The team of comic-strip superheroes known as the Fantastic Four was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics in 1961 and quickly became a cornerstone of Marvel’s universe of characters. The Fantastic Four remains one of the most popular superhero teams in comics history.
The team of characters included Dr. Reed Richards, a pompous scientist; Sue Storm, his lovely and somewhat reserved fiancée; Sue’s hotheaded teenaged brother Johnny Storm; and Richards’s beefy longtime friend pilot Ben Grimm. In The Fantastic Four, no. 1 (November 1961), the foursome commandeered an untested spaceship of Richards’s design from the U.S. military in a frantic but unsanctioned effort to beat the Soviets into space. In orbit, the craft was flooded by cosmic rays that genetically altered its passengers. Upon returning to Earth, the quartet discovered that they had been forever changed: Sue could fade in and out of view and eventually developed the ability to project force fields as the Invisible Girl (later Invisible Woman); Grimm mutated into the rock-skinned powerhouse dubbed the Thing; Richards became the rubber-limbed Mr. Fantastic; and Johnny erupted into flame, blazing through the skies as the Human Torch. Richards persuaded the group to join forces as the Fantastic Four, but the group’s dynamics made them more than a team: they were a family, albeit a dysfunctional one.
Fantastic Four (“The” was dropped from the title in issue no. 16) was a triumph for Marvel Comics, and an array of fearsome foes appeared and reappeared, most notably Doctor Doom, whose hideously scarred face was hidden behind an ominous iron mask. This despotic mastermind—originally Richards’s scientific colleague Victor von Doom—habitually returned to plague the group and to engage Richards in intellectual battles, always with dire consequences.
By the late 1960s the Fantastic Four’s acclaim had extended beyond comic books. Fantastic Four (1967–68), an animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, borrowed heavily from the Lee/Kirby comics. Despite its short run, the cartoon spurred a flurry of merchandising and served as an early crossover success for Marvel. A dispute involving story contributions divided the team of Lee and Kirby, and in the 1970s both vacated the comic. A variety of creators ventured in and out of the title, some making minor contributions to the Fantastic Four canon and others leaving a larger mark.
The Fantastic Four’s second animated TV series, The New Fantastic Four (1978), was short-lived, lasting only a single season. Writer and artist John Byrne’s run on the Fantastic Four comic book (nos. 232–292, July 1981–July 1986) featured such memorable events as the induction of the She-Hulk as a temporary member and the evolution of the once-meek Invisible Girl into the forceful and liberated Invisible Woman. Sales of the comic book dropped in the 1990s, but Fantastic Four was restored to its former glory by writer Mark Waid and artist Mike Wieringo in the 2000s. An alternate-universe title featuring a younger version of the team, Ultimate Fantastic Four, premiered in early 2004.
The live-action Fantastic Four movie was released in 2005, and its sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, followed in 2007. A new animated TV series, Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes, premiered in 2006 on cable television. In spite of these successful ventures into other media, sales of the Fantastic Four comic books were moribund. Writer Jonathan Hickman took over the title in 2009, revitalizing the stalled book with a critically acclaimed story arc that capitalized on the franchise’s traditional strengths: cosmic scale, super science, and family interaction.
