Happy 60th anniversary to Marvel’s premiere superhero team!
Created as a response to the popularity of Justice League of America, the F4, while no longer the most popular Marvel property they’re arguably the most important historically as it really can’t be overstated how much we know and love about Marvel was born in the pages of F4; ranging from stuff like Galactus, Skrulls, Inhumans, Dr. Doom, Silver Surfer, and the first Black superhero - King T’Challa made his debut in Fantastic Four. For my money, Fantastic Four #1 belongs in the same conversation as the Action Comics #1 for the most important comic book of all time. While Action Comics # 1 started the modern superhero genre, the Fantastic Four #1 arguably saved it. When the F4 debuted 60 years ago the genre creatively stagnated. Superheroes were mostly these personality-less do gooders without a hint of relatable problems. Stan Lee almost quit comics but thanks to his wife Joan Lee’s advice and together with Jack Kirby, Stan Lee created superheroes more to his liking and thus history was made! And the genre was creatively revitalized leading to the creation of many iconic superheroes we know and love today.
So even if the F4 isn’t one of your favorites, I’m willing to bet that 95% of your favorites wouldn’t exist without them. Whether that be Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man, they’re all creatively descended from them. They in fact started what would later be called the “Marvel Method” which is defined as making superheroes more realistic than those square jawed goody two shoes at DC comics who always seem to get along and never had human problems. The Fantastic Four served as a prototype to this method as superheroes with relatable issues were unheard of at the time. While the Justice League got along with no problems whatsoever, the Four were far from a functional team unit. They bickered with each other, they each had personal flaws - Reed was haunted by the guilt over inadvertently turning his friend Ben Grimm into a monster, Ben Grimm was burdened with his freakish and inhuman appearance, Johnny was a immature hothead, Sue had insecurity issues.
What’s so great about those early F4 run is that it was pretty versatile in terms of scope. It could tell stories as epic and grand as “The Coming Of Galactus” but also tell stories as small and intimate as “This Man! This Monster!” This team laid the groundwork for so much. Due to their place in history and how vital they are to the creation of Marvel as well as the superhero genre as we know it they are not just the most important Marvel team ever, but the most important superhero team period(sorry X-Men).
But for such an important team that was one time Marvel’s flagship title it’s a bit sad that the F4 nowadays has been overshadowed in popularity by their brethren. A large part of that has to do with F4 just not having a quality movie big screen movie adaption. While many of their Marvel descendants like Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, and even weirdly enough Ant-Man has had good big screen representations; the F4 in contrast have no such luck. Whether it be the campy low-budget Roger Corman movie, to the uninspired dullness of the Tim Story duology, to the joyless disaster that was the Trank film - the team has had a real rough ride cinematically.
Now that Marvel has the film rights back to the team, we may see a good movie version that finally does justice to what Stan and Jack created 60 years ago. Though even if the Fantastic Four never gets a good movie, it will never diminish their place in the annals of comics history as Marvel’s premiere superhero team. Happy 60th anniversary First Family!
