The first time I encountered the Fantastic Four was at the impressionable age of five, during the autumn of 1978. At the time, I was just beginning to understand the Marvel Universe, and my breakthrough was through the Saturday morning cartoon.
The show didn’t even have the true Fantastic Four (referred to by their standard abbreviation of “FF” from this point forward), and took away the Human Torch, replacing him with H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot. Urban legend said it was because the network didn’t want children emulating the Torch. The truth is, because Marvel parceled out its cinematic rights haphazardly, someone had optioned the Torch outside of the FF.
https://youtu.be/Nb5ZGUk1XWo
My first FF comic came a few months later, with H.E.R.B.I.E. on the cover (FF #209, August 1979), bought for 40 cents at Cunningham’s Drug Store. I was hooked.
During the 1980s, I wasn’t a regular buyer of the comic; I bought a few issues here and there (#FF 236, Nov. 1981, the writer/artist debut of John Byrne, was a favorite) but preferred to read the runs collected by my friends Brendan (for the Byrne era) and Martin (for the Walt Simonson era). I always kept up with the FF, though, and once I was out on my own and able to actually afford a lot of comic books, I started picking them up regularly.
I started an unbroken run from #375 (April 1993) to #645 (April 29, 2015). Actually, Marvel broke the run up many times, but I was always there. I was there when they had spinoff titles like Fantastic Five or FF. I was there when Ultimate Fantastic Four or Fantastic Four 2099 or Doom 2099 appeared. For 22 years, I’ve been a devoted reader of the adventures of “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” (not entirely off the mark for 101 issues, despite the hyperbole from Stan Lee).
The FF, for those of you in the dark, are four individuals (sometimes more, sometimes less) mainly consisting of Reed Richards, distracted genius scientist; Sue Storm, Reed’s girlfriend (later wife); Johnny Storm, hotshot brother of Sue and hot rod racer; and Ben Grimm, ex-military pilot.
No matter how many incarnations of the group and add-ons there are (notably She-Hulk, Spider-Man, and Medusa), these are the four core members of the family. And they are a family. Reed and Ben initially were former Army veterans from Korea, which was retroactively changed to college buddies (with Victor Von Doom). Reed and Sue were romantically linked, despite Ben’s obvious attraction to “Suzie.” Johnny and Ben have a sibling rivalry, with Sue acting as maternal go-between. Their origin, in brief, was a mixture of hubris and paranoia, with Reed’s spaceship being delayed for launch and, impulsively, he takes the other three up with him, exposing all to cosmic rays and altering their genetic makeup.
Much of the beauty of the Lee/Kirby creation was that the FF saved humanity from larger threats, like Galactus, but they taught others, more cosmic beings, what being human meant. The Silver Surfer, a herald of Galactus, tasked with finding planets for Galactus to eat, is a prime example. In the classic FF #48-50 (March-May 1966), it is blind sculptress Alicia Masters who convinces the Surfer to rebel against his master, earning him exile on Earth permanently. It is to the credit of Lee and Kirby that the Surfer embraces his punishment. This was the basis of the 2007 film, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. In time, the FF would become both macrocosmic and microcosmic, riding dimensional pathways and encountering alien races and being the ambassadors of humanity.
One particular theme comes from my favorite member of the FF (and probably 95 percent of FF fans too!), the Thing. Because Ben Grimm has been transformed genetically into a being made of rocks, he is often looked on as a monster. Ben, though, is the most sensitive and human of them. Ben is alternately wisecracking and depressed, embracing of his destiny and despises his own skin.
One of John Byrne’s continuity implants back in the 1980s involved Grimm, from Yancy Street in Brooklyn, acknowledging his own Jewish heritage (a superhero analogue to Jack Kirby). As an atheist, in personal life, I’m uncomfortable with religion, but as a story point and a character trait, I love the idea that you can have a universe with a born-again Christian (Nightcrawler of the X-Men), a devout Catholic (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), and a non-practicing Jewish man made of rocks. (Another favorite Byrne implant: we finally got to see, after 20 years, Ben’s ever-lovin’ Aunt Petunia, and she is a smoking hot cougar.)
One of my favorite recent FF stories is from FF (Vol. 3) #56, (August 2002, also reprinted in The Best Of The Fantastic Four Vol. 1 hardcover) “Remembrance of Things Past.” Because of the title being a pun, it’s been used more than once, but here it’s literal.
Ben Grimm goes back to Yancy Street in Brooklyn, where he grew up and was the leader of the Yancy Street Gang. He’d terrorized a pawn shop owner named Hiram Sheckerberg. Sheckerberg mistakes him for the person who’s been extorting him, a costumed villain named Powderkeg. Ben beats Powderkeg, but in the process Sheckerberg falls unconscious. Ben says a Shabbat prayer, reconnecting him with his faith at this crucial moment, and Sheckerberg wakes up.
The following exchange is why I love the FF:
“All these years in the news, they never mention you’re Jewish. I thought maybe you were ashamed of it a little?”
“Nah, that ain’t it. Anyone on the internet can find out, if they want. It’s just… I don’t talk it up, is all. Figure there’s enough trouble in the world without people thinkin’ Jews are monsters like me.”
“You, Benjamin, a monster? In your youth, maybe — but no worse than many, and better than most!”
And Ben tells him the real reason he came: He wants to return a Star of David he stole from the shop when he was a child. It’s the Day of Atonement, and he wants forgiveness. He gets it, but there’s the matter of the window broken in the fight with Powderkeg. Ben offers him money, but Sheckerberg refuses. Money, he has. Ben then offers to come in on weekends and work off the cost, and Sheckerberg agrees. Sheckerberg tells him to keep the Star of David for him, until he needs it. Sheckerberg asks Ben if he knows the legend of the Golem, the protector of the Jewish people. That’s what he needs Ben to do: protect the Star of David for him.
In this story, the fight is an afterthought, because human beings always, ALWAYS come first in a FF story.
Marvel, as noted previously, was once an independent company whose character rights were held by different movie studios. It has been argued that these rights sales helped keep the publisher afloat, which is true (from a certain point of view) and if you want more about Marvel’s terrible finances, read Comic Wars by Dan Raviv.
One of those sales was to Constantin Film in 1986. One of the terms of the sale was that the company had to make a Fantastic Four film by the end of 10 years, or lose the rights. Constantin Film and Roger Corman joined forces to shoot a quickie film. Though never intended for wide release, theaters showed a trailer and clips were shown at Comic-Con in San Diego. Bootleg copies of the 1994 film surfaced after Avi Arad (Arad’s benign takeover of Marvel after bankruptcy is detailed in the aforementioned book) purchased the film’s negative and had it destroyed. Arad didn’t want a low-budget cheapie competing with a big-budget version he was setting up at 20th Century Fox.
