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Reed is always trying to figure out a way to restore Ben to his former self

Such an experience binds people together, to the point that even voluntary associations seem to be ordained. Remember that Ben Grimm isn't related to any of his teammates; he is no closer to Reed and Sue Richards or Johnny Storm than you or I are to our next-door neighbors or our coworkers or the people in our pew. Yet to imagine the Fantastic Four without Ben is uncomfortable; indeed only calamity has broken up this team over time, and time has always brought them back together. Their destinies will play out alongside one another, because they are meant to, and because they wouldn't have it any other way—thus proving the biblical thesis that "it is not good … to be alone" (Genesis 2:18).

Beyond their trips across the universe and their battles against ruthless enemies like Galactus and Dr. Doom—the principal villain in the new movie—the core of the Fantastic Four is found in the adventure of family: learning to trust and retrust, remembering to love, facing the truth about one and all, and enduring to the end as participants in a lifelong covenant.

The Fantastic Four is a family writ large, run through larger-than-life crucibles of change, conflict and crisis that differ from our own crucibles only by degree. And in their earthy, feet-of-clay stories, as in our own family tales, we learn much about how the world and even we work. As G. K. Chesterton notes in his classic study Heretics:

The family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy … Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our younger brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world.

The world occupied by the Fantastic Four is charged with wonder, just as our own world is charged with wonder, and they, as we, are charged to tend to it. May we each experience what they have experienced—the consolation of one another—as we fulfill our calling together.

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David A. Zimmerman is the author of Comic Book Character: Unleashing the Hero in Us All. Also check out his online column, "Strangely Dim."

© David A. Zimmerman 2005, subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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