For just this once, I would do the type of story I myself would enjoy reading if I were a comic-book reader. And the characters would be the kind of characters I could personally relate to; they’d be flesh and blood, they’d have their faults and foibles, they’d be fallible and feisty, and—most important of all—inside their colorful, costumed booties they’d still have feet of clay. (Origins 17)
Regardless of whose version of events you believe, then, both Kirby and Lee were clearly interested in creating a new kind of superhero story that would mix commercial appeal with deeper characterizations of slightly more “realistic” characters. What this meant in practice was the merging of superhero action with melodramatic, evolving soap opera-esque personal lives and stories that carried over from issue to issue.
In other words, Lee and Kirby took the first steps in a journey to create not just a superhero book, but to build an entire superhero universe. Within the first twenty-five issues of The Fantastic Four, that universe would be in full flourish, with the all-star team-up book The Avengers eventually joining The Fantastic Four as a central hub for this newly established Marvel Universe.
Fantastic Firsts
At first glance, the cover of The Fantastic Four #1 was nothing special for Marvel. The central figure is not a superhero, but rather a giant monster in the same mold as those that had been featured in many of the previous few years’ stories from Lee and Kirby. Surrounding that monster are the titular four stars of the book, but rather than appearing in spandex-and-caped glory, two of them are displaying strange abilities (invisibility and stretching powers) in street clothes, while the other pair (a man on fire and another made of rock) seem to be displaying monstrous transformations of their own. In fact, the Fantastic Four—consisting of super-genius, super-stretching Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic; his girlfriend, Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl; her younger brother, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch; and Reed’s best friend, Ben Grimm, the super-strong but monstrously deformed Thing—don’t appear in superhero costumes anywhere within this first issue. The closest they come to them are the astronaut’s uniforms that the quarter wear on the fateful trip to outer space that bombards them with “cosmic rays,” imbuing them with their powers.
Clearly, this was a different take on superheroes, one that experimentally imbued the characters with a sense of realism that went beyond the square-jawed, cookie-cutter science fiction gods of DC Comics. Not only did the Fantastic Four not wear traditional superhero costumes, but they lacked traditional superhero attitudes. While the Human Torch exulted in his powers, for example, the Thing was devastated by his monstrous appearance, exclaiming in his very first line of dialogue, “Bah! Everywhere it is the same! I live in a world too small for me!” (3). This was a new take on superheroes, wherein the character’s inner and personal lives were every bit as important as the villains whom they fought. Superman, for example, had never felt any conflict within him about the very nature of being Superman, nor did he ever receive anything but admiration from the American public that he protected. This was not the case for the Fantastic Four.
Indeed, in the very next issue, shape-changing aliens named the Skrulls impersonate the foursome and frame them for various crimes, turning the public against them and the team against each other. The bickering and conflict that occurred amongst the heroes was another key difference from DC’s heroes. When Johnny and Ben get into an argument, Sue chastises them, telling Ben, “Thing, I understand how bitter you are—and I know you have every right to be bitter! But we’ll just destroy ourselves if we keep at each other’s throats this way! Don’t you see?” Ben responds with pure, distilled self-loathing: “I see … and sometimes … I think I’d be better off – the world would be better off – if I were destroyed!” (12, emphasis and ellipses in original).2 Even though the team would adopt superhero uniforms in the next issue, and reveal their secret headquarters and fantastic array of vehicles, the soap opera melodrama and conflicted characterizations would continue.
While Lee and Kirby used the first three issues of The Fantastic Four to showcase their new take on the superhero genre, wedding Lee’s grounded characters with the epic-scoped flights of fancy that were Kirby’s trademark, in the fourth issue they hit upon another innovation that would, in some ways, kick-start the entire Marvel Universe.
Though Johnny Storm borrowed his hero name and powers—The Human Torch—from a Marvel hero of the 1930s/1940s, it was clear from the outset that there was no connection between Johnny and the previous character.3 While the older hero had been an android imbued with life by a genius scientist, Johnny was an impetuous teenager, as evidenced by the ending of The Fantastic Four #3 in which he flies off in a huff, tired of being bossed around by the others on the team. The next issue begins with the team directly dealing with the fallout of Johnny’s departure. Looking out over the city, Reed explains, “Somewhere out there among the teeming millions of the city, the Human Torch is hiding from us! And we’ve got to find him.”
What was so unique about this opening was the serialized nature of the storytelling. While some DC Comics would be continued in the next issue, these were all self-contained two-part stories that never featured ongoing subplots. Lee and Kirby thus added seriality on top of their more “realistic” version of superheroes, connecting each issue to the next in an ongoing, never-ending story that allowed characters to learn, change and grow.
What’s more, in this very same issue, Lee and Kirby connect that story back to Marvel’s past. While hiding from his family, Johnny checks into a men’s hotel in a sordid part of town. There, he discovers an “old, beat-up comic mag” from the 1940s, featuring the Sub-Mariner. He thinks to himself, “I remember sis talking about him once! He used to be the world’s most unusual character … I wonder what ever happened to him? He was supposed to be immortal!” (8). Though he stumbled upon the character in a comic book, Johnny’s thoughts establish the Sub-Mariner as a real person who once inhabited the same world as the Fantastic Four. In fact, when a fellow resident sees Johnny reading the magazine, he explains that there’s “a stumble-bum right here who’s as strong as that joker was supposed to be!” (8). When several men harass this man, who suffers from amnesia, Johnny rescues him, then uses his flame powers to burn off the man’s beard and long hair, revealing the face of none other than the Sub-Mariner himself. To restore the Sub-Mariner’s memory, Johnny flies him to the ocean and drops him in, with the results explained in a pair of captions:
Once submerged in the mighty sea, a startling change comes over the strange derelict! In one sweeping motion, he hurls his outer garments from him … and stands revealed as the legendary prince of the sea … the invincible Namor, the Sub-Mariner!! (12)
Namor then returns to his undersea home of Atlantis, discovering it destroyed by (he assumes) atomic tests, which leads him to seek revenge upon humanity. He is opposed by the Fantastic Four, including the returned-to-the-fold Human Torch, and becomes the villain of this issue. In his original adventures, Namor had been an antihero, coming into conflict with the surface world and the android Human Torch, but the outbreak of World War II had turned him into a hero who joined forces with the Allies against the Axis powers. Here, though, when up against the heroic Fantastic Four, he is re-cast as a semi-sympathetic villain. As Marvel historian Pierre Comt...