Comic Book / Fantastic Four (Lee & Kirby)

The original run on Fantastic Four by its first creative team — Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Beginning in 1962 and ending in 1970 when Kirby left the title.

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.

In 1999, Lee and Kirby's original run was ranked #31 in The Comics Journal's list of the Top 100 Comic Books of the 20th Century, honored alongside the works of such greats as Carl Barks, Al Capp, Charles M. Schulz and Bill Watterson. It was one of only a few mainstream superhero series to make the list (alongside Jack Cole's original run on Plastic Man, C. C. Beck and Otto Binder's original run on Captain Marvel and fellow Marvel trailblazer, The Amazing Spider-Man) and it was the highest ranked of any of them.

Notable storylines created during this run include:

• 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

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Tropes in this run include:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Johnny was the first to (briefly) get out of the team, tired of the Things's bursts of violence against him. He returns when Namor returned and attacked New York.
• Actually a Doombot: Right there in his first appearance, even. When his first scheme with the FF goes a little cropper, the Thing tries walloping Doom, only to find it's a lifelike robot. The real Doom is elsewhere, watching them. (Curiously enough, for the next several appearances of Doom, this tropes was averted. Doom usually just legs it whenever his plans fail, rather than it turning out to be a Doombot.)
• Alas, Poor Villain: The destruction of the Kree Sentry is done with surprising poignancy, as it stays at its post even as the place is exploding all around it, with no idea whether the Kree are even still out there.
• Aliens Steal Cable: The Skrulls living on Kral heard of Earth via a 30s gangster who wound up there by accident. Since then, they've been watching gangster movies, and have become an entire planet of Loony Fans, acting like your cliched Chicago mob at all times. Nyeah!
• All Your Powers Combined: The Super Skrull has all the powers of the Fantastic Four, but stronger (well, except Sue Storm, since it's impossible to be more invisible).
• Always Someone Better: The Thing had never met anyone he couldn't defeat in hand-to-hand without a hand tied to his back, until he fought Hulk in FF #25.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Hate-Monger and his minions. Possible bonus points for actually being led by the Nazi, Hitler himself.
• And I Must Scream: Doom uses the stolen Power Cosmic to slow Ben down to a crawl, and leaves him standing frozen in Central Park.
• And Now You Must Marry Me:
  • Namor becomes a movie producer, lures the broke FF out to LA, then lures Reed, Johnny and Ben to isolated areas to kill them, and then tells Sue she must marry him. An outraged Sue refuses, telling him if he hadn't bothered with the whole "murder her friends" thing, she might've actually considered it.
  • Rama-Tut tries to make Sue Storm his bride. Consent is not something he's bothered with, as Sue's zapped with a hypno-ray to make her compliant.
• Appropriated Appellation: In the first story, Sue was the first person to call Ben a "Thing".
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The whole reason for the origins of one Victor Von Doom. Once, Victor was an innocent Romani child, living in rural Latveria, when a local baron demanded his father use his medical talents to heal the man's dying wife. Father Doom tried explaining there was nothing that could be done, but the baron refused to believe him. Knowing the baron would lash out when she died, Doom tried fleeing his wrath with his son, ending up in a snowstorm, where he died of exposure. And so, Victor Von Doom swore vengeance upon the world (and presumably, the baron as well).
• Art Evolution: It takes a few issues for Ben's look to develop into his usual "monobrow" appearance.
• Artistic License – Biology: No, the many weird fish that Namor has at his beck and call are not real. Giganto, a whale that can simply stand up and rampage across the city, Godzilla-style? The wondrous Mento-Fish, which can sense human thougths and transmit them to any point on Earth thru mental electro waves? The hypno-fish, a fish with a single eye that can hypnotize people in seconds, and also create a bubble to transport them underwater? A giant clam that can eat a whole ship? The ravenous, unthinking flame-eater? All that is completely made up by Jack Kirby... as you would realize if you just thought about it for a second.
• Artistic License – History: The inhabitants of Ancient Egypt sure do look pretty damn white.
• As You Know:
  • When an episode continued the action of a previous one, the characters make a full recap of it.
  • In issue #2, the first Skrulls we meet get together to recount how they've framed the FF, then remind one another about how they're Skrulls, gifted with shapeshifting abilities, sent to Earth to prepare the way for the invasion.
  • The Inhumans are a serial offender for this one. For several issues, they're stuck inside their city, and the story will often cut away to them standing around reminding one another how they're still stuck there.
• Author Avatar: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby frequently inserted themselves into the stories. One of the most famous cases is the wedding of Reed and Sue, where Nick Fury acts as the Bouncer and removes them from the party.
• Avengers Assemble: Takes place in the very first issue. Reed calls together the team to repel the Mole Man, but as it's very early in their superhero careers, they don't have much in the way of quick transportation. Sue (whose powers are still developing) has to take a taxi, Ben has to stomp through the sewer, and Johnny's attempt to fly to the rendezvous point results in him being mistaken for a hostile enemy aircraft, causing him to be fired upon by the American military.
• Bad Boss: Doom. One plot has him empower a bunch of minor criminals to defeat the Fantastic Four. When he's done, he "rewards" them by banishing all three to another dimension. Forever.
• Battle Strip: Ben Grimm, in the very first issue, had the habit of ripping off a trenchcoat, pair of pants, sunglasses, and a fedora every time he went into battle.
• The Beastmaster: Namor employs weird fish and sea creatures to help him in his fights, as he can control them with his mind.
• Beat Them at Their Own Element: During Super-Skrull's first appearance, he manages to produce flame hotter than the Human Torch can create, overwhelming him.
• Been There, Shaped History:
  • Blackbeard is actually Ben.
  • The FF time travel to ancient Egypt and meet Pharaoh Rama Tut, another time traveler who came from the future to rule with his futuristic weapons. He was forced to leave his ship behind when he escaped in a pod... a ship that looks like a stone Sphinx.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Namor is the villain of FF #4, and Dr. Doom of FF #5. What can we do for FF #6? Namor and Dr. Doom join forces, starting a long on-again, off-again not-quite-frenemies situation between the two! (Doom betrays Namor at the first chance, naturally.)
• Bluffing the Advance Scout: In the Skrulls' first appearance, the FF bluff them into thinking that Earth is crawling with giant monsters by showing them pages from a comic book◊, pretending they're real photographs.
• Bluff the Imposter: When Doom swaps his mind with Reed, Reed is unable to conclusively prove this has happened (like, say, saying something Reed would know and Doom wouldn't). Johnny solves the problem by getting some dynamite and setting it off. Reed-in-Doom's-Body jumps on the dynamite, while Doom tries to run for it.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Thing is brainwashed into killing Reed Richards by both the Frightful Four and the Mad Thinker.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: A memorable moment in Issue #10, from a series not known for breaking the fourth wall on a regular basis. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, struggling to write a plot for that issue, reflect on the mistake of sending Doctor Doom into space. Then, almost as if on cue, Doom barges into their office and threatens the pair to call Mr. Fantastic to "discuss a new plot". Then, at that moment, Johnny answers the phone, telling Reed that it is Lee and Kirby, wanting to discuss a new plot, to which Richards questions it, stating that they just discussed working on a plot the previous day.
• Broke Episode: Issue #9 had a bit of Ripped from the Headlines going on, as it was written shortly after the stock market crashed in 1962. Reed lost most of the team's money to bad investments, forcing them to participate in a humiliating and hilarious movie-making scheme put together by Namor.
• Brought Down to Badass: The Fantastic Four are caught in an explosion arranged by the Frightful four. They survive, but lose their powers... and Doom invades the Baxter Building!
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Reed convinces the leader of the Skrull invasion to leave Earth at once, because it's protected by powerful warriors... and the proof is some panels from "Strange Tales" and "Journey into Mystery".
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Inhumans would gladly dispose of Maximus after his attempted coup, but they also want to bring down that barrier he's trapped them in, and have no way of prying the secret out of his mind.
• Can't Take Anything with You: The FF travel to ancient Egypt to retrieve some herbs that, somehow, can restore people's vision, in hopes of helping Alicia Masters with it. They get them, but lose them during the journey back, which Reed figures is something to do with Doom's time-machine being unable to transport anything radioactive.
• Characterization Marches On: Stan and Jack mostly hit the ground running with Doom, but his first few appearances do have some oddities in there, such as Doom using the occasional bit of casual language, and even cracking a joke, something unheard of from the poised and proud Doom readers are more familiar with.
• Conflict Ball: One of the things that set the FF apart from some of their contemporaries was they bickered. Oh, how they bicker. Usually it's Johnny and Ben at each other's throats, but sometimes it's Ben and Reed, or Reed and Johnny, or Reed and anyone who's in the room.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: One issue has Ben attack the Silver Surfer in a paranoid rage, think he's trying to make time with Alicia. Norinn isn't interested in her, but never thinks to ask what the Hell Ben's even on about.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Reed has all his gadgets rigged so if someone presses a special button down in the Baxter Building's lobby, they all stop working.
  • One of Doom's schemes has him get swept out into space. On his reappearance, it turns out his armor is, naturally, space-proof and had just enough air for him to last long enough for Rama-Tut to rescue him.
• Creating Life: In Issue #15, Reed had created a primitive, single-celled lifeform that lived for a few seconds. The Mad Thinker's Awesome Android is a Mechanical Lifeform created from Reed's notes.
• Creating Life Is Bad: Jerome Hamilton of the Enclave comes to feel this way about the group's rogue creation, Him, and decides the best solution is kill Him before he's properly born. We did mention the Enclave are a team of Mad Scientists?
• Cross Through: One two-part storyline is a cross over between the Avengers and the Hulk, as the not-so-jolly green giant heads to New York to smash the Avengers a new one, and the Fantastic Four get in his way.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The logic of this trope is what drove Reed to figure out that the Miracle Man was not what he claimed to be. If he was he wouldn't need to steal any money, he could simply create it from nothing.
• Deus ex Nukina: When Namor first reappears, he attacks New York with a gigantic, whale-like creature. The Thing carries a nuke into the creature's stomach in an attempt to kill it. He escapes with seconds to spare.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • A recurring problem for the Mad Thinker. He plans everything out in ludicrously over-precise detail, but is always foiled by something he didn't plan for (like, for example, Reed Richards managing to overpower his duplicate).
  • Reed gets sucked into the Negative Zone at one point. As he's drifting to his apparent death, he sees a spaceship pass by, and is surprised to realize the Zone has inhabitants besides Annihilus, or he could've tried contacting them for help.
• Didn't Want an Adventure: Sue often complains how she didn't want to have superpowers or go on bizarre adventures, but would be much, much happier spending her days doing normal girl stuff.
• Dirty Communists: This comic was written during the Cold War, so many villains were communists, such as the Red Ghost.
• Diplomatic Impunity: As ruler of Latveria, Doom is free to walk away from attacking the FF in his third go-around, because apparently drugging people isn't actually a crime, and he's got diplomatic immunity.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Why is the Hulk so hell-bent on smashing the Avengers? Rick Jones became Captain America's sidekick, so he's obviously betrayed the Hulk. Somehow. Note that this isn't the Dumb Muscle Hulk, this is the early, intelligent and eloquent Hulk, who is clearly a raging paranoiac.
• Damsel in Distress: Happens to Sue a lot. A lot a lot. This was the 60s, so there wasn't much chance of her being an Action Girl for a while. But even the readers got pretty annoyed about it soon enough, even writing in to complain.
• Do Androids Dream?: The Kree Sentry may look like a robot, but it demonstrates a full range of emotional capacity, and gets very annoyed whenever anyone calls it a robot.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: While Ben is not remotely above moping about being stuck in his rock-like form, he tends to lash out physically whenever any of the others try offering him sympathy.
• Doppelgänger Dating: In the first issues, Thing likes Sue, but she's the designated love interest of Reed, causing his usual explosions of anger. Then Alicia Masters enters the scene... a girl so similar to Sue that the similarity is used as a plot point in her first issue.
• Dramatic Irony: In issue #12, the Fantastic Four take a trip to New Mexico to help hunt the Hulk. While there, they run into Doctor Bruce Banner, who is very terse and disinterested with this. The FF don't know that Doctor Banner is the Hulk yet.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Ben gets called "Thing" almost all the time. Before too long, the other three members called him "Ben" and "The Thing" was more or less just his call-sign.
  • For the first two issues, the team just wears street clothes. And yet, Reed is able to make the clothes stretch with his body, and Johnny does not incinerate his clothes whenever he uses his powers. Even after they get uniforms in the third issue (designed and sewn by Sue, of course, as it was the sixties and only women did stuff like that), it's mainly to promote team spirit than to accommodate their powers. During this time, they also operated out of Central City instead of New York City—which is still canon as Reed's hometown.
  • For the first twenty (or so) issues, the Invisible Girl can't, or at least doesn't, make force-fields. Her only displayed power was invisibility, which in the earliest comics she primarily used to...hide. Just hide, so the bad guys wouldn't get her. It was only starting with the third issue that she started using her power for espionage as well, and even then she tended to be given away by things like dogs barking at her, and was generally the Damsel in Distress for the other three.
  • Nobody shall ever mention Doom's helicopter with the face of a shark, from FF #5!
  • Reed and Ben are WWII veterans. It made sense back then, since the war was not that far off. Nowadays nobody mentions that. Unlike Captain America or Red Skull, it's not something that defines them as characters.
  • The Molecule Man uses a wand to channel his powers, and had a weakness against organic material.
  • Nick Fury's earliest appearance, aside from him being CIA and not SHIELD, also has him with two perfectly healthy eyes.
  • The notion of Doom ruling Latveria is established early on, but for whatever reason it's kept a secret until the Fantastic Four discover the mysterious master of Latveria is their sworn nemesis.
  • Speaking of which, the fact Doom even is Latverian doesn't come up until the second annual.
  • It may be weird for modern readers of Future Foundation to see Dragon Man as a brainless brute.
  • A lot with Wakanda. For one thing, they're not quite as futuristically advanced as they will be later. Also, the people are called "the Wakanda", rather than Wakandans. Also, T'Challa's outfit in its first appearance has visible irises. He's also called their chieftain, rather than their king. And the super-advanced jungles of Wakanda? T'Challa made that all by himself.
  • In Ronan's first appearance, he's pink. Later appearances of the Kree establish some Kree are Caucasian-looking, but Ronan ain't one of them. He also calls himself the "Public Accuser", rather than just "The Accuser".
• The Ending Changes Everything: Issue #3 is against the Miracle Man, a villain that can do basically anything, anything he wants. He has all superpowers he can imagine at his beck and call. Actually, he simply hypnotized everybody into thinking he did all that.
• Enemy Mine: Although Namor has been the villain most of the times he appears, Attuma would have been worse. The FF attacked his forces laying siege to Atlantis, making sure that Namor didn't notice it.
• Entitled to Have You: Namor's attitude towards Sue is roughly "I want you, ergo you're mine."
• Even Evil Has Standards: Sandman by his own admission is a crook and villain, but he draws the line at hurting the infant Franklin to get at the Fantastic Four. Seems the Wizard agrees with him, since he even stresses during their plan that they shan't harm the baby.
• Everyone Has Standards: Namor may rage about how much he hates humans, but when brainwashed by the Puppet Master he fights against it to stop himself killing the four. Of course, afterwards he has no memory of this.
• Evil Is Petty: A theme.
  • You DARE suggest DOOM is petty? Foolish troper, Doom merely desires vengeance on that accursed Richards for the crime of disfiguring his face! WHAT? You claim Richards had nothing to do with it?! INSOLENCE!
  • The Super-Skrull's first act on being freed from a volcano? Abduct Sue and Johnny's dad, replace him, pretend to be a supervillain and go on a rampage, making the Fantastic Four look bad. Because Kl'rt's just kind of a dick that way.
• Exact Words:
  • In issue #5, Mr. Fantastic, Thing, and Torch are sent back in time to retrieve Blackbeard's treasure or Doctor Doom will kill Sue. Mr. Fantastic decides to dupe him, saying technically they promised to bring back the treasure chest, so even if it's a chest filled with chains they've fulfilled their word.
  • A Wakandan envoy tells the FF they've been invited to a special hunt. They see nothing remotely suspicious about that phrasing, but it turns out they are the hunt.
• Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: Willie Lumpkin the mailman jokingly suggests that he should join the Fantastic Four because of his special ability to wiggle his ears.
• The Faceless
  • Stan Lee and Jack Kirby frequently appear, but most times we don't see their faces.
  • The Yancy Street gang always sends mail or shouts and throw things from afar, we rarely see any of them up close and personal.
  • Doom's face is hidden behind his mask.
• Fakeout Escape: In issue #2, Sue turns invisible when government officials come to check on her, then runs out the doorway during their confusion. (This act is repeated in the Ultimate version as well as the movie Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.)
• Fiction 500: T'Challa is so rich he can actually buy an entire island, just like that.
• Finger in a Barrel: When the Fantastic Four first encounter Prince Namor, the Submariner is preparing an invasion of New York to combat "the human filth." At one point, some Atlantian soldiers are preparing a large gun for firing when Ben Grimm stuffs his whole arm down the barrel, causing the weapon to explode. Ben then brings four dazed and unconscious Atlantians to Reed's laboratory, saying, "Hey, Reed: I found ya four volunteers."
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Dr. Doom used a power he learned from aliens to exchange his mind with Reed Richards.
• Frontline General: T'Chaka always faced any danger to Wakanda head on, and T'Challa is the same.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: One of Doom's early plans has him drug the FF with laced "berry juice". The Comics Code Authority forbade any depiction of alcoholic consumption at the time.
• Genre Savvy: Having apparently read every Tarzan story, Ben interrupts T'Challa telling the Fantastic Four his origin story to say he knows how it'll go. Fortunately, T'Challa's just bemused and carries on with the story anyhow.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: A usual scene of Jack Kirby is to show someone pointing his finger to the others as he talk, from the speaker's back point of view
• Go Mad from the Isolation: In the first annual, Namor is abandoned by his fellow Atlanteans. When he reappears, the time alone without anyone to talk to is making him go a little nutty.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: The entity known as Him, who gives off terrifying amounts of power before even being born.
• Grand Theft Me: Doctor Doom forcefully switches bodies with Reed Richards in issue #10.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Ronan is The Heavy of his first appearance, answering to the Supreme Intelligence, who can't do anything because it's just a head.
• Hate Plague: The Hate-Master, as one might expect, causes one with his Hate-Ray.
• He's Back!: Timely Comics published superhero comics during the Golden Age. Years later they canceled all those titles and moved to other genres, until they returned to the superheroes with the FF (and now under the name of Marvel Comics). Namor was the first superhero from Timely to return, in FF #4.
• Heel–Face Turn: Medusa is introduced as an evil member of the Frightful Four. Later on, we found out that she had amnesia, and that she was actually the Queen of the Inhumans.
• Hidden Elf Village
  • The Inhumans, a whole city of people with superhuman powers, hidden in the Himalayas.
  • Namor is the king of Atlantis, an underwater kingdom. Only Namor can breath at both air and sea, the Atlanteans only breath underwater.
  • Wakanda is a highly advanced nation in Africa, hidden behind an artificial jungle.
• Historical In-Joke: What was Blackbeard's true identity? Find out in Fantastic Four #5! It's Ben Grimm/The Thing.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • In issue #10, Doctor Doom develops a Shrink Ray device with the intent of using it on the Fantastic Four, but he ends up getting shrunk down to nothingness by it.
  • After Doctor Doom steals the Surfer's powers and goes on an unprecedented four issue rampage, Reed is able to defeat him by figuring that stealing the Surfer's power also means the drawbacks that come with it, such as Galactus's conditions. He tricks Doom into flying into the atmosphere, at which point there's an almight kaboom.
  • In issue #100, the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker build a robot Hulk to destroy the FF. Unfortunately, for whatever reason they decide to give it the Hulk's personality as well. So it immediately refuses to do what they say, and starts smashing everything in sight, defeating the two before the FF get anywhere near them.
• Hope Spot: During the early days of the series' run, Ben would periodically revert back to his old human self for a few minutes before turning back into The Thing again. Not only did this give Ben hope that the power of the cosmic rays were weakening on him, but it gave the rest of the four hope it might do the same for their powers.
• Horrible Judge of Character: The Ovoids, a highly advanced and pacifistic race, save Doctor Doom and allow him to wander around their spaceship. He steals their advanced mind-swapping technique before they return him to Earth.
• Humans Are Bastards: The Silver Surfer spends his time ranting about how humans are just the worst. In fairness, being tricked and mugged of his powers by Doctor Doom, then held captive by his space-racist flunkies would make anyone bitter.
• Hypno Ray: Rama-Tut uses one on the team. It eventually wears off on Ben, who had been turned into an ordinary human, when his mutation reasserts itself, and from there Rama's plan falls apart.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming:
  • Johnny and Ben may often fight one another (and quite possibly with the intent of actually killing one another sometimes), but if someone else hurts them, they respond in kind.
  • The Yancy Street Gang endlessly prank Ben, but intervene in the fight with the Hulk because Ben's their guy, no-one else's.
• Identity Amnesia: Namor was found in a slum by the Human Torch, having forgotten his identity.
• I Have Your Wife: Magneto manages to force Namor into going along with his plan to take over New York by holding Lady Dorma hostage, and tries to get the FF to back off by holding the Invisible Woman as well.
• I Know Kung Fu: In one encounter with Doom, he tries grabbing Sue, only for her to reveal Reed has taught her some judo.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The Kree had all but forgotten about the Kree Sentry they'd left on Earth, since it was an unremarkable planet way off their beaten tracks, so they're quite surprised when one day the Sentry sends a report and then gets destroyed by the locals.
• Invincible Villain
  • The Impossible Man is an alien who can counter all the powers of the FF, but he just wants to play pranks. Reed instructs everyone to ignore him, and so he leaves when he felt bored
  • The Enfant Terrible is an alien with great reality-warping powers, and they can't do anything to stop him. Reed noticed that he acted childish (not as a Manchild but as an actual child), so he sent a warning to the space about this. The alien's parents soon show up to retrieve him.
  • And of course, Galactus. He can't be defeated just by fighting, all the times he showed up he had to be tricked in some way to leave the planet and go away.
• It Amused Me: Why did T'Challa turn so much of Wakanda into a technological jungle? For a lark.
• Jerkass Ball: Could be passed around the team like a football, really, but Reed has a tendency to hug the damn thing for dear life, often being an outright dick to his supposed family.
• Just Ignore It: The first time the four fought the Impossible Man.
• Kaiju: The Fantastic Four fought a lot of these within the first issues of the series.
  • Issue #1: Mole Man's massive army that he managed to train while on Monster Isle.
  • Issue #2: A giant snake, a massive, spike-covered golem made of iron, and an enormous bird, all of which were actually Skrulls in disguise.
  • Issue #3: A papier-mâché statue of "The Monster From Mars", which was brought to life by Miracle Man.
    • Lampshaded during the Fantastic Four's cameo in Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men when they helped the X-Men battle one of Mole Man's monsters:
      Thing: We do big monsters! Big monsters in Manhattan, it's our signature piece!
  • Issue #4: A massive whale-like creature with legs called Giganto, summoned and controlled by Submariner.
• Killer Robot: Our first introduction to the Kree is via their giant robot, the Sentry, left buried on Earth and accidentally woken up by two archaeologists. Later on, the Four face another Sentry sent to prevent the first moon landing.
• Kneel Before Zod: "Kneel before the Invincible Man!" Also known as Super-Skrull.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Unfortunately for Johnny, most villains have fire-proof materials for their stuff.
• Large-Ham Announcer: As written in the inimitable, hyperbolic style of Smilin' Stan Lee! No issue can begin without at least one overly dramatic narration by the most loquacious man in comics! Nuff' said!
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: One of Reed's many (many, many, many) attempts to cure Ben turns him human, at the cost of erasing all his memories, leaving a semi-naked Ben wondering what the hell's going on. Reed restores him to his rocky state, in the hopes it'll restore Ben's memories.
• Leave Him to Me!: Happened in issue #27, as shown here. Mr. Fantastic tells The Thing to leave Namor to him.
• Left Hanging
  • The first episode with the Skrulls ends with three Skrulls turned into cows and hypnotized to believe they are really cows. Yes, that's a decent closure for the episode, but sure as hell that won't be the last time we heard about those Skrulls. They returned during the Kree-Skrull War.
  • The Human Torch finds Namor in a slum, with amnesia. He restores his memory, and he immediately becomes the angry ruler of the underwater kingdom we all love to hate. But how did he get there to begin with? That was explained years later, in Namor's own comic.
• Lighter and Softer: Adolf Hitler, of all people (the real identity of the Hate Monger). He never even mentions Jews or any people, and only directs the people's hatred towards "the foreigners" and other unspecific terms like "those we hate". Of course, it had to be this way, the CCA would never authorize something more explicit.^note One of their rules is "Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible". No exceptions for the villain.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: During a fight with Namor, Ben's zapped by a stray lightning bolt which momentarily turns him back to his human self.
• Like Reality, Unless Noted: As of issue #20, the Fantastic Four have met several alien races (the Skrulls, Planet X, the Watcher, the Impossible Man, the Ovoids), and that's not counting the aliens that appeared in other comics of Marvel. Still, when a meteorite contains traces of a life form inside, he's as interested as any real-life scientist would be to discover alien life.
• Love Makes You Stupid: And also violent. When Crystal is literally dragged back to the Inhumans, Johnny goes roaring after her (nearly getting shot by twitchy Soviets on the way), planning to drag her right back. When he gets to Attilan, he attacks the Inhumans, then when Crystal tries telling him to calm down, Johnny comes to the conclusion she never loved him, and tries wrecking the whole city. Only Reed's timely intervention stops him from doing anything, and fortunately the Inhumans are pretty chill about the whole thing.
• Manipulative Bastard: The final story Stan and Jack worked on has Namor find an unconscious Magneto, fresh from his most recent tussle with the X-Men. Namor rescues him, and in gratitude... Magneto tries tricking Atlantis into war with the surface again.
• Man of Kryptonite: One issue saw Doom empower three criminals so they could take on specific members of the Fantastic Four. One got Super-Hearing so that he could track down the Invisible Woman even if he couldn't see her, one was made completely fireproof so the Human Torch's flames would have no effect on him, and the last one got a cosmic beam gun that could temporarily depower the Thing (as well as Super-Strength so that he actually stood a chance fighting him).
• Master of Illusion: The Miracle Man can hypnotize anyone into thinking he can perform amazing feats of magic.
• Medium Blending: Some of the Jack Kirby-drawn issues featured photographed models of objects in place of drawings.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In the Red Ghost's first appearance, his Super-Apes turn on him, because he never fed them (so as to ensure they were properly vicious).
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Ronan's first appearance has him explain he doesn't really care one way or another about Earth, but since the Supreme Intelligence told him to go to Earth and see what's what, that's what he's going to do.
• Never Mess with Granny: In Agatha Harkness' first appearance, the Frightful Four try attacking the gang while they're at her incredibly creepy mansion. Agatha, a witch, drives them off on her own, with the Four none the wiser.
• Nominal Hero: Though they obviously got better, the four got off to an extremely rocky start. The first issue starts with Sue, Johnny and Ben causing mass destruction just by making their way across town in answer to Reed's distress signal, with Johnny actually getting in a dog fight with the air force along the way. Ben and Johnny also couldn't seem to go five minutes without trying to beat each other senseless in the early years, while Sue was famously prone to getting captured. As for Reed, he managed to lose all the team's money on the stock market, and of course the entire story kicked off with him pushing through with a space mission absolutely everyone advised him against and it ending in disaster. Suffice to say, they all had a lot of growing up to do.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: The page image◊ is a scene from issue #87 in which Crystal and Sue are trying to escape Doom's castle, only to run right into the dictator's personal dining room. Despite the fact that he was trying to kill them before, he now treats them as honored guests. Even Evil Has Standards, especially when it comes to getting three square meals, apparently.
• No Name Given: Molecule Man, in his introductory story, to help emphasize what a nobody he was before he gets his powers.
• The Nose Knows: In issue #52, Sue tries turning invisible to avoid fighting Black Panther. However, his sense of smell is so strong he can just smell where she is anyhow.
• No-Sell: A clue that the Fantastic Four may be the stars of the book, but they're in serious trouble during their fight with ol' Jade Jaws, when Johnny's fireballs do nothing to the Hulk, nor does Ben tricking him into receiving a several million volt zap from a stray power line.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: A one-off villain is an alien who's crashed on Earth, and is trying to fix his ship. Compounding his problems is he either can't speak, or just can't speak English, so he attacks humans on sight rather than explaining everything. Once Reed works out what's going on, the guy's allowed to go on his way.
• Nothing Is Scarier: None shall gaze into the face of Doom! Not even Doom himself is willing to risk it. In one issue, he actually removes his mask, and whatever he sees has him scream in horror. Of course, over the decades, writers would go back and forth as to whether the injuries really are that horrible, or if Doom is just being... well, Doom over a comparatively minor blemish.
• Not Wearing Tights: For the first two issues. The four only started wearing them because of fan demand.
• Now What?: At the end of the Black Panther's first appearance, he wonders what to do with Klaw supposedly dead and his father avenged. The Fantastic Four point out there's a lot of good someone like him could do for the world.
• Nuke 'em: Reed Richards gets the backers of the Invincible Man to send him away by threatening to drop a nuke on them. They do so... but see Sore Loser.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: In an early issue, Ben nearly crushes Doom's hands. Naturally, Doom holds a serious grudge over that one.
• Origins Episode: Mixed with Villain Episode, the second Fantastic Four annual is all about Doom's Start of Darkness.
• Out-of-Character Alert: The Thing destroys a tower, the Invisible Girl steals a gem, the Human Torch burns a marble statue, Reed causes a city-wide blackout... "Can we believe our startled eyes? Is it really possible that the Fantastic Four have really perpetrated those criminal acts? Or is there more to this than meets the eye??" It's the Skrulls, framing the Fantastic Four.
• Parental Abandonment: Dr. Franklin Storm, Sue and Johnny's dad, went mad from grief when his wife, Mary, died in a car crash. He turned to drink and gambling, and accidentally killed a loan shark who came looking to collect. He refused to contest the judge's sentence of twenty years. Sue never told Johnny, who apparently never heard a thing about any of this, and just assumed his dad was dead.
• Perception Filter: Ronan uses his Universal Weapon to hide himself while he takes stock of New York.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Reed Richards is astonishingly sexist a lot of the time.
• The Psycho Rangers: The Red Ghost and his super apes, who also passed through the cosmic rays and got super powers. Later the Frightful Four became a closer example, with The Wizard (an evil science guy), Sandman (with super strength and street smarts) and Medusa (an evil token female member) .
• Rage Against the Author: Author Avatars of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby attended the wedding of Reed and Sue... and were expelled by Nick Fury.
• Reed Richards Is Useless:
  • The second issue prevents an alien invasion, and by the end of it we have three alien prisoners on Earth. The potential of that would be awesome: they can be interrogated to no end to get technology ideas from them (that if they didn't keep any actual alien devices with them), and their alien biology would open whole new fields of science (no need to get to an Alien Autopsy, just some useless samples of hair and nails would be an incredible thing to analyze). But no: Reed simply hypnotized them to think they are cows, and good riddance.
  • In issue #9 the FF are broke and badly in need of money as a result of the stock market crash of 1962. The team point out that they can surely monetize their powers somehow, but Reed rejects the idea: the only two ways would be joining a freak show, or crime. Never mind that previous issues had shown Johnny can and does use his power to help fix cars.
  • Diablo appears to use his amazing grasp of alchemy to restore life to deserts... except he's basically an alchemical con-man, and nothing he does lasts.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Issue #19 keeps spelling the word Pharaoh as "Pharoah". This was pointed out in the "Fantastic Four: The Legend" special.
• Science Marches On: The Fantastic Four were, in-universe, the first humans to reach the Moon, alongside the Red Ghost. There, they met a strange alien, the Watcher. Some years later (and with Kirby still writing the comic) the first actual Moon landing took place. It was acknowledged as such, and no reference to the FF being the first ones was ever made.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • The Super-Skrull is stuck inside a volcano. His bosses use SUPER-SCIENCE to bust him out several months later (and not, say, just getting a bunch of Skrulls with pickaxes or something).
  • Diablo was sealed up by the locals of the country he lived in. Unfortunately, Ben Grimm is hypnotized into letting him out.
• Secret Identity: Averted. Contrary to the long-standing tradition of superhero comics up to that point, the Fantastic Four have public identities. Everybody knows their real names and where they live.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Franklin Storm dies at the end of issue 32, and everybody is crying over his corpse. The narrator conceded that "the editors feel this is not the time or place for advertising our next issue".
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: The Yancy Street Gang are not villains, they're just jerks who love to make Ben's life miserable.
• Sixth Ranger: While the core line-up remains fixed, the FF are joined on some adventures by Johnny's friend Wyatt Wingfoot, and later on by Crystal of the Inhumans.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Slaver, a Skrull who grabs aliens and forces them into death-matches. He decides ol' blue-eyed Ben Grimm would make a fine one, and abducts him.
• Sore Loser: The Skrulls, after Reed thwarts their second plan with the Super-Skrull, send Dr. Storm back to Earth... with a bomb strapped to his chest rigged to go off the minute he gets there.
• Soul Fragment: In issue #51, "This Man, This Monster", a scientist uses a "duplication device" to physically model himself after Ben Grimm, but when he sacrifices himself to save Reed Richards, Reed speculates that he may have gotten some part of Ben Grimm other than his skin.
• The Spook: In his first two appearances, Rama-Tut has a mysterious past, and the characters all wonder just who he could be, whether he's a descendant of Doctor Doom, or Doctor Doom himself. Even Doom gets in on the action, somehow wondering if Rama-Tut will one day go back in time, turn into a child and become Doom. ... we should probably point out Doom had just nearly asphyxiated when he was thinking this. When he became Kang the Conqueror over in Avengers, we get a few more deets on his past, but one thing is clear: He categorically isn't Doctor Doom.
• Story-Breaker Team-Up: Namor has kidnapped Sue and takes her to his underwater kingdom. Reed uses all his high-tech sci-fi machines to locate and go after him, but insists on going alone. What can Johnny and Ben, without those magical machines, do? Easy: ask Dr. Strange for help, who locates Namor and sends Johnny and Ben to the fight just with magic.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien:
  • The Watcher, who has incredible deus-ex-machina powers, but only ever uses them to watch... unless the threat is too high.
  • And Galactus, a Planet Eater.
• Superheroes Stay Single: In this comic the trope was subverted by the marriage of Reed and Sue. It's not the first superhero marriage (over at the Distinguished Competition, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash and his long time girlfriend Joan were married when Barry Allen met them in the famous "Flash of Two Worlds", predating this story by four years) but it may well be the first super-hero wedding seen on panel with an entire Annual devoted to it.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: The story from issues #102-104 deals with the Four having to fight Magneto, who takes over the Atlantean army and invades New York. At no point do his usual foes the X-Men make so much as a cameo, or even a throwaway line about what they're up to while this is going down.
• Take That, Audience!: The FF are reading mail and Sue is troubled because she's got a lot of hate mail, saying that she's useless, that she doesn't help, that the team would be better off without her. Reed and Ben are outraged and make a speech (yes, looking at you!) by pointing to the significance that Abraham Lincoln gave to his mother, even if she did not "help" to fight The American Civil War.
  Ben Grimm: In fact, if we printed Lincoln's life in our mag, some wise guy would probably write in and ask why we don't leave his mother out of the story, because she doesn't do enough!
• Team Hand-Stack: Used in the origin story, when the team and members are named.
  • And in multiple repeat variations of the origin story.
• The End... Or Is It?: In issue #52, Black Panther supposedly kills Ulysses Klaw, and his whole base explodes. The issue ends revealling Klaw is still just slightly alive, and his sound machine is still functioning. A battered Klaw decides to turn it on himself...
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In-Universe, Stan and Jack are discussing new villains, and regret that Dr. Doom was lost in space the last time. You don't come up with a villain like that every day!
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman:
  • In the fight between the FF, the Avengers and the Hulk, who is it who has the most luck styming the green rage monster? Ant-Man and the Wasp. Hank uses his shrinking powers to dodge the Hulk's attack, then sets a bunch of ants on him, distracting the Hulk long enough for Rick Jones to slip him a de-hulking pill, ending his current rampage.
  • In order to rescue Reed from imminent death in the Negative Zone, the Fantastic Four turn to Triton of the Inhumans, his physiology allowing him to survive in the Negative Zone's lack of atmosphere and recover Reed.
• Together in Death: When Franklin Storm is fatally wounded in issue #32, he tells his children Sue and Johnny not to be sad, as he'll finally be reunited with his beloved wife (who'd been killed in a car accident years earlier).
• Took a Level in Badass: Initially, the Invisible Girl could turn invisible, and that was it. A good idea for an H. G. Wells novel perhaps, but too little for superhero adventures. So she had increased powers later: she could turn other things invisible, and use forcefields in battle.
• Underestimating Badassery: In issue #12, all the guys brag about how they'd use their powers to beat the Incredible Hulk (Sue says nothing because she could only turn invisible at this point, and she really doesn't want to go anywhere near him). They are all completely wrong.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Doom's immediate first response on being saved from certain death by Rama-Tut? "How can I enslave whoever rescued me?" Gratitude ain't one of Doom's defining attributes.
• Villain Ball: At the end of issue #3, Johnny leaves the FF in a huff. Issue #4 has the others go to track him down. The Thing finds him first, and then apropos of nothing attacks Johnny.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Doom has a knack for getting away from the Fantastic Four, until the second annual reveals he's actually ruler of Latveria.
• Water Is Air: The fight between Namor and Attuma used several elements from middle ages warfare (walls, siege, catapults, burning projectiles, etc.), which should not work underwater.
• Wedding Episode: The third annual is centered around the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm. However, Reed and Sue's wedding quickly went from kink-free and blissful to a disaster of epic proportions when it was crashed by a very-pissed conga line of recurring villains who tore up the Baxter Building and a large portion of New York while fighting over who got to kill the FF, tangled with all the FF's Avenger and X-Men pals who had been invited to the wedding, and turned the event into one of the most famous Battle Royales in all of comics history. It took the frickin' Watcher popping in with a machine that threw all the villains back in time to before the attack began to end the chaos.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Dr. Franklin Storm, the father of Johnny and Sue, is introduced in issue #31, and then jailed.^note He was a fugitive from the law, but he arrived at the hospital to cure his daughter, even knowing that the police would capture him in doing so And then he's killed by the Skrulls the next issue.
• Will They or Won't They?: The endless dance in the early days between Reed and Sue, which eventually ends with them marrying. And meanwhile, Ben and Alicia. They don't (and wouldn't for another six decades. Yeesh.)
• Yank the Dog's Chain: So many examples of Ben's mutation wearing off, or a cure being waved in his face, and it all turns sour.
• Yo Yo Plot Point: A very early plot point that kept getting recycled was Ben spontaneously turning human again (this happened in the second issue) or Reed finding a cure for Ben being the Thing. No matter how permanent the change seemed, he was always back to normal by the end of the arc.
• You Already Changed the Past: The Fantastic Four go to the past, to retrieve the treasure of Blackbeard. The Thing, costumed as a pirate, leads the other pirates (amazed by his superhuman strength) to pillage another ship, and capture its treasure. Was Blackbeard in that ship? Not exactly. When they see how the pirates treat him, they realize that the Thing, with his pirate costume (including a black beard), is Blackbeard.
• You Killed My Father: T'Challa's father, T'Chaka, was killed by Ulysses Klaw. When he was a kid, T'Challa managed to drive him and his thugs off, ruining Klaw's hand in the process, but he knows the man is out there, and has been training since then to avenge him.

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