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If you're a regular or even semi-regular visitor to this site, you can probably recite the Fantastic Four's origin backwards and forwards. You've probably read the story a few dozen times between recaps, reprints and retellings. But the story I'd like to tell here and now is the origin of The Fantastic Four, the comic magazine itself. How did Stan Lee and Jack Kirby develop such a powerful book? Where did the inspiration for a family of super-powered adventurers come from?
Such a tale is in fact very long if it is to be told in it's entirety. It is tempting to travel back to the origins of comics themselves and even more tempting to start with the introduction of Superman in 1938. But to keep things focused on the FF, let's begin with the introduction of The Flash.
The comic industry was in a slump following the morality campaign against comic books with figurehead leader Dr. Fredric Wertham, the subsequent Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquincy, and the Comic Code Authority. Julie Schwartz, working for National (now DC) Comics, thought about reviving the then-dead superhero motif. Having working on the original Golden Age Flash years earlier, he tried a new spin on the concept. He passed his idea along to writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino and not long after the second Flash made his debut in Showcase #4, cover dated October 1956. The book was considered a huge success and DC followed up on the superhero idea over the next few years with additional Superman books and the revival of the Green Arrow and Green Lantern concepts.
Schwartz: "I have a theory that when you revive a hero, you can base it on the original, but go off in a different track. We decided to come up with expanded activities. I worked out the idea of a whole universe full of Green Lanterns."
All of these superhero books proved very successful, so DC decided to combine them all together as a team. It was a marketing gimmick to help introduce Superman and Batman fans to some of their other heroes. Brave and the Bold #28, cover dated March 1960, featured the grouping meeting for the first time as the Justice League of America, this concept also spinning from the previously published Justice Society of America. The first three JLA stories sold well, and the team soon saw the newsstands in the own title in late 1960.
At the time, Martin Goodman was the publisher of Marvel Comics. They had been having waning -- but still moderate -- success with their varied horror titles. On a May or June 1961 golf outing (golf was a favorite passtime of Goodman's), he was told by National publisher Jack Liebowitz that sales on the first two issues of Justice League were phenomonal. Goodman, who was always known to follow a popular idea in his publications, began to think of how he could capitalize on the superhero team concept. Marvel had a cache of Golden Age superheroes to draw upon: Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Angel, Marvel Boy, and Venus to name a few. But Goodman was in a unusual situation; his distributor was none other than National itself! While National imposed strict limitations on the number of comics Goodman could publish a month, they tolerated working with their competitor probably in part because he published genres that really did not overlap their own.
Having almost certainly looked at several issues of Justice League to discover what was so successful about it, Goodman may well have stumbled across a villanous "flame being" that fought Martian Manhunter in issue #1. This could easily have sparked Goodman's memory to recall Marvel's own flame being from the Golden Age: The Human Torch. As an added bonus, when aflame, the Torch actually fit in very well visually with the monster fare Marvel was then known for.
Goodman began speaking with his editor-in-chief Stan Lee about the idea. Lee, who was then writing several romance books, suggested a female character to try to appeal to girls. From Wonder Woman's famous invisible jet, it must not have been to far a leap to an invisible girl "but with a new twist," Lee says, "she's not just a girlfriend who doesn't know what the hero does."
And to further capitalize on the monster theme, why not add a monster? The Thing joined the team and bore more than a passing physical resemblance to any number of monsters featured in Marvel's horror titles. (Interestingly, one of those creatures in Tales to Astonish #21 is named the Hulk!)
A theme of the Earth's elements was fairly obviously established at this point, so the final member should probably have water-based powers. Although earlier heroes like Sub-Mariner or the Fin may have worked, Lee opted for a new take on the Jack Cole's Plastic Man concept from (by then defunct) Quality Comics.
Goodman still needed a catchy name for their new quartet. He was a strong believer that a good title could make or break a book, so he sought to utilize good buzz words in all his titles: amazing, astounding, incredible, etc. He also wanted to place some distance between his team book and National's, so he had to make sure that names that included league, legion, and society were eliminated quickly. Between those guidelines and Lee's affinity for alliteration, the Fantastic Four were named. It seems almost impossible that Fabulous Four was not under consideration as well.
It was now up to Lee to develop a story for them: "I went home and wrote a two-page outline and sent it to [Jack] Kirby. 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."
