A golf course doesn't seem like the most logical place for comic book history to be made, but like everything else about the Fantastic Four, nothing in this story sticks to formula.
As the legend goes, Martin Goodman, publisher of Marvel's forerunner, Timely Comics, was playing golf one morning with Jack Liebowitz, publisher of DC Comics at the time. With both men firmly entrenched in the comic book industry, a little bit of shop talk was to be expected, but one thing that Liebowitz said was particularly interesting to Goodman: a conversation about the Justice League.
Liebowitz was touting the sales success of the superteam, which included heavyweights like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Goodman was looking for a new addition to bolster his much smaller comic book line, so he went back to writer Stan Lee and asked him to think of a superteam of his own to help boost sales.
At the time, Lee was burnt out on the comic book game but was convinced by his wife to swing for the fences and do the book exactly how he wanted to. And when you want to turn heads, you enlist the art of Jack Kirby.
"I went home and wrote a two-page outline and sent it to Kirby," Lee said, according to the book Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics. "We talked about it, and he went home and drew it. We didn't know we were doing something that was going to be almost historic. It was just another story."
But the Fantastic Four is far from just another story.
The Flawed Fantastique
In November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 hit the stands. Instead of bright costumes and cackling villains, the cover by Kirby featured four oddballs in street clothes, battling a monster that looked more like a sentient head of lettuce than a comic book supervillain.
"I — I can't turn invisible fast enough!! How can we stop this creature, Torch?" screamed the Invisible Girl.
"Just wait and see, sister! The Fantastic Four have only begun to fight!" the Human Torch responded.
With that cover, the dynamics of the Four were laid out. This was a family; there were no costumes (yet), no secret identities, only diverse personalities. Whether your eye was drawn to the brightly lit Human Torch, the beautiful translucency of the Invisible Girl, the elongated features of Mister Fantastic or the rocky hide of The Thing, chances are something on this cover spoke to you.
While the Justice League read like a greatest hits of household names banded together to fight crime and sell books, the Fantastic Four weren't polished do-gooders beloved by the public. They weren't gods or chosen by a higher power; they were misfits, and their abilities were an accident.
You know the story: Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben steal a rocket to beat the communists into space, as people were wont to do at the time. However, once in orbit, they were belted with cosmic rays, which not only gave them powers, but also presented the family with a whole host of other issues never seen before in a superhero comic.
The Unwilling Super Team
Unlike heroes like Superman, Green Lantern and The Flash, the Fantastic Four's powers came as more of a curse than a blessing. Mister Fantastic could never get over the guilt of cursing his friends with these powers; the Human Torch let the fame of his newfound abilities get to his head; The Thing's monstrous appearance all but ended any hope he had for a normal life and the Invisible Girl was now tasked with trying to hold this brood of maladjusted outcasts together, while also coming to terms with the changes in her own body.
Lee and Kirby didn't have the Four adjust to just their powers, though, they also had to adjust to each other. In an unprecedented move for a superhero book at the time, this quartet not only lived together like a real family, they fought like a real family. At times, the egos and neurosis inside the Baxter Building were just as dangerous as a battle with Blastaar or the coming of Galactus.
"It was this sort of soap opera conflict that quickly became the hallmark of the book," former Fantastic Four editor Tom Brevoort said in the introduction to The Best of the Fantastic Four Volume One. "The Fantastic Four were often at odds with one another, almost more so than the villains they fought."
Open nearly any issue of Fantastic Four and you would see The Thing locked in some brand of battle with the immature Human Torch. This left Sue alone to rein them both in, while at the same time scolding Mister Fantastic for spending too much time in his lab and not enough time being a husband. It might be tough to relate to the last son of Krypton or a billionaire orphan with a nuclear-powered jet, but you can identify with the squabbling of the Fantastic Four. Even better, you can probably see yourself in one of them, if not all of them.
"Characterization is the most important thing in any story," Lee again said in Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics. "First I thought of the kind of character I wanted, then I figured out what kind of powers he'd have."
The family dynamics and conflicts in Fantastic Four stories helped pave the way for the tone of the entire Marvel Universe that followed. It's seen in Bruce Banner's inner conflict with the Hulk, Peter Parker's relationship with Aunt May and Wolverine's constant battles with the straight-laced Cyclops. Without this initial foundation laid down by Lee and Kirby in 1961, we wouldn't have the same Marvel Universe we have today. In fact, there probably wouldn't be one at all.
The Kirby Krackle
Outside of Will Eisner's Spirit run, if you take a look at the most popular superhero comics before 1961, chances are you won't find any one book so connected to an artist as Kirby was to Fantastic Four. Through his experimental panel layouts, use of splash pages and double-page spreads and tinkering with techniques like photo collages, Kirby crafted a look that encapsulated the pop-art stylings of the '60s in a way no other title could compete with.
To this day, comic book artists are still playing catch-up with Kirby in many ways. In nearly every Fantastic Four issue during his 100+-issue tenure, Kirby was coming up with a layout, angle, technique or invention that was never seen before. Look back at the other superhero books at the time and see where else you could find something like this:
But it wasn't just the dynamic nature of his art that made Kirby a legend; it was also the raw human emotion he brought to the book. Kirby's illustrations alone can tell you the whole story of any issue, even if you took out the dialogue and narration. He could sum up everything about a character in one splash page, like we see here in Fantastic Four #51:
Is there anything else you would ever need to know about The Thing? The Fantastic Four seemingly always brings the best out of an artist, and as the years went on, talent like Mike Wieringo, John Byrne and Dale Eaglesham all had career highs while illustrating the Four.
The Sympathetic Rogues
A superteam is only as good as its villains, so it should come as no surprise that the FF has one of the best rosters of baddies in all of comics. All of their villains would be just as comfortable on a therapist's couch as they are in the middle of a super-powered brawl. And the beauty lies in the way Lee, Kirby and subsequent creators went about making these foes relatable.
They weren't, for the most part, just hell-bent on world domination; they genuinely thought what they were doing was justified. Doctor Doom's villainy came from a need to protect his home country of Latveria, the Silver Surfer was out to protect his home world and the love of his life, while the world-eating Galactus was just looking for some grub.
Again, we see this same formula unfold over the years in characters like Loki and Magneto; two iconic villains that believe their vile actions could be justified if they weren't so misunderstood.
Changes And Constants
In the decades since Lee and Kirby took the first steps into the larger Marvel U, writers John Byrne, Mark Waid, Jonathan Hickman and a host of other creators have kept the main thesis of the Fantastic Four alive. The foundation of the original books is so strong that none of the later writers or artists ever needed to reformulate the Four; only the occasional tune-up was necessary to bring the team into new decades.
Unfortunately, the movie rights situation has hurt the Four's recent comic book appearances. While there might not be a proper Fantastic Four title at this moment, we can't imagine that Marvel will turn its back on the characters that built the brand for long.
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