Chapter 16 | Page 5a: Charmed, I’m sure…

Evil Inc – February 25, 2025
by Brad J. Guigar

Panel 1
(Exterior of an office building, music notes are floating out of a window.)
Caption: The following day...

Panel 2
(Inside the office, Miss Match looks distressed, covering her ears. Lightning Lady is also covering her ears. Through a glass window, Jeremy is seen playing a clarinet for Cassie Cruz, who sits at her desk.)
Miss Match: What’s that horrible noise?!

Panel 3
(Miss Match and Lightning Lady continue covering their ears in agony.)
Miss Match: Jeremy has been playing for Cassie for hours!

Panel 4
(Close-up of Miss Match and Lightning Lady, both wincing from the sound.)
Miss Match: This is terrible!
Lightning Lady: Tell me about it...

Panel 5
(Inside Cassie’s office, Jeremy enthusiastically plays the clarinet, with music notes filling the air. Cassie sits at her desk, looking unimpressed. A cobra in a basket, presumably meant to be charmed, looks just as miserable.)
Lightning Lady (off-panel, in a thought box): Just our luck we got a tone-deaf cobra!

Lisa Kirby and John Morrow Discuss “Fantastic Four: Lost”

Lisa Kirby and John Morrow Discuss “Fantastic Four: Lost”Comic Book Resources has a very interesting interview about “Fantastic Four: Lost” — a lost episode of FF by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby — with Jack’s daughter and a noted Kirby historian.

[COMIC BOOK RESOURCES] “From what I understand, my father submitted art that was intended for FF # 102,” [Lisa] Kirby explained. “Stan Lee apparently felt at the time that this work could not be used. The artwork was shelved for a few months, and then parts of it resurfaced for FF # 108. It was during this time my father had turned in his resignation at Marvel and moved on to DC.

“This project was brought to my attention by John Morrow,â€? continued Kirby. “Tom Brevoort had contacted him about his idea of putting this ‘lost’ issue together. John then contacted me, and filled me in on the origin and history behind the lost pages. He also mentioned that Tom would like to get Stan Lee to do the dialogue and possibly Joe Sinnott to ink. I had to say I was pretty intrigued about the idea.”

The aforementioned resignation is significant according to Morrow, who said that after Jack Kirby left Marvel, things changed quite a bit. “Jack soon after turned in his final FF story (which ended up going in #102) along with his resignation from Marvel, and the Marvel Age effectively came to an end,” explained the historian. “Without Kirby at Marvel, the company really took on a different feel, and Stan himself retired from writing comics soon after. The ‘House of Ideas’ was never the same after that. So this final, reassembled story is one last look at the greatness that was the 1960s Marvel Age of Comics.”