1 of 3

Editor's note: We asked Dave Zimmerman, author of Comic Book Character: Unleashing the Hero in Us All (InterVarsity), to write an essay comparing the Fantastic Four to the modern family. Turns out that today's families have much in common with this fabulous foursome—warts and all. We bicker, we reconcile, we love—and we all face our own villains, the things which threaten to destroy any family. But we, like these superheroes, band together for the battle, using whatever powers we have—super or otherwise—in our quest for victory.

The Fantastic Four are the First Family of superheroes. Oh, there have been other families, before and since this one debuted—from the Marvels to the Incredibles. And technically, the Fantastic Four are a team, not a family, since only two of the four are blood-related. Nevertheless, FF fans regard them as family first, teammates second.

As a family, the Fantastic Four—brought to us by Marvel Comics—changed how superhero stories were told. Before them, superheroes were chums at best, trading quips and high fives as they bludgeoned bad guys. Actual blood relationships were effectively cosmetic. But the first battle the Fantastic Four faced was against one another, and the hostility and tension that occasionally flares up among them has trickled down to the rest of the superhero universe, resulting in more fully realized characters and ultimately richer storytelling. The most interesting battles, after all, are those we fight against the ones we love.

Even Fantastic families fight

And that's the deal: The Fantastic Four do love each other, even though at times they hate one another. More than 40 years since their debut, they're still treating readers to family tales that are cosmic in scope but still manage to hit close to home. No matter how many aliens they fight, no matter how super-human they've become, they show us again and again that they are simply human.

In a sense, then, Superman and Batman and Spider-Man and all of us who read the comics owe the Fantastic Four a debt of gratitude for their humanity. And despite the larger-than-life spectacle that the new film will bring to the screen this week, their humanity more than anything else is what makes them fantastic.

First things first: Before our heroes were fantastic, they were four. Nothing made them particularly special apart from their collective sense of adventure and their collective sense of community. Truth be told, that's quite enough to make four people particularly special. It's one thing to be motivated by a sense of adventure; it's quite another to be committed to sharing your adventures with other people.

The beginnings of the Fantastic Four, as told in the original canon, trace back to the Cold War space race, at a time when no human beings had yet left the earth. Two of our heroes, Ben Grimm and Reed Richards, were trained to advance the American space program—Ben as a pilot, Reed as a scientist. But when the time came to fly into space, they were joined by their good friends Sue Storm and her brother Johnny, neither of whom had any formal training to prepare them for such a mission.

Unfortunately, their ship was not properly protected from radiation, and as soon as they entered orbit they were overwhelmed by cosmic rays, forcing a return and a crash landing. Their exposure to radiation brought startling changes: Reed developed an elasticity that allowed him to stretch his body to amazing lengths. Sue, his one true love, could become invisible and cast an invisible shield around her and those nearby. Her brother Johnny combusted at will without doing any damage to his body; he could even use fire as a weapon.

Johnny, Ben, Sue and Reed are a functional 'family'

And then there's the sad case of Ben Grimm, whose body, as a result of the accident, is hardened into orange rock. Though he also developed invulnerability and superhuman strength, he was left permanently and horribly disfigured. While the others took heroic names like the Human Torch, the Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic, Ben identified himself simply as the less-than-human Thing.

next page... |  1 of 3 | last page

Related Elsewhere:

Fantastic Four	Printer view