The team see a queue at the local newsagent for the latest Fantastic Four comic and decide to come back later to get their own copy. They also see 4 children playing at being them and give them a thrill by stopping to chat with them. At their private lift they meet their mailman Willie Lumpkin with a sack of fanmail, who asks if his ability to wiggle his ears could get him in the team. The mail includes a parcel for Thing which when opened hits him in the face with a boxing glove, and he figures it's from the Yancy Street Gang. Reed Richards gives him a new version of the serum he invented (#8) to turn him back to human Ben Grimm, but it remains to be seen how long this 1 will last.
Johnny Storm says he's going down to the basement to tinker with his new sports car. The other 3 reminisce about the past, and Reed decides to tell the readers how he 1st met Ben as roommates at State University. Ben was on a football scholarship and Reed was a genius but they still became fast friends. After college they fought in WWII, Grimm as a Marine fighter pilot in the Pacific and Richards in the OSS in Europe. Reed and Sue's romance dates back to when they were kids living next door to each other, but now she's torn between him and Namor. They recall the experimental spaceflight where cosmic rays gave them their powers, and their adventures since then. Sue says lots of fans think she's the weak link in the team. Reed points out the things she's done, and Ben gets angry which turns him back into Thing.
An alarm goes off in the flying saucer they got from Planet X (#7). Inside they find Johnny with a surprise birthday party for his sister. (The cake only has 1 candle so we can't tell how old she is.) And Willie Lumpkin returns with another huge sack of letters.
For the special marvelite in you
Story #2The Impossible Man
Writer:
Stan Lee.
Penciler:
Jack Kirby.
Inker:
Dick Ayers.
Colorist:
Stan Goldberg.
Letterer:
Art Simek.
Synopsis
A strange green alien with a pointy head and purple attire drops out of the sky on a bunch of hoboes. He announces that he's from the planet Poppup in the 10th Galaxy and asks to share their food. They ask him to pay for it but have to explain about money. 1 joker tells him he can just go to a bank and ask for some. So the alien transmutes with a 'pop' into a jet plane, still green and purple, and flies off. We next see him in a locked New York bank vault where a banker is counting cash. He explains that he turned into an insect and crawled under the door. The banker runs out and the alien grabs bags of money and follows him, to be met by armed guards. But their bullets bounce off when he 'pops' to metal. Outside he thinks he's going to enjoy being on Earth.
Later a deputy police inspector uses closed-circuit TV to call in the Fantastic Four to deal with the alien who's spending a lot of his money on food at the Flamingo restaurant. They go there in the flying Fantasti-Car to confront him, where he expands on his origin. Poppup is a 'charming' world but full of dangerous beasts, so as everyone knows the Poppupians developed very very fast evolution - shapeshifting by any other name. He like many others turn themselves into self-propelled spaceships to explore the universe. In return the FF try to explain what he's doing wrong on Earth, but it soon devolves into them trying to fight or restrain him. He defeats all their attempts but is too much of a gentleman to fight Invisible Girl. Ben says the things he does are impossible. Sue asks him what his name is and he tells her that Poppupians don't have names because they *know* who they are.
The alien takes umbrage at their rude behaviour and exits the restaurant as a whirling buzzsaw, but stops when he endangers passersby. He asks them why they didn't turn into birds and fly out of the way. And belatedly realises that Earthlings *can't* transform. But this means that he can get away with doing whatever he likes, and this vacation will be even more fun than he thought.
He begins by scaring a cabbie into giving him his taxi so he can try driving, which he does by ricocheting off other cars. The FF catch up with him in their F-Car and Thing drops down to stop the taxi by grabbing its rear bumper. The alien gets out and makes himself too heavy for Thing to move. Then the National Guard turn up but he turns into a large ticking bomb and they retreat. Mr Fantastic extends his legs and arms greatly to toss the bomb into the sub-stratosphere where it explodes but the green guy forms wings to glide back down. Human Torch flies in a spiral to hypnotise the alien into losing consciousness and falling to the ground.
But when the FF gather to see if he's OK he reveals that he was playing dead to see if they cared about him. But now he knows they like him he's going to stay with them forever. However Reed tries a new tactic and tells his group to walk away from the alien and ignore him. Their 'guest' tries hard to get them to play with him but then goes off in a huff. MrF puts out the word across the US and everyone ignores the 'Impossible Man' no matter what he does. And eventually he gets bored and flies off to find a planet that's more fun, and he'll warn all other Poppupians not to come here.