The Fantastic Four From Liverpool

The guy on the right is Ringo or possibly Jerry Lewis. The other guys are John, George and Paul or possibly any one of the members of Freddie and the Dreamers.

I got the panels above from Marvel’s Greatest Comics No. 33 which was a double-sized comic filled with reprint stories from 1964 and ’65 and published or re-published in 1971 by Marvel Comics shortly after the breakup of The Fab Four.

Back then if you lived in a small town, this was the only way to get back issues. There were no trade editions. Most comics were sold on newsstands and drug stores. Comic shops were virtually nonexistent. If you lived in a big city, you may have been able to find old comics in secondhand bookstores that had stacks of mouldering magazines. I remember seeing stripped comics (comics with the covers cut or torn off and returned to the distributor for credit) at flea markets back then. Marvel’s Greatest Comics and other books like Marvel Tales were the only way to get those old stories from the glory days of Marvel Comics.

The story above which originally appeared in Marvel’s Strange Tales No. 130 looks and reads like a filler or backup story which was probably quickly hashed out by Stan Lee in order to cash in on the vanguard of the British Invasion and illustrated by whoever was available. Bouncin’ Bob Powell pencilled with inks by Chucklin’ Chic Stone. The results look decidedly rushed and cartoony.

As for me, I preferred Freddie and the Dreamers to The Beatles. They were not as popular as the Liverpool foursome nor better known than major religious figures, but they knew how to entertain! Besides, the Beatles did not have a trademarked dance like The Freddie.

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