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Several comics about the Fantastic Four have been published almost continuously since 1961, and the group has also been featured in other media.
Legend has it that in 1961, Timely publisher Martin Goodman was playing a round of golf with rival publisher Jack Liebowitz of DC Comics. Liebowitz told Goodman about the success that DC had recently been having with Justice League of America, a new title that featured a team comprised of several of DC's superhero characters. Based upon this conversation, Goodman decided that his company should begin publishing its own series about a team of super-heroes. He gave the order to writer Stan Lee who was recently finding the medium of comic books restrictive. Intending to leave the medium, Lee and artist Jack Kirby produced a ground-breaking book featuring a family of super-heroes who were far more fallible and human than anything seen in the medium to date. To forestall possibly upsetting DC, (which, in addition to being a competing publisher, also owned Marvel's distributor) Lee and Kirby deliberately avoided making the new book look like a competing superhero comic book; the new characters appeared on the cover without costumes and had no secret identities. Lee's intended swan song was phenomenally successful, and Lee and Kirby stayed together on the book and began launching other titles together from which the Marvel Universe grew.
The Fantastic Four acquired their superhuman abilities after an experimental rocket designed by the scientist Reed Richards passed through a storm of cosmic rays on its test flight. Upon crash landing back on Earth, the four occupants of the craft found themselves transformed and possessed of bizarre new abilities.
Richards, who took the name Mister Fantastic, was now able to stretch his body into nearly any shape he could imagine. His fiancee, Susan Storm, gained the abilty to become invisible at will and to project force fields and named herself the Invisible Girl (later the Invisible WomanAlternate meaning: The Invisible Woman, a 1940 film. The Invisible Woman real name Susan Richards nee Susan Storm formerly the Invisible Girl is a fictional superhero who is a member of The Fantastic Four in the Marvel Universe. As the girlfriend and late). Her younger brother, Johnny Storm, was posessed with the incendiary powers of the Human TorchThe Human Torch was a comic book superhero in the Marvel Universe. There are two different characters with this name. The best way to differentiate them is that the face on the original Torch is featureless when enveloped in flame while the face is usuall, enabling him to control fire, project burning bolts of flame from his body, and fly. Finally, pilot Ben Grimm was transformed into an orange-skinned craggy monster with incredible strength and a nearly invulnerable hide. Filled with self-pity he dubbed himself the ThingThis article is about the comic book character. For other meanings of thing see Thing (disambiguation). Benjamin Jacob "Ben" Grimm aka The Thing is a fictional character from the Marvel Universe, a founding member of the superhero team the Fantastic Four.
The four characters were all modelled after the four classical Greek elementsSeveral ancient classical element ideas exist. The Greek version of these ideas persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, deeply influencing European thought and culture. Classical elements in Greece The Greek classical elements are f--earth (The Thing), fire (The Human Torch), wind (The Invisible Girl) and water (the pliable and ductile Mr. Fantastic). These same four elements also inspired Jack Kirby's earlier creations, the Challengers of the UnknownThe Challengers of the Unknown are a group of fictional characters which were created by Jack Kirby for DC Comics. They were a quartet of adventurers who explored apparent paranormal occurances and found themselves facing fantastic menaces. The group appe.
The team of adventurers have used their fantastic abilities to protect humanity, the earth and the universe from a number of threats. Propelled, for the main part, by Richards' innate scientific curiosity the team have explored space, the Negative Zone , the MicroverseAlso generically known as Innerspace, Microverses are parallel dimemsions occurring within the fictional Marvel Universe. Microverses was often visited by the Fantastic Four in various adventures. A microverse could be defined as any universe which seems, other dimensions and nearly every hidden valley, nation, and lost civilization on the planet. They have had a number of headquarters, most notably the Baxter Building in New York city. Pier 4, a warehouse on the New York waterfront, served as a temporary headquarters for the group after the first Baxter Building was destroyed. Later, Four Freedoms Plaza was built on the site of the second Baxter Building when the latter was shuttled into space by a villain. Most recently, an orbiting satellite version of the Baxter Building has been used.