Comic Book / Fantastic Four (1961)

And if this cover does not make you buy the comic, we don't know what else will...

Fantastic Four is a 1961 comic book series from Marvel Comics by Jack Kirby, with some plots of Stan Lee. The series was one of the starting points of The Silver Age of Comic Books and the beginning of the Marvel Universe.

It all began when scientist Reed Richards, his best friend Ben Grimm, Reed's fiancee Sue Storm and Sue's little brother Johnny stole an experimental rocket to go into space, heedless of the risks of dangerous cosmic radiation. That radiation would give all four fantastical abilities, which they vowed to use for the protection of mankind. And on that day, the Fantastic Four were born!

This run introduced or popularized a huge number of tropes to the superhero genre, mainly superheroes having problems and fighting among them. It also goes without saying that it also introduces a lot of the characters and concepts that became mainstays of the Marvel Universe as a whole. The two worked together until Fantastic Four issue #101, one of the longest shared runs between a writer and artist in the Big Two for decades, not broken until Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley's Ultimate Spider-Man. Jack quit Marvel between issues #102 and #103, which was a multi-part story.

Notable creative runs include:

• Fantastic Four Lee And Kirby (1961-70)

Notable storylines created during this run includes:

• Fantastic Four #1
• Fantastic Four Annual #1
• Fantastic Four Annual #2
• Fantastic Four Annual #3
• A Blind Man Shall Lead Them
• Among Us Hide... The Inhumans!
• The Coming of Galactus

---

Fantastic Four (1961) provides examples of:

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run

See Fantastic Four Lee And Kirby

Stan Lee's run

• No Such Thing as Space Jesus: Subverted the second time Galactus attacks Earth in issue #120. He is preceded by his new herald Air Walker, a very impressive-looking being who just happens to be named Gabriel Lan ^note  Technically, it's a robot duplicate of the real Gabriel Lan, who is deceased by then. and who, as a herald of Galactus, has come to announce the end of the world. Naturally, the human onlookers assume he is the Biblical Gabriel announcing Armageddon and are terrified. Air Walker is then confronted by the Silver Surfer, who makes it plain that he himself does believe in God, and that Air Walker cannot possibly be His agent, because Air Walker is acting like a bullying jerk.
  Silver Surfer: The ultimate power need never be flaunted! You cannot possibly be who you claim!
• Twisting the Prophecy: When the Overmind was introduced in issue #113, he was fond of quoting a prophecy about himself: "From out of the heavens shall come the Overmind, and he shall crush the universe." Indeed, none of the heroes can make a dent in him, even with the Teeth-Clenched Teamwork of Doctor Doom. It took the Deus ex Machina of The Stranger showing up, and summarily shrinking the Overmind to particulate size, taunting: "Now the Overmind has his universe to crush, on a nameless mote of dust."

Roy Thomas' run

• Powered Armor: During Thomas' run in the early 70s, the Thing lost his powers, so he wound up using a exo-suit version of his previous body.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: In issue #177, the Frightful Four (who were betrayed by Thundra and now reduced to just the Wizard, Sandman and Paste-Pot Pete) defeated the FF and kept them captive while making auditions for a forth member. They got: a guy with no powers, a guy who can make tornados but would only join if he was well paid for his services (and they expected a member that was in it For the Evulz), Thundra (who was there only to have another chance to strike them), a guy with awesome powers but with a fobia to fire, and Tigra (a new character then; she found the Wizard very attractive... because he was the nearest one to the lever that would release the FF). The Wizard then made a general call: any of those waiting outside that helps them defeat the Torch and the Thing would be accepted as a member. They all ran away. The only one to remain was The Brute, who finally became the 4th member.

Marv Wolfman's run

• Hoist by His Own Petard: In issue #196, Doctor Doom gloats to an imprisoned Reed Richards about a torture room he designed full of thousands of mirrors arranged in such a way that the myriad reflections are so incomprehensible to the human mind that looking at it without protective goggles can induce a Heroic BSoD. In issue #200, Doom and Reed's climactic battle leads to Reed chasing Doom into the aforementioned room, where Doom beats the living crap out of Reed and strangles him while screaming about how much he hates him. However, Reed manages to tear off Doom's mask just before he passes out, and the sight of his grotesquely disfigured face reflected at him thousands of times drives Doom completely insane (he gets better).
• Shout-Out: Annual #12 sees the Thing fighting an out-of-control robot and crashing into The Gong Show.
• Take That!: When HERBIE the robot was infamously introduced for the 1978 cartoon, Marvel's writers were evidently not too happy about it. So during Marv Wolfman's run, Johnny explains to Richard Rider that he was absent when the others signed the contract for the show (as, much to Ben's ire, Reed was busy creating a real HERBIE robot with a Xandarian scientist so they could get back to Earth easier). A few issues later, it's revealed Doctor Sun, a former enemy of Dracula's who had joined Nova and company in an attempt to gain the knowledge of Xandar's computers, uploaded himself into HERBIE and attempted to kill the team. HERBIE/Sun ends up getting blown up by the end of the issue.
• Wham Episode: Issue #216 opens with the following disclaimer: "Warning: In this incredible issue, you'll find the one word you never thought you'd see in a Marvel comic again!" At the end of the issue, the Fantastic Four (seeking to know who the mysterious alien beings behind the Nuwali and Fortisquains were) locate a defunct Nuwalian heater in the currently frozen-over Savage Land and open it up, finding one word among the machinery: Beyonder. This is the name of a group of powerful aliens that were first mentioned back in issue 63 of the Thing's own Team-Up Series, Marvel Two-In-One. The revelation also inspires most of the Fantastic Four to visit the singular entity of the same name (from Secret Wars (1984) and Secret Wars II) a few issues later.

John Byrne's run

• Candids for Sale: In issue #275, a sleazy tabloid takes pictures of She-Hulk sunbathing topless with the intention of selling them for a large amount of money. She-Hulk fails to stop the pictures from seeing print but is able to avoid public embarrassment thanks to the pictures being color corrected in the printing process, making the woman in the images unrecognizable as She-Hulk.
• Casual High Drop: During John Byrne's tenure, he had She-Hulk substitute for Ben Grimm. While fighting against the mask of Doctor Doom (who'd presumably died), she fell from a top-story window of the Baxter Building, and plummeted many stories to the street below. Of course, this won't hurt She-Hulk much; she instead aimed to miss the people and cars to minimize the collateral damage. How thoughtful.
• Court Room Episode: Issue #262 is a follow-up on a story arc seen in Issues #242-244 where Galactus comes to Earth to die. Interestingly, this was spurred behind-the-scenes from Chris Claremont having the Fantastic Four make a brief appearance in Uncanny X-Men #167 to have Majestrix Lilandra of the Shi'ar Emprie call out Reed for saving Galactus from death. Not only was this appearance unauthorised by then-current FF writer John Byrne, he found the scene to come across as a "Take That!" towards his writing and complained to then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter about it. With Assistant Editor's Month coming up, Byrne decided to make an entire issue inspired by the X-Men appearance.
• Dangled by a Giant: In issue #248, while the Fantastic Four are visiting the Inhumans on the moon, gravity suddenly goes haywire. The cause is a Tractor Beam that's pulling the moon into the docking bay of a gargantuan starship. As a colossal alien begins to examine the moon, Ben Grimm tries to get its attention by tearing off a huge chuck from a control panel. Well, to Ben it's a huge chunk; to the alien, it's a mere sliver. The alien dangles the sliver with Ben still gripping it before its eye, but cannot see minuscule Ben. The alien shrugs, discounts the sliver as an anomaly, and does a Blind Shoulder Toss with the sliver. It's stated that poor Ben will take hours to plummet to the floor.
• Fantastically Challenging Patient: Issue #258 has Manhattan doctors discuss a peculiar patient found badly mangled with broken bones aplenty. They have the patient bandaged from head to toe, and give him a "sugar and booze" (sucrose and methanol 3% solution) intravenous drip. Some doombots abscond this patient, taking him to Latveria, where Doctor Doom (no, Not That Kind of Doctor) manages to heal him. The patient is revealed to be Terrax the Tamer a/k/a Tyros the Terrible. Doom plans to use Tyros, infused with the Power Cosmic, to soften up the Fantastic Four, then claim the coup de grace.
• Mind Rape: In issue #280, the Psycho Man twisted Susan's emotions to turn her into the villain Malice. Sue explicitly compared the experience to being raped, and it was a key factor in her decision to change her name to the Invisible Woman, and take one of the biggest levels in badass in comics.
• Mistaken Age: Throughout the series, the Thing frequently mentioned his 'Aunt Petunia', with the implication that she was an old woman. When she finally appeared in issue #238, Petunia (she prefers 'Penny') was revealed to be his uncle's second wife and an attractive woman about the Thing's own age.
• Mr. Alt Disney: In issues #263-264, Alden Maas goes mad and believes himself a Messiah. To solve the problem of overpopulation he plans to use the Human Torch to reignite the Earth's core thus expanding the landmass. He dies just as he's about to push the big button. Afterwards his assistants claim the idea would never work. Queried why they were doing it, they admit they were programmed to obey him. The point being, they know the messiah stuff is rubbish but they can only do what they're told.
• Obliviously Superpowered: In issue #234, Skip Collins is absolutely ordinary middle-aged man who actually happens to be a nigh-omnipotent Reality Warper. He remains unaware of this throughout the story, never realizing that the small lucky breaks and coincidences around him are caused by his power. At one point, he even speeds up time so that the weekend will arrive sooner. In the climax of the story, he spends all his power to fix the Earth when it's destroyed in a battle between Ego the Living Planet and the Fantastic Four, becoming truly an ordinary man, while everyone (including himself) remains unaware that planetary destruction has been overwritten.
• Power Trio: Ben, Johnny and Alici. This was carried over into the Marvel Comics 2 universe with Ben, Johnny and Lyja).
• Sacred Flames: In issue #260, Doctor Doom gets his body obliterated during a fight between Tyros The Terrible and the Silver Surfer. Doom's mind resides in the body of a bystander, who now uses "Gypsy magic" and the "Flames of Falroth" in his Latverian castle to try and reconstruct his mortal body. When these sacred flames cannot undo the disintegration, they summon The Beyonder instead. It's an awkward moment, having recently returned from Secret Wars (1984).
• Tyrannicide: Issue #247 has Doctor Doom bring the Fantastic Four to his homeland to show them how Prince Zorba has reduced Latveria to a Crapsack World where its people live in misery and fear. While the Four battle war-class Doombots, Doom seeks out Zorba and confronts him about his tyranny.
  Prince Zorba: So long as I live, you have no claim to the throne!
  Doctor Doom: Precisely.
• That Man Is Dead: In Issue #284, when Sue gives a speech about her newfound maturity at the end:
  Sue: There is no Invisible Girl anymore, Reed. She died when the Psycho-Man twisted her soul.

Tom De Falco's run

Sexually-revealing suits? Check. BFG? Check. Civvie Spandex? Check. Ominous mask? Check. "Special issue" in a number that has nothing special? Check. Welcome to the 1990s!

With the departure of Walt Simonson in 1991 following a brief but popular run writing (and sometimes drawing) the Fantastic Four comic, Marvel's editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco stepped up to the plate as his replacement. He was joined by artist and occasional co-plotter Paul Ryan, a longtime Marvel employee who had previously enjoyed well-received runs pencilling The Avengers, West Coast Avengers and Mark Gruenwald's limited series Squadron Supreme.

Together, they were going to bring Marvel's First Family into the 1990s. For better or worse, they succeeded.

Running for around 60 issues (FF #356 - 416) from 1991 to 1996, the DeFalco/Ryan era represents one of the longest for a single creative team on the Fantastic Four comic, surpassed only by the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run in the 1960s and equalled by the John Byrne run in the early 1980s. Although it achieved some of the title's best sales since its Silver Age heyday, it was divisive in its time and remains so even now, with its infamous Dark Age trappings serving as ready targets of fan mockery.

Some of the notable features of this run include:

• Retconning Johnny Storm's marriage to Alicia Masters from the preceding Roger Stern and Steve Englehart runs (in his very first story!) and revealing that she was actually a Skrull infiltrator named Lyja and the real Alicia had been a Skrull prisoner since before her romance with Johnny began.
• Aging-up Reed and Sue's young son, Franklin, into a Totally Radical leather-jacketed early 90s teenager with an armoured costume and the codename "Psi-Lord" (he even had a short-lived spin-off super-team called "Fantastic Force").
• Some rather questionable character design choices, of which Sue's infamous "4"-shaped boob window is only the most notorious; others include Reed's safari jacket and Ben's metal mask, which he donned to hide the scar inflicted when his face was slashed by Wolverine.
• Revisiting the "greatest hits" of the preceding John Byrne, Steve Englehart and Walter Simonson eras, bringing back both Sue's "Malice, Mistress of Hate" identity and Aron the Renegade Watcher and reforming the New Fantastic Four (Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Wolverine and the Hulk).
• Killing off both Reed Richards and Doctor Doom and then keeping them killed off for two years straight before bringing them back shortly before DeFalco departed the book, when they were revealed to have been exiled to the distant past by a villain called Hyperstorm, the alternate future son of Franklin Richards and Rachel Summers (the second Phoenix) from the future seen in the X-Men story "Days of Future Past" (phew!).
• Expanding the regular supporting cast to what was then the greatest extent it had been, bringing in Namor, Scott Lang, Lyja, Nathaniel Richards (Reed's father, previously revealed to have become the leader of Earth in a dystopian future), She-Hulk, Kristoff Vernard and others.

Perhaps the most famous story from this era is "Nobody Gets Out Alive", in which the team travels across different timelines looking for the time-displaced Reed and comes into conflict with a powerful villain called the Dark Raider, an alternate Reed Richards who was driven mad by the loss of his family and took to travelling across dimensions killing every version of Reed Richards he can find.

Ultimately, the book's sales declined towards the middle of the decade (coinciding with the The Great Comics Crash of 1996 contraction of the American comic book industry more generally, and around the time DeFalco had stepped down from the editor-in-chief) and the decision was made to reboot the team as part of the Heroes Reborn storyline, with the FF, along with the Avengers, written into a crossover with the X-Men which saw the team removed from the main Earth-616 continuity in a battle with the villain Onslaught. Precisely how much foreknowledge the creative team had of this is ambiguous: DeFalco clearly had plans to keep writing into 1996 (see Aborted Arc, below) while Ryan only learned that he was being replaced by Jim Lee via the Internet!

Mocked though it may be, the DeFalco run does have fans who admire its consistency, attempts to strike a balance between the prevailing trends of the time and the FF's "old school" nature and the expansion of the cast to encompass more of the FF's extended family (while other fans enjoy the incongruity of the Marvel team of the Silver Age donning the Darker and Edgier trappings of comics in The '90s). Likewise, Paul Ryan's art and talent for visual storytelling remain very well-regarded, even among detractors of DeFalco's writing.

---

• Aborted Arc:
  • The FF find some Lost Technology in the jungle that turns people into "The Thing" soldiers and back. Works for Ben, and for anyone else just as fine. After his return, Reed is worried about a detail everybody overlooked: who built that thing? Alas, Defalco's run ended, the FF died fighting Onslaught, were recreated in another universe, then returned... meanwhile the Baxter Building was handed over to the Thunderbolts, until Zemo blew it up. By then, the machine was lost and Ben returned to his usual status.
  • One very obvious one appeared right at the end of the run, when Cassie Lang, Franklin Richards (restored to his more familiar age) and Kristoff Vernard meet a classmate of Cassie's who is evidently being beaten by his father and lashes out when they attempt to help him; clearly a Very Special Episode about abuse was in the offing, but then an issue or two before the book was rebooted, Kristoff and Franklin ask Cassie about the classmate and she explains that the problem had been resolved off-panel and his family were in counselling.
• Actually a Doombot: Alicia, who got married with Johnny, turned out to be a Skrull. And the real Alicia still loves Ben, allowing Johnny to be single again.
• The Atoner: Wolverine scarred Ben's face with his claws during a fight. He called him to a bar at a later issue, to try to make amends.
• The Baby Trap: When she was first outed, Lyja claimed that she was carrying Johnny's baby. Reed doubted it, he thought it unlikely that humans and Skrulls could breed. And, before dying, she confessed that it was a lie. When she returned, the baby subplot resumed... and yes, it turned out to be a lie (though it would later turn out that Skrulls and humans can have kids. Just not this time).
• Berserk Button: The FF go to the Skrull world to rescue the real Alicia. Johnny gets enraged when he sees Lyja among the crew... and with a FF suit to boot!
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Where did Ben get the mask? He was in the Watcher's house, which has a museum. One of the exhibits involved Ben using a mask similar to one he only wore for a few moments when the FF first donned costumes. So he took the mask from it.
• Exact Words: In one of his time travel jaunts, Nathaniel fell into the European past, among some gypsies, and had sex with one of them. His other son, he said, was the legitimate ruler of Latveria! Sue is thunderstuck: Reed and Doom are brothers? No, he wasn't talking about Doom. He was talking about Kristoff, heir to the throne now that Doom is dead.
• Death Is Cheap: Shortly before his run came to an end, DeFalco revived Reed and Doom.
• Depower: Sharon Ventura, previously mutated into She-Thing, returns looking significantly less She-Thing-y. Turns out she got some help from Doctor Doom.
• Facial Horror: The Thing gets his face sliced up by Wolverine and for a while he sports a helmet and later a scar until Hyperstorm reverses the damage.
• Fighting Your Friend: After Johnny torches an entire university campus, Silver Sable and the Wild Pack go after him, and she tries getting Spider-Man in on that. Spidey points out that Johnny is his friend, and Sable's response is basically "so?" Instead, Spider-Man gathers up the All-New Fantastic Four to try talking Johnny down, and the predictable happens.
• The Hero Dies: Reed Richards is killed by Dr. Doom. The Fantastic Four have to go on without him. Of course, he gets better eventually.
• Idiot Ball: Spider-Man brings Wolverine in on his team to try and talk a rogue Johnny down. You know, Wolverine, the man with the unbreakable metal claws, bad attitude and tendency to go into berserk rages. Somehow, this decision ends with Wolverine going into a berserk rage and slicing Ben's face up.
• In Love with the Mark: Lyja had been sent to impersonate Alicia to woo the Thing. As fate would have it, this happened right when the Secret Wars event had Ben leaving the team for a time. Lyja thus shifted her plan to seduce Johnny instead, only to fall in love with him for real.
• Most Common Superpower: For a time, the Invisible Woman wore a skimpy costume with a cut-out "4" on her cleavage.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Johnny comes under attack from Lyja, Paibok and Devos, so he uses his nova attack. Too bad he was at college at the time.
• Otherworldly Visits Youngest First: In the build-up to the Onslaught story, Franklin Richards was visited by his "imaginary friend", Charlie. Charlie was a manifestation of Onslaught, who was, initially, gestating in the brain and body of Charles Xavier. Eventually, the entire Marvel Universe would be reeling from just how real he was.
• Point of Divergence: The Fantastic "Three" visit a world where 'The Coming of Galactus'' took place with a small alteration. Instead of sending Johnny to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier, the Watcher sent Reed. Reed got distracted by all the science-defying amazing gizmos around, instead of going straight to the needed one, and came back too late. Galactus killed the Silver Surfer^note he was about to do that in the original story, before being interrupted, dispatched the F3, and consumed the planet.
• Retcon: One of the biggest ever for the team: The Alicia Masters the Human Torch married was a Skrull imposter and had been ever since the events of Secret Wars (1984).
• Self-Disposing Villain: Subverted. Lyja dies during Alicia's rescue... or not. Paibok rescued her, and she returned to have vengeance!
• Stripperiffic: Sue's infamous "boob window" outfit. It turns out to be Malice trying to reassert control.
• Take That!: A famous moment, and one that got DeFalco in hot water, was Scott Lang slamming the reviled first season of Fantastic Four: The Animated Series.
• Too Dumb to Live: Paibok takes his ally Devos to the Skrull homeworld, to celebrate the capture of the FF. Devos, who wants to destroy all alien races capable of waging war. Earth and the FF are on that list, yes, but the Skrull homeworld is an even better target. Some minutes later his ship is raining death over the unsuspecting Skrulls.
• Underestimating Badassery: Somehow the Wild Pack, largely a group of mercenaries with fancy tech, think they can take Johnny Storm, who even on his slower days is a pretty formidable fighter.

Walt Simonson's run

• Celebrity Casualty: In issue #343, it's revealed that an alternate President George H. W. Bush died of pneumonia.
• Covert Emergency Call: In Issue #348, Mr. Fantastic is secretly being held prisoner by a Skrull infiltrator disguised as Sue. As the leave the Baxter Building together, Reed tells his robotic assistant that he and his wife are going on a day trip and that she should tell that to his "friends in the Marines." The robot, knowing that Reed has no friends that are in the Marines, looks up the phrase, discovering its history as a Covert Distress Code and realises that Reed is in trouble.
• Deception Non-Compliance: In issue #348, Reed Richards is going along seemingly willingly with a Skrull Sue imposter. When he passes by the robot secretary the FF used at the time, he tells her to "tell it to the Marines," which she looks up in an idiom database and discovers it means he's lying.

---