Way back in 1996, in Jack Kirby Collector #9, I pieced together the original version of what was meant to be Fantastic Four #102. Some of the original story ended up as a framing sequence in FF #108 (mixed with John Buscema pencil art), after Kirby had left Marvel for DC Comics in 1970. I had a bunch of chopped up Kirby pencil pages and panels that were never used, and combined them with the Kirby panels that were used in #108, and put the story back into (more or less) the original version Jack had drawn. Since 1996, the unused #102 splash page, and copies of most of the pencils from the #108 stuff, have turned up, so we had the story almost totally complete in pencil.

Enter Marvel’s Tom Brevoort, who got the great idea of having Stan Lee dialogue the unused story, and Joe Sinnott ink it. So, after making sure the Kirby family would be getting paid for the use of Jack’s art, I sent it all to Marvel. The end result is Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure, which is in stores now. It presents the unused pencil version, the inked/dialogued version, and the story that ran in FF #108.

However, there were still a few panels missing from this unused pencil story, so Marvel got Ron Frenz to draw new art for the missing pieces. And wouldn’t you know it; a couple of weeks after Marvel publishes the whole thing, look what just showed up in my email box:

Yes, it’s a missing page from that unused story. A Kirby fan copped this low-res scan off of eBay back in 2004, when someone was selling it. We don’t have record of who actually bought it, and it may have changed hands since then.

If we can find a good scan of this pencil page, Joe Sinnott has agreed to ink it for us to run in the Jack Kirby Collector. So if you know who has it, or have a scan or xerox of this page, please get in touch with me at twomorrow@aol.com. I really want to see Jack’s final FF story completed, once and for all!