Issue(s): Fantastic Four #64
Cover Date: Jul 67
Title: "The Sentry sinister!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker

Review/plot:
A professor searching for evidence of an ancient alien civilization on Earth awakens a Kree sentry. The FF, trying once again to have a nice vacation as a way to ease Reed and Sue's marital tensions (they've been married for, what, two weeks?)...

...wind up on the same island, and end up destroying the Kree outpost.

The set-up for this story, with an old Professor and a hired assistant discussing Incan legends and discovering the remains of an ancient alien civilization that used to rule the Earth, is very similar (OK, it's identical) to the beginning of Kirby's later Eternals series).

Reed's ego (to Sue):

Just do as I told you, girl! And don't question my orders! This isn't your husband talking -- it's Mr. Fantastic -- the leader of the world's greatest team--!

For some reason even though Crystal and Triton are hanging around the Baxter Building, they don't help out when Johnny is summoned to help the team on the island (Johnny didn't go on vacation with the others; he stayed behind to make out with Crystal).

Triton is busy flying around NYC on a rocket sled.

But the real star of this issue is Lockjaw. Isn't that right, boy? Yes it is! Yes it is!

Quality Rating: C+

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - first Kree Sentry, first evidence of Kree

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Kirby's original rejected cover to this was first printed in a 1968 comic covention program, and then later in Alter Ego #115.

So you have Sue having Reed problems (again) and Crystal with her hands down where they shouldn't be. I wonder if they were trying to make a certain point about...hey look, Lockjaw!

Glad you included those panels of Reed's launch and "manta ray" attack on the Sentry. Takes imagination to do full justice to his physical abilities, which I've felt often get underplayed because of his intellect.

In the wake of "The Galactus Trilogy," Lee and Kirby really got into a cosmic groove and developed important aspects of that part of the Marvel mythos. Of course, you already had the Skrulls, the Watcher, and (from the pages of X-Men) the Stranger. But in pretty quick succession, the FF series delivered the Negative Zone (along with Blastaar and Annihilus), the Kree, and Him/Warlock, along with Ego and the High Evolutionary over in Thor. The creativity was really flowing.

I liked this one and I've always liked the Kree and their connection with the Skrulls. The Kree in many ways remind of DC's Khunds and Star Trek's Klingons in that they all seem to love war.