Indie writer James Sturm and future Guillermo del Toro visual collaborator Guy Davis team up for this very unusual installment of Startling Stories, a series that focuses on the early days of the characters who would later become the Fantastic Four.

The series shows Dr. Reed Richards’ work in the ‘50s on (guess what?)…Unstable molecules!  If that sounds boring, it isn’t.  This book won an Eisner Award.

There’s LOTS of good in it: Johnny’s hippie days are explored, for example, using characters from the Lee/Kirby days.  There’s a “comic within the comic” about a fictional superhero called Vapor Girl.  But the series is best known for this scene:

Ben and Sue, drunk at a party, almost get it on—right before Reed had planned to propose marriage to her.