Issue(s): Fantastic Four #80
Cover Date: Nov 68
Title: "Where treads the Living Totem!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker

Review/plot:
Wyatt Wingfoot ("that rovin' red-skinned mass of muscle" - Johnny) is in this issue, so that means we get to fight Indian totems. Except it's really all a scheme by the Red Star oil company to drive Wingfoot's tribe off its oil rich land.

Previous appearances by Wyatt have kept the Indian bit fairly low key (whatever happened to that sub-plot with the coach of ESU trying to recruit Wyatt for the football team?), but this one is pretty offensive. It also features Crystal in a cleaning apron.

To be fair, Johnny is housecleaning too, although he's not wearing an apron.

Of course, any issue where Reed gets scrunched up into a ball and shot out of a bazooka can't be all bad, can it?

"Hey Wyatt, have you got a bazooka in the jeep?" "Oh, sure."

Wyatt and Johnny are on summer vacation, just in case you were wondering why they weren't in school. It is a summer vacation that will last the rest of their lives.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 2

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• The Black Panther gave Wyatt and Johnny a gyro-cruiser in Fantastic Four #54 (The footnote says issue #36, but it's wrong, even if it is referring to the Marvel's Greatest Comics reprint, which was issue #41).

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel's Greatest Comics #62

Crystal is hot in the apron again XD.

The Wyatt Wingfoot ESU subplot never does get resolved.

Tomazooma instantly gets designated as a "really bad idea' archetype and stays that way among fandom for a really long time. I think he's more interesting than, say, the Miracle Man though.

When I first saw the splash page of Tomazooma I thought I had misread the heading and was reading an issue from Roy Thomas' first run on X-Men.

Coming just a few months after Kirby saw his creation, the Silver Surfer, get taken over and retconned by Lee and Buscema - I've always seen work like Tomazooma as proof that Kirby was deliberately dialing things back, determined not to give Marvel any new character creations that might have commercial value.

Wyatt's tribe, the Keewazi, are treated rather like the Wakandas, right down to the FF finding out they're actually very wealthy due to mineral resources and have loads of advanced technology on hand.

Also, a small gripe: How the hell does Wyatt pick up Mr. Fantastic with one hand? Wouldn't the hypercompressed Reed weight as much as....well, as Reed?

That's a good point. I never thought of that!

Bazookas fire rockets, so I don't see how Wyatt fires Reed either. Conceivably Reed slingshots himself, and uses the signal from the trigger as the signal to let go. But if so, why is there a backwash?

The living totem concept was recycled from RAWHIDE KID #22.

It looks to me like Kirby drew a recoilless gun, and Stan used "bazooka" as slang. Those weapons fire shells that don't have their own propulsion like rockets do. Wyatt should have needed to load in a charge after Reed, but that could have happened between panels, and just wasn't drawn for pacing reasons.