ross sent the Fantastic Four after his arch-nemesis the Hulk, but we readers knew what the FF did not — that the Hulk was really the sympathetic figure of well-meaning, tortured, tragic Bruce Banner. The sixth and final issue of the Hulk’s title would be published the next month.
This kind of conflict had been anticipated within the Fantastic Four title by the volatile characters’ battles with each other. And really, this was part of a company tradition that extended all the way back to 1939, when the Human Torch fought the Sub-Mariner.
“Marvel has been putting out superhero comics again for nearly a year and a half, and the handful of features they’ve created are really taking off,” observed comics historian Don Alsafi. “But now, for the very first time, we see the initial step in the shared-world idea that would soon define much of their appeal. Sure, one of the members of the Fantastic Four has his own spin-off comic — but even with that first bit of expansion, there had been nothing to suggest a shared history or setting between any of these separate strips, just as (for instance) you wouldn’t expect any interaction between the stories of Dracula and King Arthur. But when The Incredible Hulk’s Gen. Ross recruits the FF to help him track down and capture his personal Moby Dick, the canny reader could predict the team-up possibilities to come…”
For readers, the main event was the clash between Marvel’s two super-strong superhumans, the Thing and the Hulk (who were in a sense variations on the same man/monster theme). Stan Lee set up a return bout a dozen issues later, sidelining the other members of the team so that a whole issue could be devoted to the Thing/Hulk battle.
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