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Dysfunctional family? Look no further than the FF.

In a 1981 comic, Ben lashes out at Johnny after being on the receiving end of a particularly thoughtless practical joke. Interestingly enough, the fight plays out in front of a priest—an awkward witness to the sacred dysfunction of family life. Reed breaks up the fight, and Ben leaves quickly to sulk. The others reflect on what's happened:

REED: "Poor Ben. He plays the clown so much even I sometimes forget it's only a mask to hide the bitterness he still feels …"
JOHNNY: " 'Poor Ben?' Hey, listen Reed, I got as much sympathy for the Thing as anybody, but sometimes he just goes too far. I mean …"
SUE: "Jonathan Storm! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
JOHNNY: "Hey, Sis, ease off, will ya? I only meant …"
SUE: "I'm not interested in what you meant—and don't you 'ease off' me! The very idea! Brawling in the middle of our home like a common thug! And in front of a priest!"
REED: "Oh—good morning, Father. We seem to have—ah—forgotten you!"

And there we have an often-repeated insight into the family dynamics of the Fantastic Four: Ben's tragedy is everyone's tragedy, a key ingredient in the divine comedy being played out. Between missions, Reed spends most of his time trying to come up with a way of reversing Ben's disfiguration. Sue is never more maternal than when she empathizes with Ben's sadness. Ben's soliloquies are historically built around his private efforts to find meaning in his suffering or to lament his condition. Johnny, less mature than the rest and "hot-headed" as they come, exploits Ben's poor self-image for his own amusement.

Things are looking Grimm for Ben, perpetually perplexed about his condition

This in itself is a great leap forward in comic book storytelling. Before Ben Grimm, no superhero regretted being a superhero. None thought of himself as less than human or expressed resentment toward the source of his powers. Not surprisingly, Ben became the centerpiece of the team, with his own catch phrase ("It's clobberin' time!") and his own series down through the years. Wallowing in sadness will short-circuit a story in no time, but undergirding a character with sadness will keep readers coming back month after month—a formula that the team's corporate creators repeated with great success (and much imitation from their competitors) in the years to come.

What makes this storytelling innovation work is its believability. Someone whose body was disfigured would quite likely feel self-conscious, resentful, dehumanized. And when tragedy strikes a family, it quite naturally impacts each member. We don't have to read about it in the funny papers; we can see it in our own homes. Mom loses her job and can't find another one: Dad tries to console her, the kids step lightly around her, her brothers and sisters give her unwanted advice, and occasionally she lashes out. The circumstances vary from family to family, but the dynamics are universal.

But as ever-present as the little and big tragedies that plague each family are, they never quite define the family. There is still a life to be lived, and only so much time to indulge the self-pity that attends to tragedy. In the case of the Fantastic Four, as in the case of us all, there is a cosmic calling to be fulfilled.

As the First Family of the superhero universe, the Fantastic Four found plenty of adventures to keep them occupied. X-Men, Daredevil, the Hulk and Spider-Man would come later, but in the beginning the heroic task fell to the FF.

As a result, no other super-group has fought on quite the same level as the Fantastic Four. As the legend goes, their greatest nemesis was introduced with the editorial instruction, "Have them fight God." Thus was born Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds who from the beginning of time has regularly absorbed a planet's worth of energy simply to survive. It was the Fantastic Four who confronted him, who sent him away from the earth, who played the Good Samaritans when he was near death, who proved before an intergalactic court that this being who had destroyed countless species served a higher purpose for the universe.

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