The general consensus coming from people like Timely-Atlas expert Michael Vasallo and Mark Evanier (and I agree with them) is that George Klein inked the cover of FF # 1, as well as the interior and the cover and interior of FF # 2.

Nick Caputo

As a practising Occultist, I’d say that Alan Moore would probably be in the know.

Also depending on who talks about it 616 may or may not be based on FF#1. Based on what Alan Davis says it has to do with the Number of the Beast – 666.

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that 616 being the number of the beast was only discovered a few years ago – long after Marvel had started using it.

LOL to Michael Mayket who claims to have “seen the Fantastic Four cover a billion times (literally)” as he really ought to know that you should never combine obvious exaggeration with the word “literally” if you want to be taken seriously. I know that the current U.S. financial crisis has people throwing “billions” and “trillions” around now like they don’t mean anything anymore, but let’s do the math here. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 3600 seconds in an hour, 86,400 seconds in a day, and therefore 31,536,000 seconds in a non-leap year. So to do something a billion times, and assuming that you could do whatever it is (in this case, see a comic book cover once again) once per second, you’d have to be doing that, 24 hours a day, for more than 30 years (30 X 31,563,000 is not quite yet a billion). If he’d said “a thousand times”, I probably would have bought it.. but even “a million times” is probably ridiculous, never mind a billion. Let’s all reserve the word “literally” for when we mean it… literally. (And yes, this is just a pet peeve of mine.)

“Anonymous,
It took me awhile to see it [the head in Kirby's pencils] too. It’s much lower than you might expect, but you can see the outline of his forehead and nose and helmet just to the left of (behind) his fist. All of which is certainly omitted in the inked version.”

Yeah, thanks. I can now also see that the other I mentioned is the character’s body armor with his torso turned almost horizontal. Thank you very much. However, and as I said, I doubt very much Coletta had any similar help.

As for finishing on Kirby’s THOR and this THOR-related material being ‘the highlights of his career as an inker,” I’d have to say that “the shallowest of his lowlights” might be better phrasing. But I thought his inks were less damaging to Mike Grell’s pencils (I’m particularly thinking about Vince’s long run on THE WARLORD) than to anybody else’s. General compatibility or more effort on his part, I wouldn’t know. And I do mean LESS DAMAGING, as the finished comics still did not look too good.

Also depending on who talks about it 616 may or may not be based on FF#1. Based on what Alan Davis says it has to do with the Number of the Beast – 666.

http://www.marvel.com/blogs/Tom_Brevoort/entry/719