Will Scheibel
Mention reading Fantastic Four to most people outside of the comics community and you’re likely to get a smirk or a look of confusion. The superhero quartet has one of the worst film track-records of any Marvel Comics property. Twentieth Century Fox’s Fantastic Four (2005) and its sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) treated the source material like a bad joke. Then, there was Fox’s 2015 reboot, which took a darker approach, featured younger versions of the characters, and bombed at the box office. Most infamously, Roger Corman agreed to distribute a Fantastic Four film in 1994 for German producer Bernd Eichinger’s Constantin Film, the production company that went on to launch the Resident Evil film series. It was never even released.
For comics fans, however, the Fantastic Four is much better known as Marvel’s “First Family.” Co-creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby debuted the characters in their own series, The Fantastic Four, in November of 1961 (“The” was dropped in 1963 with issue #16). The series remained the company’s flagship title throughout the Silver Age of comics and, until 1970, held the distinction of being the only title on which Lee and Kirby worked continuously in their respective roles as writer and penciler. Issues #44 through #98 of their legendary, 102-issue collaboration span one of the very best periods of the series to date, affirming Lee’s cheeky boast that it was the greatest comic magazine in the world.
Disney’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision), will be the first official Fantastic Four film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film will set up “Phase Six” of the MCU—continuity made possible by Disney’s acquisition of both Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox, now 20th Century Studios—and will culminate in Avengers: Doomsday with a curiously cast Robert Downey Jr. as the Fantastic Four’s arch nemesis Doctor Doom. Little else has been revealed, but we know the film is not an origin story even though it will take place in the 1960s, or some version of it. If your only familiarity with Reed Richards (“Mr. Fantastic”), Sue Storm (“Invisible Woman,” née “Invisible Girl”), Johnny Storm (“Human Torch”), and Ben Grimm (“The Thing”) is from their previous screen appearances, well, you’ve made dear Aunt Petunia cry. Here are five Fantastic Four stories to catch you up before the new MCU film. Flame on!
Fantastic Four #44–51 (1965 – 1966)
Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Jack Kirby. Collected in Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus, Fantastic Four Epic Collection Vol. 3 (Marvel, 2023).
Essentially two story-arcs and an epilogue, these eight issues are where Lee and Kirby hit their stride on Fantastic Four. Issue #44 also marks the return of inker Joe Sinnott after his contribution to Issue 5, and his name stayed on the masthead for the duration of Lee and Kirby’s run together. Set immediately after Reed and Sue’s wedding, the first story is about our heroes’ fateful meeting of the Inhumans, another super-powered group. One of the Inhumans, Crystal, would become an important ally of the Fantastic Four and a romantic interest for Johnny. The second story saw the arrival of the antagonist Galactus, the god-like “Devourer of Worlds,” and his melancholy herald, the Silver Surfer, both of whom play major roles in the new film. Finally, issue #51 takes us into the Negative Zone, a parallel dimension of antimatter that Kirby introduced through his far-out use of photo collage. If you’re not a Fantastic Four fan by the time you finish this cycle, you might as well go join the Yancy Street Gang.
The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine
Originally published in single issues as Fantastic Four: The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine 1-12 (2001-2002).
Jack Kirby left Marvel for DC Comics in 1970, and Stan Lee moved into a corporate position as Marvel’s publisher in 1972, ending his run on Fantastic Four with issue #125 in August of that year. Commemorating the 40th anniversary of “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine,” Erik Larsen and Eric Stephenson were among the bevy of writers and artists who paid homage to Kirby and Lee’s collaboration with this limited series set immediately after the events of issue #100. It’s a retro Fantastic Four vs. Doctor Doom story that reads like a veritable “who’s who” of Marvel superheroes from the period.
Unstable Molecules
Written by James Sturm, illustrated by Guy Davis, and originally published in single issues as Startling Stories: Fantastic Four—Unstable Molecules 1–4 (2003).
What made Fantastic Four especially innovative in the 1960s was how the focus shifted between “clobberin’ time” with cosmic villains, on the one hand, and the social and psychological conflicts within the team, on the other. At the end of the day, the team was also a family, if not always a harmonious one. Presented as a faux academic biography, Unstable Molecules tells the story of the “real” family whose turbulent life in the late 1950s inspired the comics: Columbia University professor Reed Richards, a brilliant physicist recruited by the U.S. government to help win the Cold War; his neglected, unfulfilled girlfriend Sue Sturm, conscripted into the role of a Glen Cove “faculty wife”; proto-Beat Johnny Sturm, Sue’s moody teenage brother; and Reed’s jealous college pal Ben Grimm, a self-destructive boxing-trainer. You’ll never look at the Fantastic Four the same way again.
Life Story
Written by Mark Russell, illustrated by Sean Izaakse, and originally published in single issues as Fantastic Four: Life Story 1–6 (2021).
Have you noticed how superheroes never age? Life Story shows the Fantastic Four aging in real time as they experience real historical events and changes from the 1960s to the 2010s. Mark Russell, who also wrote The Flintstones (2016–2017), Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles (2018), Superman: Space Age (2022), and Batman: Dark Age (2004), is one of the smartest comic-book scribes of his generation. Looking back on U.S. cultural icons of the mid-twentieth century, he grasps latent meanings and reinterprets these figures to show how they are as relevant to our lives in the present as to our present-day understanding of the past.
Full Circle
Written and illustrated by Alex Ross and published as a one-shot graphic novel in 2022.
The events of issue #51, “This Man…This Monster,” from 1966, served as a springboard for the Fantastic Four’s first original graphic novel (as distinct from a trade volume collecting previously published material). We find our heroes besieged by creatures of negative energy that invade the Baxter Building through a human host, leading the entire team into the Negative Zone. Don’t read it for the story, which is a little thin and more than a little confusing. Published in prestige-format hardcover, Full Circle was also the first longform comic-book written and illustrated by Alex Ross, the Rembrandt of comic-book artists, and his forte is painted visual style. The dreamy illustrations practically glow like fluorescent ink under a blacklight. Nobody would have loved it more than Jack Kirby himself.
Disney releases The Fantastic Four: First Steps in theaters on July 25. Let’s hope a film finally does justice to characters who have been going strong in comics for more than sixty years.
