What Could Have Been / Fantastic Four

• * The original outline of Fantastic Four #1 Stan Lee typed up, featured a number of ideas that weren’t incorporated into the final comic.
  • Reed's stretching powers would've harmed him.
  • Sue was originally permanently invisible, and she'd be more or less an Invisible Streaker. To compensate, Sue would wear a mask to indicate her location. She was also an actress.
  • Ben would have been a Token Evil Teammate, pining to steal Sue away from Reed and suffering from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
  • Johnny's powers were limited, meaning at any point his flame could shut off.
• The Four's costumes were originally supposed to include masks.
• Jack Kirby initially pitched Black Panther as a similar hero called the Coal Tiger, but this was changed when Marvel became worried that a visibly African hero would alienate Southern retailers.
  • When the Black Panther concept was decided on, Kirby came up with a slightly different design than the finished version. His mask exposed the lower half of his face (ala Batman) and his costume sported Underwear of Power, but this design was once again vetoed after Marvel expressed concern. The Panther's iconic black mask ended up coming about as a way to essentially trick retailers into ordering a book guest-starring a black superhero without them knowing the character was black until it was too late.
  • Black Panther and The Inhumans were originally supposed to debut in their own titles in 1965. Lore has it that Marvel was constrained by a distribution deal with DC that kept them from publishing more than 8 comics a month. The characters were instead introduced in the pages of Fantastic Four.
• There were plans for an Invisible Woman mini-series by John Byrne and Mary Wilshire back in the 80s. The series would have seen Sue's powers mutate so that she could now become intangible instead of just invisible, but with the caveat that she couldn't actually control the intangibility. This would have led to her falling into an alternate dimension where she could remain tangible, but where her only chance to return home would not come about for another 40 years. The series would have then chronicled Sue's life for the next four decades as she met a handsome warrior and battled a group of villains called the Shadow Knights.
• Had John Byrne stayed on the book and produced the 25th anniversary issue (#296), it would have been a story called "Return to Monster Island", where, according to Amazing Heroes Preview Special #2, "since Monster Island blew up at the end of the first story, it is now a ring of small islands surrounding a large hole, into which sea water has been pouring ever since that story. The sea water has been flowing down subterranean tunnels in the Mole Man's underground kingdom, into areas where the Earth's heat has turned it into superheated steam, triggering earthquakes worldwide."
• When Scott Lobdell took on the book with its reboot in 1998, he had huge plans. He talked of ideas like making C-lister Doctor Demonicus into a true threat and the hint the cosmic rays had long-term effects on the FF. His first year would culminate in the Wizard forming a Frightful Four "worthy of the name" and a battle of wits with Reed. But after just three issues, Lobdell had a falling-out with editors and left the book with Chris Claremont taking over.
• During the late '90s, when Chris Claremont was writing the Fantastic Four, he had planned to have Reed and Sue hire Kitty Pryde as a live-in nanny for Franklin Richards (taking place after the cancellation of Excalibur), but then X-Editor Bob Harris wanted Kitty to rejoin the X-Men. Claremont intended to do this again during X-Men v. 2 #100, and during a cancelled Kitty Pryde mini-series with artist Lee Moder.
• In 2011, Nick Spencer and Becky Cloonan were slated to do a Prequel mini-series called Victor Von Doom, which would have focused on a teenage Doctor Doom as he traveled to Hell to try and save his mother's soul. Unfortunately, the book was cancelled by Marvel right before the first issue was about to be shipped.
• One oft-repeated but seldom substantiated rumour which has floated around the Internet for decades suggests that John Byrne and Chris Claremont were going to "swap" books in the mid-1980s, with Claremont taking over Fantastic Four while Byrne would get the X-Men. Whatever its provenance, it most likely would have ended up being moot anyway, because Byrne jumped ship to DC for the opportunity to work on his dream project (Superman) around the time this switch supposedly would have happened.
• Before making a name for himself with Pulp Fiction and Killing Zoe, Roger Avary penned a script on spec in the late 80s. Based on Fantastic Four numbers 48-50, but with all references to the super hero team removed. In Avary's words: "Instead of Johnny Storm traveling to the Negative Zone, it's the Surfer. Instead of The Punisher guarding the Ultimate Nullifier in the Negative Zone I had a gold-skinned surfer-like guardian. Alecia Masters has no relationship with Ben Grimm, but is still a blind sculptress — through her I have the Surfer rediscovering the humanity he lost when he transformed from Norrin Radd to the herald of Galactus. Lastly, my first draft supposed that Galactus wasn't necessarily a sentient entity, but a massive and complex planet eating robot-ship that's operated by millions of creatures — Borg-like (before there were Borg)."