The FF

I believe in arts education. I take my son to see music, theatre, and the Marx Brothers. We've buzzed free nights at MOCA and the Hammer, and last month we visited the Getty's Courbet show.

I think an appreciation of the old masters is important: Rembrandt, Caravaggio, El Greco, Jack Kirby.

Recently we were rummaging through the attic heirlooms, mostly silver-age Marvel, and we rediscovered this fabulous multi-part Fantastic Four comic adventure: A House There Was. In it the Fantastic Four go househunting!

Reed (the egg-headed Mr. Fantastic) and Sue (the wannabe domestic Invisible Girl) are concerned about security and schools. Meanwhile, Johnny The Human Torch (who hot-rods around in alternative fuel vehicles with his Inhuman girl-friend and Native American roommate) opines about suburban facelessness and the criminal sterility of large, earth-moving redevelopment projects.

Wow, even comic book characters in 1969 were hip to the value of organic civic environments, not those designed by traffic engineers, power mad g-school planners, or monument seeking aldermen. (Or at least writer Stan Lee was hip to Jane Jacobs. Please see archives.)

I've got to keep reading. Maybe there's an issue where the Human Torch moves to a Utopian community, heats his own bath water, persuades Crystal to douse his organic plantings, and strips texcote with his flame.