“When I was 11, life was often hard. I read that comic 20 times and felt such shame that I related more to the evil scientist than to the heroes,” writes Kindness columnist ANTONIO DI DIO.

If you ever find yourself thumbing through a comic-book values catalogue (now there’s an image) you’ll find that the canonical issue 1 of Fantastic Four is fairly expensive!

It was the November 1961 book that ushered in the Marvel age and turned a struggling schlock house of cowboy, comedy and monster rip-off books into a juggernaut now in its seventh decade of publishing and movie domination.

Second to that, by mid-decade, Fantastic Four numbers 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 and 52 are also worth thousands and sought like grails by collectors. 

Writer/editor Stan Lee and artist/legend Jack Kirby were in a creative fertility space that had not been seen since somebody gave Agatha Christie a typewriter, and these particular issues included the first appearances of The Inhumans, The Silver Surfer, The Black Panther and other members of the marvel pantheon that endure and thrive to this day.

After a lifetime of collecting these treasures, I’m no closer to owning one of them ever, but the joy they bring is great.

The thing is, nestled among those treasures, and appearing in Australian newsagencies in early August 1966, at exactly the same time I first appeared too, was the little known number 51.

It’s worth a small fraction of the others and is a lame and ordinary 20-page story introducing a villain (the evil scientist Ricardo Jones) who was so uninteresting that he dies at the end of the story and was never seen again.

From the moment I first read it, it is my favourite comic book of all time and I read it about once a year, whenever my wife rereads Pride and Prejudice. It’s got fewer bonnets but more explosions so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

The story is simple. In every issue since number 1, Reed Richards, famed scientist and the leader of the FF, promises but fails to cure his best buddy Ben Grimm from being a monster made from rocks, known as The Thing.

Like the creators of the comic, Stan and Jack, they had served in World War II and been defined by challenge.

The story begins with Ben being so frustrated at never getting cured that he falls in with the Evil Scientist, who is jealous of Reed’s fame and fortune.

The scientist successfully turns Ben back into a normal man. Ben races to his girlfriend’s house to show off his normality and finally propose. Evil scientist is turned into the rock monster himself and impersonates The Thing, his plan being to destroy the hated rock-star scientist Reed Richards.

The comic features the first appearance of The Negative Zone (creativity unbound, this zone is still big in the comics and movies, too) and soon the Evil Scientist bloke is stunned to discover that, like everything else he does, Reed bravely risks his life to explore the place for the good of humanity, not for fame or fortune.

Furthermore, when going deeper, Reed asks the bloke he thinks is Ben to hold his tethering line, and literally puts his life in his friend’s hand. A scary thing happens and Reed offers his life to save his friend.

In a finale my 11-year-old self had never seen before, the Evil Scientist realises that his loneliness and failures are not Reed’s fault but his own, and inspired by the selfless friendship he first sees here in Reed, sacrifices himself in the first unselfish act of his whole life.

Classic comics melodrama demands that when the evil bloke dies, Ben, about to propose to his girlfriend in his handsome human body, instantly turns back into the ugly Thing and fails to pop the question. Alicia, we know, doesn’t care what he looks like and loves him for him, but he never sees it.

When I was 11, life was often hard. I read that comic 20 times and felt such shame that I related more to the evil scientist than to Reed and Ben, our heroes.

I understood his loneliness and anger so much better than their easy success, belonging and having a best friend. I loved the redemption that could be gained from a single act.

Kindness to me is finding all those people who are behaving like the evil scientist, blaming everything for things they cannot grasp, and showing them all the love and respect we can, to open their own hearts.

People who have undergone unfair treatment, fear, and despair and seek recognition or refuge in our modern Australia – people who’ve been here for six years or 60,000 – there’s plenty here who need our love today more than ever.

Antonio Di Dio is a local GP, medical leader and nerd. There is more of his Kindness on citynews.com.au