Comic Book / Fantastic Four (1961)

And if this cover does not make you buy the comic, we don't know what else will...

Fantastic Four is a 1961 comic book series from Marvel Comics by Jack Kirby, with some plots of Stan Lee. The series was one of the starting points of The Silver Age of Comic Books and the beginning of the Marvel Universe.

It all began when scientist Reed Richards, his best friend Ben Grimm, Reed's fiancee Sue Storm and Sue's little brother Johnny stole an experimental rocket to go into space, heedless of the risks of dangerous cosmic radiation. That radiation would give all four fantastical abilities, which they vowed to use for the protection of mankind. And on that day, the Fantastic Four were born!

This run introduced or popularized a huge number of tropes to the superhero genre, mainly superheroes having problems and fighting among them. It also goes without saying that it also introduces a lot of the characters and concepts that became mainstays of the Marvel Universe as a whole. The two worked together until Fantastic Four issue #101, one of the longest shared runs between a writer and artist in the Big Two for decades, not broken until Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley's Ultimate Spider-Man. Jack quit Marvel between issues #102 and #103, which was a multi-part story.

Stories from this era with their own pages:

• Fantastic Four #1
• Fantastic Four Annual #1
• Fantastic Four Annual #2
• Fantastic Four Annual #3
• A Blind Man Shall Lead Them
• Among Us Hide... The Inhumans!
• The Coming of Galactus

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Fantastic Four (1961) provides examples of:

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Era

• 10-Minute Retirement: Johnny was the first to (briefly) get out of the team, tired of the Things's bursts of violence against him. He returns when Namor returned and attacked New York.
• Actually a Doombot: Right there in his first appearance, even. When his first scheme with the FF goes a little cropper, the Thing tries walloping Doom, only to find it's a lifelike robot. The real Doom is elsewhere, watching them. (Curiously enough, for the next several appearances of Doom, this tropes was averted. Doom usually just legs it whenever his plans fail, rather than it turning out to be a Doombot.)
• Alas, Poor Villain: The destruction of the Kree Sentry is done with surprising poignancy, as it stays at its post even as the place is exploding all around it, with no idea whether the Kree are even still out there.
• Aliens Steal Cable: The Skrulls living on Kral heard of Earth via a 30s gangster who wound up there by accident. Since then, they've been watching gangster movies, and have become an entire planet of Loony Fans, acting like your cliched Chicago mob at all times. Nyeah!
• All Your Powers Combined: The Super Skrull has all the powers of the Fantastic Four, but stronger (well, except Sue Storm, since it's impossible to be more invisible).
• Always Someone Better: The Thing had never met anyone he couldn't defeat in hand-to-hand without a hand tied to his back, until he fought Hulk in FF #25.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Hate-Monger and his minions. Possible bonus points for actually being led by the Nazi, Hitler himself.
• And I Must Scream: Doom uses the stolen Power Cosmic to slow Ben down to a crawl, and leaves him standing frozen in Central Park.
• And Now You Must Marry Me:
  • Namor becomes a movie producer, lures the broke FF out to LA, then lures Reed, Johnny and Ben to isolated areas to kill them, and then tells Sue she must marry him. An outraged Sue refuses, telling him if he hadn't bothered with the whole "murder her friends" thing, she might've actually considered it.
  • Rama-Tut tries to make Sue Storm his bride. Consent is not something he's bothered with, as Sue's zapped with a hypno-ray to make her compliant.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The whole reason for the origins of one Victor Von Doom. Once, Victor was an innocent Romani child, living in rural Latveria, when a local baron demanded his father use his medical talents to heal the man's dying wife. Father Doom tried explaining there was nothing that could be done, but the baron refused to believe him. Knowing the baron would lash out when she died, Doom tried fleeing his wrath with his son, ending up in a snowstorm, where he died of exposure. And so, Victor Von Doom swore vengeance upon the world (and presumably, the baron as well).
• Art Evolution: It takes a few issues for Ben's look to develop into his usual "monobrow" appearance.
• Artistic License – Biology: No, the many weird fish that Namor has at his beck and call are not real. Giganto, a whale that can simply stand up and rampage across the city, Godzilla-style? The wondrous Mento-Fish, which can sense human thougths and transmit them to any point on Earth thru mental electro waves? The hypno-fish, a fish with a single eye that can hypnotize people in seconds, and also create a bubble to transport them underwater? A giant clam that can eat a whole ship? The ravenous, unthinking flame-eater? All that is completely made up by Jack Kirby... as you would realize if you just thought about it for a second.
• Artistic License – History: The inhabitants of Ancient Egypt sure do look pretty damn white.
• As You Know:
  • When an episode continued the action of a previous one, the characters make a full recap of it.
  • In issue #2, the first Skrulls we meet get together to recount how they've framed the FF, then remind one another about how they're Skrulls, gifted with shapeshifting abilities, sent to Earth to prepare the way for the invasion.
  • The Inhumans are a serial offender for this one. For several issues, they're stuck inside their city, and the story will often cut away to them standing around reminding one another how they're still stuck there.
• Author Avatar: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby frequently inserted themselves into the stories. One of the most famous cases is the wedding of Reed and Sue, where Nick Fury acts as the Bouncer and removes them from the party.
• Bad Boss: Doom. One plot has him empower a bunch of minor criminals to defeat the Fantastic Four. When he's done, he "rewards" them by banishing all three to another dimension. Forever.
• The Beastmaster: Namor employs weird fish and sea creatures to help him in his fights, as he can control them with his mind.
• Been There, Shaped History: The FF time travel to ancient Egypt and meet Pharaoh Rama Tut, another time traveler who came from the future to rule with his futuristic weapons. He was forced to leave his ship behind when he escaped in a pod... a ship that looks like a stone Sphinx.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Namor is the villain of FF #4, and Dr. Doom of FF #5. What can we do for FF #6? Namor and Dr. Doom join forces, starting a long on-again, off-again not-quite-frenemies situation between the two! (Doom betrays Namor at the first chance, naturally.)
• Bluffing the Advance Scout: In the Skrulls' first appearance, the FF bluff them into thinking that Earth is crawling with giant monsters by showing them pages from a comic book◊, pretending they're real photographs.
• Bluff the Imposter: When Doom swaps his mind with Reed, Reed is unable to conclusively prove this has happened (like, say, saying something Reed would know and Doom wouldn't). Johnny solves the problem by getting some dynamite and setting it off. Reed-in-Doom's-Body jumps on the dynamite, while Doom tries to run for it.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Thing is brainwashed into killing Reed Richards by both the Frightful Four and the Mad Thinker.
• Brought Down to Badass: The Fantastic Four are caught in an explosion arranged by the Frightful four. They survive, but lose their powers... and Doom invades the Baxter Building!
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Reed convinces the leader of the Skrull invasion to leave Earth at once, because it's protected by powerful warriors... and the proof is some panels from "Strange Tales" and "Journey into Mystery".
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Inhumans would gladly dispose of Maximus after his attempted coup, but they also want to bring down that barrier he's trapped them in, and have no way of prying the secret out of his mind.
• Can't Take Anything with You: The FF travel to ancient Egypt to retrieve some herbs that, somehow, can restore people's vision, in hopes of helping Alicia Masters with it. They get them, but lose them during the journey back, which Reed figures is something to do with Doom's time-machine being unable to transport anything radioactive.
• Characterization Marches On: Stan and Jack mostly hit the ground running with Doom, but his first few appearances do have some oddities in there, such as Doom using the occasional bit of casual language, and even cracking a joke, something unheard of from the poised and proud Doom readers are more familiar with.
• Conflict Ball: One of the things that set the FF apart from some of their contemporaries was they bickered. Oh, how they bicker. Usually it's Johnny and Ben at each other's throats, but sometimes it's Ben and Reed, or Reed and Johnny, or Reed and anyone who's in the room.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: One issue has Ben attack the Silver Surfer in a paranoid rage, think he's trying to make time with Alicia. Norinn isn't interested in her, but never thinks to ask what the Hell Ben's even on about.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Reed has all his gadgets rigged so if someone presses a special button down in the Baxter Building's lobby, they all stop working.
  • One of Doom's schemes has him get swept out into space. On his reappearance, it turns out his armor is, naturally, space-proof and had just enough air for him to last long enough for Rama-Tut to rescue him.
• Creating Life Is Bad: Jerome Hamilton of the Enclave comes to feel this way about the group's rogue creation, Him, and decides the best solution is kill Him before he's properly born. We did mention the Enclave are a team of Mad Scientists?
• Cross Through: One two-part storyline is a cross over between the Avengers and the Hulk, as the not-so-jolly green giant heads to New York to smash the Avengers a new one, and the Fantastic Four get in his way.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The logic of this trope is what drove Reed to figure out that the Miracle Man was not what he claimed to be. If he was he wouldn't need to steal any money, he could simply create it from nothing.
• Deus ex Nukina: When Namor first reappears, he attacks New York with a gigantic, whale-like creature. The Thing carries a nuke into the creature's stomach in an attempt to kill it. He escapes with seconds to spare.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • A recurring problem for the Mad Thinker. He plans everything out in ludicrously over-precise detail, but is always foiled by something he didn't plan for (like, for example, Reed Richards managing to overpower his duplicate).
  • Reed gets sucked into the Negative Zone at one point. As he's drifting to his apparent death, he sees a spaceship pass by, and is surprised to realize the Zone has inhabitants besides Annihilus, or he could've tried contacting them for help.
• Didn't Want an Adventure: Sue often complains how she didn't want to have superpowers or go on bizarre adventures, but would be much, much happier spending her days doing normal girl stuff.
• Dirty Communists: This comic was written during the Cold War, so many villains were communists, such as the Red Ghost.
• Diplomatic Impunity: As ruler of Latveria, Doom is free to walk away from attacking the FF in his third go-around, because apparently drugging people isn't actually a crime, and he's got diplomatic immunity.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Why is the Hulk so hell-bent on smashing the Avengers? Rick Jones became Captain America's sidekick, so he's obviously betrayed the Hulk. Somehow. Note that this isn't the Dumb Muscle Hulk, this is the early, intelligent and eloquent Hulk, who is clearly a raging paranoiac.
• Damsel in Distress: Happens to Sue a lot. A lot a lot. This was the 60s, so there wasn't much chance of her being an Action Girl for a while. But even the readers got pretty annoyed about it soon enough, even writing in to complain.
• Do Androids Dream?: The Kree Sentry may look like a robot, but it demonstrates a full range of emotional capacity, and gets very annoyed whenever anyone calls it a robot.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: While Ben is not remotely above moping about being stuck in his rock-like form, he tends to lash out physically whenever any of the others try offering him sympathy.
• Doppelgänger Dating: In the first issues, Thing likes Sue, but she's the designated love interest of Reed, causing his usual explosions of anger. Then Alicia Masters enters the scene... a girl so similar to Sue that the similarity is used as a plot point in her first issue.
• Dramatic Irony: In issue #12, the Fantastic Four take a trip to New Mexico to help hunt the Hulk. While there, they run into Doctor Bruce Banner, who is very terse and disinterested with this. The FF don't know that Doctor Banner is the Hulk yet.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Nobody shall ever mention Doom's helicopter with the face of a shark, from FF #5!
  • Reed and Ben are WWII veterans. It made sense back then, since the war was not that far off. Nowadays nobody mentions that. Unlike Captain America or Red Skull, it's not something that defines them as characters.
  • The Molecule Man uses a wand to channel his powers, and had a weakness against organic material.
  • Nick Fury's earliest appearance, aside from him being CIA and not SHIELD, also has him with two perfectly healthy eyes.
  • The notion of Doom ruling Latveria is established early on, but for whatever reason it's kept a secret until the Fantastic Four discover the mysterious master of Latveria is their sworn nemesis.
  • Speaking of which, the fact Doom even is Latverian doesn't come up until the second annual.
  • It may be weird for modern readers of Future Foundation to see Dragon Man as a brainless brute.
  • A lot with Wakanda. For one thing, they're not quite as futuristically advanced as they will be later. Also, the people are called "the Wakanda", rather than Wakandans. Also, T'Challa's outfit in its first appearance has visible irises. He's also called their chieftain, rather than their king. And the super-advanced jungles of Wakanda? T'Challa made that all by himself.
  • In Ronan's first appearance, he's pink. Later appearances of the Kree establish some Kree are Caucasian-looking, but Ronan ain't one of them. He also calls himself the "Public Accuser", rather than just "The Accuser".
• The Ending Changes Everything: Issue #3 is against the Miracle Man, a villain that can do basically anything, anything he wants. He has all superpowers he can imagine at his beck and call. Actually, he simply hypnotized everybody into thinking he did all that.
• Enemy Mine: Although Namor has been the villain most of the times he appears, Attuma would have been worse. The FF attacked his forces laying siege to Atlantis, making sure that Namor didn't notice it.
• Entitled to Have You: Namor's attitude towards Sue is roughly "I want you, ergo you're mine."
• Even Evil Has Standards: Sandman by his own admission is a crook and villain, but he draws the line at hurting the infant Franklin to get at the Fantastic Four. Seems the Wizard agrees with him, since he even stresses during their plan that they shan't harm the baby.
• Everyone Has Standards: Namor may rage about how much he hates humans, but when brainwashed by the Puppet Master he fights against it to stop himself killing the four. Of course, afterwards he has no memory of this.
• Evil Is Petty: A theme.
  • You DARE suggest DOOM is petty? Foolish troper, Doom merely desires vengeance on that accursed Richards for the crime of disfiguring his face! WHAT? You claim Richards had nothing to do with it?! INSOLENCE!
  • The Super-Skrull's first act on being freed from a volcano? Abduct Sue and Johnny's dad, replace him, pretend to be a supervillain and go on a rampage, making the Fantastic Four look bad. Because Kl'rt's just kind of a dick that way.
• Exact Words: A Wakandan envoy tells the FF they've been invited to a special hunt. They see nothing remotely suspicious about that phrasing, but it turns out they are the hunt.
• Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: Willie Lumpkin the mailman jokingly suggests that he should join the Fantastic Four because of his special ability to wiggle his ears.
• The Faceless
  • Stan Lee and Jack Kirby frequently appear, but most times we don't see their faces.
  • The Yancy Street gang always sends mail or shouts and throw things from afar, we rarely see any of them up close and personal.
  • Doom's face is hidden behind his mask.
• Fakeout Escape: In issue #2, Sue turns invisible when government officials come to check on her, then runs out the doorway during their confusion. (This act is repeated in the Ultimate version as well as the movie Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.)
• Fiction 500: T'Challa is so rich he can actually buy an entire island, just like that.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Dr. Doom used a power he learned from aliens to exchange his mind with Reed Richards.
• Frontline General: T'Chaka always faced any danger to Wakanda head on, and T'Challa is the same.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: One of Doom's early plans has him drug the FF with laced "berry juice". The Comics Code Authority forbade any depiction of alcoholic consumption at the time.
• Genre Savvy: Having apparently read every Tarzan story, Ben interrupts T'Challa telling the Fantastic Four his origin story to say he knows how it'll go. Fortunately, T'Challa's just bemused and carries on with the story anyhow.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: A usual scene of Jack Kirby is to show someone pointing his finger to the others as he talk, from the speaker's back point of view
• Go Mad from the Isolation: In the first annual, Namor is abandoned by his fellow Atlanteans. When he reappears, the time alone without anyone to talk to is making him go a little nutty.
• Goo-Goo-Godlike: The entity known as Him, who gives off terrifying amounts of power before even being born.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Ronan is The Heavy of his first appearance, answering to the Supreme Intelligence, who can't do anything because it's just a head.
• Hate Plague: The Hate-Master, as one might expect, causes one with his Hate-Ray.
• He's Back!: Timely Comics published superhero comics during the Golden Age. Years later they canceled all those titles and moved to other genres, until they returned to the superheroes with the FF (and now under the name of Marvel Comics). Namor was the first superhero from Timely to return, in FF #4.
• Heel–Face Turn: Medusa is introduced as an evil member of the Frightful Four. Later on, we found out that she had amnesia, and that she was actually the Queen of the Inhumans.
• Hidden Elf Village
  • The Inhumans, a whole city of people with superhuman powers, hidden in the Himalayas.
  • Namor is the king of Atlantis, an underwater kingdom. Only Namor can breath at both air and sea, the Atlanteans only breath underwater.
  • Wakanda is a highly advanced nation in Africa, hidden behind an artificial jungle.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • After Doctor Doom steals the Surfer's powers and goes on an unprecedented four issue rampage, Reed is able to defeat him by figuring that stealing the Surfer's power also means the drawbacks that come with it, such as Galactus's conditions. He tricks Doom into flying into the atmosphere, at which point there's an almight kaboom.
  • In issue #100, the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker build a robot Hulk to destroy the FF. Unfortunately, for whatever reason they decide to give it the Hulk's personality as well. So it immediately refuses to do what they say, and starts smashing everything in sight, defeating the two before the FF get anywhere near them.
• Horrible Judge of Character: The Ovoids, a highly advanced and pacifistic race, save Doctor Doom and allow him to wander around their spaceship. He steals their advanced mind-swapping technique before they return him to Earth.
• Humans Are Bastards: The Silver Surfer spends his time ranting about how humans are just the worst. In fairness, being tricked and mugged of his powers by Doctor Doom, then held captive by his space-racist flunkies would make anyone bitter.
• Hypno Ray: Rama-Tut uses one on the team. It eventually wears off on Ben, who had been turned into an ordinary human, when his mutation reasserts itself, and from there Rama's plan falls apart.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming:
  • Johnny and Ben may often fight one another (and quite possibly with the intent of actually killing one another sometimes), but if someone else hurts them, they respond in kind.
  • The Yancy Street Gang endlessly prank Ben, but intervene in the fight with the Hulk because Ben's their guy, no-one else's.
• Identity Amnesia: Namor was found in a slum by the Human Torch, having forgotten his identity.
• I Have Your Wife: Magneto manages to force Namor into going along with his plan to take over New York by holding Lady Dorma hostage, and tries to get the FF to back off by holding the Invisible Woman as well.
• I Know Kung Fu: In one encounter with Doom, he tries grabbing Sue, only for her to reveal Reed has taught her some judo.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The Kree had all but forgotten about the Kree Sentry they'd left on Earth, since it was an unremarkable planet way off their beaten tracks, so they're quite surprised when one day the Sentry sends a report and then gets destroyed by the locals.
• Invincible Villain
  • The Impossible Man is an alien who can counter all the powers of the FF, but he just wants to play pranks. Reed instructs everyone to ignore him, and so he leaves when he felt bored
  • The Enfant Terrible is an alien with great reality-warping powers, and they can't do anything to stop him. Reed noticed that he acted childish (not as a Manchild but as an actual child), so he sent a warning to the space about this. The alien's parents soon show up to retrieve him.
  • And of course, Galactus. He can't be defeated just by fighting, all the times he showed up he had to be tricked in some way to leave the planet and go away.
• It Amused Me: Why did T'Challa turn so much of Wakanda into a technological jungle? For a lark.
• Jerkass Ball: Could be passed around the team like a football, really, but Reed has a tendency to hug the damn thing for dear life, often being an outright dick to his supposed family.
• Killer Robot: Our first introduction to the Kree is via their giant robot, the Sentry, left buried on Earth and accidentally woken up by two archaeologists. Later on, the Four face another Sentry sent to prevent the first moon landing.
• Kneel Before Zod: "Kneel before the Invincible Man!" Also known as Super-Skrull.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Unfortunately for Johnny, most villains have fire-proof materials for their stuff.
• Large-Ham Announcer: As written in the inimitable, hyperbolic style of Smilin' Stan Lee! No issue can begin without at least one overly dramatic narration by the most loquacious man in comics! Nuff' said!
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: One of Reed's many (many, many, many) attempts to cure Ben turns him human, at the cost of erasing all his memories, leaving a semi-naked Ben wondering what the hell's going on. Reed restores him to his rocky state, in the hopes it'll restore Ben's memories.
• Left Hanging
  • The first episode with the Skrulls ends with three Skrulls turned into cows and hypnotized to believe they are really cows. Yes, that's a decent closure for the episode, but sure as hell that won't be the last time we heard about those Skrulls. They returned during the Kree-Skrull War.
  • The Human Torch finds Namor in a slum, with amnesia. He restores his memory, and he immediately becomes the angry ruler of the underwater kingdom we all love to hate. But how did he get there to begin with? That was explained years later, in Namor's own comic.
• Lighter and Softer: Adolf Hitler, of all people (the real identity of the Hate Monger). He never even mentions Jews or any people, and only directs the people's hatred towards "the foreigners" and other unspecific terms like "those we hate". Of course, it had to be this way, the CCA would never authorize something more explicit.^note One of their rules is "Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible". No exceptions for the villain.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: During a fight with Namor, Ben's zapped by a stray lightning bolt which momentarily turns him back to his human self.
• Like Reality, Unless Noted: As of issue #20, the Fantastic Four have met several alien races (the Skrulls, Planet X, the Watcher, the Impossible Man, the Ovoids), and that's not counting the aliens that appeared in other comics of Marvel. Still, when a meteorite contains traces of a life form inside, he's as interested as any real-life scientist would be to discover alien life.
• Love Makes You Stupid: And also violent. When Crystal is literally dragged back to the Inhumans, Johnny goes roaring after her (nearly getting shot by twitchy Soviets on the way), planning to drag her right back. When he gets to Attilan, he attacks the Inhumans, then when Crystal tries telling him to calm down, Johnny comes to the conclusion she never loved him, and tries wrecking the whole city. Only Reed's timely intervention stops him from doing anything, and fortunately the Inhumans are pretty chill about the whole thing.
• Manipulative Bastard: The final story Stan and Jack worked on has Namor find an unconscious Magneto, fresh from his most recent tussle with the X-Men. Namor rescues him, and in gratitude... Magneto tries tricking Atlantis into war with the surface again.
• Man of Kryptonite: One issue saw Doom empower three criminals so they could take on specific members of the Fantastic Four. One got Super-Hearing so that he could track down the Invisible Woman even if he couldn't see her, one was made completely fireproof so the Human Torch's flames would have no effect on him, and the last one got a cosmic beam gun that could temporarily depower the Thing (as well as Super-Strength so that he actually stood a chance fighting him).
• Master of Illusion: The Miracle Man can hypnotize anyone into thinking he can perform amazing feats of magic.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In the Red Ghost's first appearance, his Super-Apes turn on him, because he never fed them (so as to ensure they were properly vicious).
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Ronan's first appearance has him explain he doesn't really care one way or another about Earth, but since the Supreme Intelligence told him to go to Earth and see what's what, that's what he's going to do.
• Never Mess with Granny: In Agatha Harkness' first appearance, the Frightful Four try attacking the gang while they're at her incredibly creepy mansion. Agatha, a witch, drives them off on her own, with the Four none the wiser.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: The page image◊ is a scene from issue #87 in which Crystal and Sue are trying to escape Doom's castle, only to run right into the dictator's personal dining room. Despite the fact that he was trying to kill them before, he now treats them as honored guests. Even Evil Has Standards, especially when it comes to getting three square meals, apparently.
• No Name Given: Molecule Man, in his introductory story, to help emphasize what a nobody he was before he gets his powers.
• The Nose Knows: In issue #52, Sue tries turning invisible to avoid fighting Black Panther. However, his sense of smell is so strong he can just smell where she is anyhow.
• No-Sell: A clue that the Fantastic Four may be the stars of the book, but they're in serious trouble during their fight with ol' Jade Jaws, when Johnny's fireballs do nothing to the Hulk, nor does Ben tricking him into receiving a several million volt zap from a stray power line.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: A one-off villain is an alien who's crashed on Earth, and is trying to fix his ship. Compounding his problems is he either can't speak, or just can't speak English, so he attacks humans on sight rather than explaining everything. Once Reed works out what's going on, the guy's allowed to go on his way.
• Nothing Is Scarier: None shall gaze into the face of Doom! Not even Doom himself is willing to risk it. In one issue, he actually removes his mask, and whatever he sees has him scream in horror. Of course, over the decades, writers would go back and forth as to whether the injuries really are that horrible, or if Doom is just being... well, Doom over a comparatively minor blemish.
• Now What?: At the end of the Black Panther's first appearance, he wonders what to do with Klaw supposedly dead and his father avenged. The Fantastic Four point out there's a lot of good someone like him could do for the world.
• Nuke 'em: Reed Richards gets the backers of the Invincible Man to send him away by threatening to drop a nuke on them. They do so... but see Sore Loser.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: In an early issue, Ben nearly crushes Doom's hands. Naturally, Doom holds a serious grudge over that one.
• Out-of-Character Alert: The Thing destroys a tower, the Invisible Girl steals a gem, the Human Torch burns a marble statue, Reed causes a city-wide blackout... "Can we believe our startled eyes? Is it really possible that the Fantastic Four have really perpetrated those criminal acts? Or is there more to this than meets the eye??" It's the Skrulls, framing the Fantastic Four.
• Parental Abandonment: Dr. Franklin Storm, Sue and Johnny's dad, went mad from grief when his wife, Mary, died in a car crash. He turned to drink and gambling, and accidentally killed a loan shark who came looking to collect. He refused to contest the judge's sentence of twenty years. Sue never told Johnny, who apparently never heard a thing about any of this, and just assumed his dad was dead.
• Perception Filter: Ronan uses his Universal Weapon to hide himself while he takes stock of New York.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Reed Richards is astonishingly sexist a lot of the time.
• The Psycho Rangers: The Red Ghost and his super apes, who also passed through the cosmic rays and got super powers. Later the Frightful Four became a closer example, with The Wizard (an evil science guy), Sandman (with super strength and street smarts) and Medusa (an evil token female member) .
• Reed Richards Is Useless:
  • In issue #9 the FF are broke and badly in need of money. The team point out that they can surely monetize their powers somehow, but Reed rejects the idea: the only two ways would be joining a freak show, or crime. Never mind that previous issues had shown Johnny can and does use his power to help fix cars.
  • Diablo appears to use his amazing grasp of alchemy to restore life to deserts... except he's basically an alchemical con-man, and nothing he does lasts.
• Science Marches On: The Fantastic Four were, in-universe, the first humans to reach the Moon, alongside the Red Ghost. There, they met a strange alien, the Watcher. Some years later (and with Kirby still writing the comic) the first actual Moon landing took place. It was acknowledged as such, and no reference to the FF being the first ones was ever made.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • The Super-Skrull is stuck inside a volcano. His bosses use SUPER-SCIENCE to bust him out several months later (and not, say, just getting a bunch of Skrulls with pickaxes or something).
  • Diablo was sealed up by the locals of the country he lived in. Unfortunately, Ben Grimm is hypnotized into letting him out.
• Secret Identity: Averted. Contrary to the long-standing tradition of superhero comics up to that point, the Fantastic Four have public identities. Everybody knows their real names and where they live.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Franklin Storm dies at the end of issue 32, and everybody is crying over his corpse. The narrator conceded that "the editors feel this is not the time or place for advertising our next issue".
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: The Yancy Street Gang are not villains, they're just jerks who love to make Ben's life miserable.
• Sixth Ranger: While the core line-up remains fixed, the FF are joined on some adventures by Johnny's friend Wyatt Wingfoot, and later on by Crystal of the Inhumans.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Slaver, a Skrull who grabs aliens and forces them into death-matches. He decides ol' blue-eyed Ben Grimm would make a fine one, and abducts him.
• Sore Loser: The Skrulls, after Reed thwarts their second plan with the Super-Skrull, send Dr. Storm back to Earth... with a bomb strapped to his chest rigged to go off the minute he gets there.
• Soul Fragment: In issue #51, "This Man, This Monster", a scientist uses a "duplication device" to physically model himself after Ben Grimm, but when he sacrifices himself to save Reed Richards, Reed speculates that he may have gotten some part of Ben Grimm other than his skin.
• The Spook: In his first two appearances, Rama-Tut has a mysterious past, and the characters all wonder just who he could be, whether he's a descendant of Doctor Doom, or Doctor Doom himself. Even Doom gets in on the action, somehow wondering if Rama-Tut will one day go back in time, turn into a child and become Doom. ... we should probably point out Doom had just nearly asphyxiated when he was thinking this. When he became Kang the Conqueror over in Avengers, we get a few more deets on his past, but one thing is clear: He categorically isn't Doctor Doom.
• Story-Breaker Team-Up: Namor has kidnapped Sue and takes her to his underwater kingdom. Reed uses all his high-tech sci-fi machines to locate and go after him, but insists on going alone. What can Johnny and Ben, without those magical machines, do? Easy: ask Dr. Strange for help, who locates Namor and sends Johnny and Ben to the fight just with magic.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien:
  • The Watcher, who has incredible deus-ex-machina powers, but only ever uses them to watch... unless the threat is too high.
  • And Galactus, a Planet Eater.
• Superheroes Stay Single: In this comic the trope was subverted by the marriage of Reed and Sue. It's not the first superhero marriage (over at the Distinguished Competition, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash and his long time girlfriend Joan were married when Barry Allen met them in the famous "Flash of Two Worlds", predating this story by four years) but it may well be the first super-hero wedding seen on panel with an entire Annual devoted to it.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: The story from issues #102-104 deals with the Four having to fight Magneto, who takes over the Atlantean army and invades New York. At no point do his usual foes the X-Men make so much as a cameo, or even a throwaway line about what they're up to while this is going down.
• Take That, Audience!: The FF are reading mail and Sue is troubled because she's got a lot of hate mail, saying that she's useless, that she doesn't help, that the team would be better off without her. Reed and Ben are outraged and make a speech (yes, looking at you!) by pointing to the significance that Abraham Lincoln gave to his mother, even if she did not "help" to fight The American Civil War.
  Ben Grimm: In fact, if we printed Lincoln's life in our mag, some wise guy would probably write in and ask why we don't leave his mother out of the story, because she doesn't do enough!
• The End... Or Is It?: In issue #52, Black Panther supposedly kills Ulysses Klaw, and his whole base explodes. The issue ends revealling Klaw is still just slightly alive, and his sound machine is still functioning. A battered Klaw decides to turn it on himself...
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In-Universe, Stan and Jack are discussing new villains, and regret that Dr. Doom was lost in space the last time. You don't come up with a villain like that every day!
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman:
  • In the fight between the FF, the Avengers and the Hulk, who is it who has the most luck styming the green rage monster? Ant-Man and the Wasp. Hank uses his shrinking powers to dodge the Hulk's attack, then sets a bunch of ants on him, distracting the Hulk long enough for Rick Jones to slip him a de-hulking pill, ending his current rampage.
  • In order to rescue Reed from imminent death in the Negative Zone, the Fantastic Four turn to Triton of the Inhumans, his physiology allowing him to survive in the Negative Zone's lack of atmosphere and recover Reed.
• Together in Death: When Franklin Storm is fatally wounded in issue #32, he tells his children Sue and Johnny not to be sad, as he'll finally be reunited with his beloved wife (who'd been killed in a car accident years earlier).
• Took a Level in Badass: Initially, the Invisible Girl could turn invisible, and that was it. A good idea for an H. G. Wells novel perhaps, but too little for superhero adventures. So she had increased powers later: she could turn other things invisible, and use forcefields in battle.
• Underestimating Badassery: In issue #12, all the guys brag about how they'd use their powers to beat the Incredible Hulk (Sue says nothing because she could only turn invisible at this point, and she really doesn't want to go anywhere near him). They are all completely wrong.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Doom's immediate first response on being saved from certain death by Rama-Tut? "How can I enslave whoever rescued me?" Gratitude ain't one of Doom's defining attributes.
• Villain Ball: At the end of issue #3, Johnny leaves the FF in a huff. Issue #4 has the others go to track him down. The Thing finds him first, and then apropos of nothing attacks Johnny.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Doom has a knack for getting away from the Fantastic Four, until the second annual reveals he's actually ruler of Latveria.
• Water Is Air: The fight between Namor and Attuma used several elements from middle ages warfare (walls, siege, catapults, burning projectiles, etc.), which should not work underwater.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Dr. Franklin Storm, the father of Johnny and Sue, is introduced in issue #31, and then jailed.^note He was a fugitive from the law, but he arrived at the hospital to cure his daughter, even knowing that the police would capture him in doing so And then he's killed by the Skrulls the next issue.
• Will They or Won't They?: The endless dance in the early days between Reed and Sue, which eventually ends with them marrying. And meanwhile, Ben and Alicia. They don't (and wouldn't for another six decades. Yeesh.)
• Yank the Dog's Chain: So many examples of Ben's mutation wearing off, or a cure being waved in his face, and it all turns sour.
• Yo Yo Plot Point: A very early plot point that kept getting recycled was Ben spontaneously turning human again (this happened in the second issue) or Reed finding a cure for Ben being the Thing. No matter how permanent the change seemed, he was always back to normal by the end of the arc.
• You Already Changed the Past: The Fantastic Four go to the past, to retrieve the treasure of Blackbeard. The Thing, costumed as a pirate, leads the other pirates (amazed by his superhuman strength) to pillage another ship, and capture its treasure. Was Blackbeard in that ship? Not exactly. When they see how the pirates treat him, they realize that the Thing, with his pirate costume (including a black beard), is Blackbeard.
• You Killed My Father: T'Challa's father, T'Chaka, was killed by Ulysses Klaw. When he was a kid, T'Challa managed to drive him and his thugs off, ruining Klaw's hand in the process, but he knows the man is out there, and has been training since then to avenge him.

Tom De Falco's Era

Sexually-revealing suits? Check. BFG? Check. Civvie Spandex? Check. Ominous mask? Check. "Special issue" in a number that has nothing special? Check. Welcome to the 1990s!

With the departure of Walt Simonson in 1991 following a brief but popular run writing (and sometimes drawing) the Fantastic Four comic, Marvel's editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco stepped up to the plate as his replacement. He was joined by artist and occasional co-plotter Paul Ryan, a longtime Marvel employee who had previously enjoyed well-received runs pencilling The Avengers, West Coast Avengers and Mark Gruenwald's limited series Squadron Supreme.

Together, they were going to bring Marvel's First Family into the 1990s. For better or worse, they succeeded.

Running for around 60 issues (FF #356 - 416) from 1991 to 1996, the DeFalco/Ryan era represents one of the longest for a single creative team on the Fantastic Four comic, surpassed only by the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run in the 1960s and equalled by the John Byrne run in the early 1980s. Although it achieved some of the title's best sales since its Silver Age heyday, it was divisive in its time and remains so even now, with its infamous Dark Age trappings serving as ready targets of fan mockery.

Some of the notable features of this run include:

• Retconning Johnny Storm's marriage to Alicia Masters from the preceding Roger Stern and Steve Englehart runs (in his very first story!) and revealing that she was actually a Skrull infiltrator named Lyja and the real Alicia had been a Skrull prisoner since before her romance with Johnny began.
• Aging-up Reed and Sue's young son, Franklin, into a Totally Radical leather-jacketed early 90s teenager with an armoured costume and the codename "Psi-Lord" (he even had a short-lived spin-off super-team called "Fantastic Force").
• Some rather questionable character design choices, of which Sue's infamous "4"-shaped boob window is only the most notorious; others include Reed's safari jacket and Ben's metal mask, which he donned to hide the scar inflicted when his face was slashed by Wolverine.
• Revisiting the "greatest hits" of the preceding John Byrne, Steve Englehart and Walter Simonson eras, bringing back both Sue's "Malice, Mistress of Hate" identity and Aron the Renegade Watcher and reforming the New Fantastic Four (Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Wolverine and the Hulk).
• Killing off both Reed Richards and Doctor Doom and then keeping them killed off for two years straight before bringing them back shortly before DeFalco departed the book, when they were revealed to have been exiled to the distant past by a villain called Hyperstorm, the alternate future son of Franklin Richards and Rachel Summers (the second Phoenix) from the future seen in the X-Men story "Days of Future Past" (phew!).
• Expanding the regular supporting cast to what was then the greatest extent it had been, bringing in Namor, Scott Lang, Lyja, Nathaniel Richards (Reed's father, previously revealed to have become the leader of Earth in a dystopian future), She-Hulk, Kristoff Vernard and others.

Perhaps the most famous story from this era is "Nobody Gets Out Alive", in which the team travels across different timelines looking for the time-displaced Reed and comes into conflict with a powerful villain called the Dark Raider, an alternate Reed Richards who was driven mad by the loss of his family and took to travelling across dimensions killing every version of Reed Richards he can find.

Ultimately, the book's sales declined towards the middle of the decade (coinciding with the The Great Comics Crash of 1996 contraction of the American comic book industry more generally, and around the time DeFalco had stepped down from the editor-in-chief) and the decision was made to reboot the team as part of the Heroes Reborn storyline, with the FF, along with the Avengers, written into a crossover with the X-Men which saw the team removed from the main Earth-616 continuity in a battle with the villain Onslaught. Precisely how much foreknowledge the creative team had of this is ambiguous: DeFalco clearly had plans to keep writing into 1996 (see Aborted Arc, below) while Ryan only learned that he was being replaced by Jim Lee via the Internet!

Mocked though it may be, the DeFalco run does have fans who admire its consistency, attempts to strike a balance between the prevailing trends of the time and the FF's "old school" nature and the expansion of the cast to encompass more of the FF's extended family (while other fans enjoy the incongruity of the Marvel team of the Silver Age donning the Darker and Edgier trappings of comics in The '90s). Likewise, Paul Ryan's art and talent for visual storytelling remain very well-regarded, even among detractors of DeFalco's writing.

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Tropes

• Aborted Arc:
  • The FF find some Lost Technology in the jungle that turns people into "The Thing" soldiers and back. Works for Ben, and for anyone else just as fine. After his return, Reed is worried about a detail everybody overlooked: who built that thing? Alas, Defalco's run ended, the FF died fighting Onslaught, were recreated in another universe, then returned... meanwhile the Baxter Building was handed over to the Thunderbolts, until Zemo blew it up. By then, the machine was lost and Ben returned to his usual status.
  • One very obvious one appeared right at the end of the run, when Cassie Lang, Franklin Richards (restored to his more familiar age) and Kristoff Vernard meet a classmate of Cassie's who is evidently being beaten by his father and lashes out when they attempt to help him; clearly a Very Special Episode about abuse was in the offing, but then an issue or two before the book was rebooted, Kristoff and Franklin ask Cassie about the classmate and she explains that the problem had been resolved off-panel and his family were in counselling.
• Actually a Doombot: Alicia, who got married with Johnny, turned out to be a Skrull. And the real Alicia still loves Ben, allowing Johnny to be single again.
• The Atoner: Wolverine scarred Ben's face with his claws during a fight. He called him to a bar at a later issue, to try to make amends.
• The Baby Trap: When she was first outed, Lyja claimed that she was carrying Johnny's baby. Reed doubted it, he thought it unlikely that humans and Skrulls could breed. And, before dying, she confessed that it was a lie. When she returned, the baby subplot resumed... and yes, it turned out to be a lie (though it would later turn out that Skrulls and humans can have kids. Just not this time).
• Berserk Button: The FF go to the Skrull world to rescue the real Alicia. Johnny gets enraged when he sees Lyja among the crew... and with a FF suit to boot!
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Where did Ben get the mask? He was in the Watcher's house, which has a museum. One of the exhibits involved Ben using a mask similar to one he only wore for a few moments when the FF first donned costumes. So he took the mask from it.
• Exact Words: In one of his time travel jaunts, Nathaniel fell into the European past, among some gypsies, and had sex with one of them. His other son, he said, was the legitimate ruler of Latveria! Sue is thunderstuck: Reed and Doom are brothers? No, he wasn't talking about Doom. He was talking about Kristoff, heir to the throne now that Doom is dead.
• Death Is Cheap: Shortly before his run came to an end, DeFalco revived Reed and Doom.
• Depower: Sharon Ventura, previously mutated into She-Thing, returns looking significantly less She-Thing-y. Turns out she got some help from Doctor Doom.
• Facial Horror: The Thing gets his face sliced up by Wolverine and for a while he sports a helmet and later a scar until Hyperstorm reverses the damage.
• Fighting Your Friend: After Johnny torches an entire university campus, Silver Sable and the Wild Pack go after him, and she tries getting Spider-Man in on that. Spidey points out that Johnny is his friend, and Sable's response is basically "so?" Instead, Spider-Man gathers up the All-New Fantastic Four to try talking Johnny down, and the predictable happens.
• The Hero Dies: Reed Richards is killed by Dr. Doom. The Fantastic Four have to go on without him. Of course, he gets better eventually.
• Idiot Ball: Spider-Man brings Wolverine in on his team to try and talk a rogue Johnny down. You know, Wolverine, the man with the unbreakable metal claws, bad attitude and tendency to go into berserk rages. Somehow, this decision ends with Wolverine going into a berserk rage and slicing Ben's face up.
• In Love with the Mark: Lyja had been sent to impersonate Alicia to woo the Thing. As fate would have it, this happened right when the Secret Wars event had Ben leaving the team for a time. Lyja thus shifted her plan to seduce Johnny instead, only to fall in love with him for real.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Johnny comes under attack from Lyja, Paibok and Devos, so he uses his nova attack. Too bad he was at college at the time.
• Point of Divergence: The Fantastic "Three" visit a world where 'The Coming of Galactus'' took place with a small alteration. Instead of sending Johnny to retrieve the Ultimate Nullifier, the Watcher sent Reed. Reed got distracted by all the science-defying amazing gizmos around, instead of going straight to the needed one, and came back too late. Galactus killed the Silver Surfer^note he was about to do that in the original story, before being interrupted, dispatched the F3, and consumed the planet.
• Retcon: One of the biggest ever for the team: The Alicia Masters the Human Torch married was a Skrull imposter and had been ever since the events of Secret Wars (1984).
• Self-Disposing Villain: Subverted. Lyja dies during Alicia's rescue... or not. Paibok rescued her, and she returned to have vengeance!
• Stripperiffic: Sue's infamous "boob window" outfit. It turns out to be Malice trying to reassert control.
• Take That!: A famous moment, and one that got DeFalco in hot water, was Scott Lang slamming the reviled first season of Fantastic Four: The Animated Series.
• Too Dumb to Live: Paibok takes his ally Devos to the Skrull homeworld, to celebrate the capture of the FF. Devos, who wants to destroy all alien races capable of waging war. Earth and the FF are on that list, yes, but the Skrull homeworld is an even better target. Some minutes later his ship is raining death over the unsuspecting Skrulls.
• Underestimating Badassery: Somehow the Wild Pack, largely a group of mercenaries with fancy tech, think they can take Johnny Storm, who even on his slower days is a pretty formidable fighter.

Johnathan Hickman's Era

Following Mark Millar's run, Jonathan Hickman took over. As the FF continue with their lives, Reed Richards ponders the question of how to solve everything. His decision leads him to meet a group of alternate Reeds who've asked the same question. From there, however, disastrous dominoes begin to line up

Hickman's run also included the temporary end of the title, the story continuing in the new title of FF for near year, when Fantastic Four returned as issue #600. From there, Fantastic Four and FF continued simultaneously.

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Tropes:

• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: A major part of Hickman's run is that while every other alternate Reed is awesome, it comes at the cost of being maladjusted, eventually leaving their families behind, something Reed is horrified by.
• Arc Words: "Solve everything" and "all hope lies in Doom"
• Back for the Dead: Psionics, Johnny's girlfriend of the week from Millar's arc, returns during Johnny and Ben's visit to Nu-Earth, where she's gone insane, and gets her brain splattered. Johnny is remarkably unperturbed about this.
• Back from the Dead: Black Bolt, who got supposedly blown up at the end of War of Kings, turns out to have just survived, and Lockjaw finds him.
• Best of All Possible Worlds: Jonathan Hickman's run shows that while Reed has made many a bad decision, and isn't necessarily the best person in the world, he's a severe step-up from all the other Reed Richards out there, who without a father turned into cold manipulators, willing to do all manner of things in the name of the greater good, and eventually left their families.
• Birthday Episode: Franklin's birthday, when he's... whatever age he is (Sue shushes Reed when he tries saying it out loud). Then the Baxter Building is visited by a mysterious stranger who bypasses all their defenses and seems hell-bent on getting to Franklin, before leaving. Because he's Franklin's future self, restoring his powers.
• Broken Record: The Dooms captured and lobotomized by the Council of Reeds are incapable of saying anything other than "Doom".
• Darkest Hour: "Three" promised one of the FF would die, and the story has Reed stuck on a planet about to be eaten by an angry Galactus, Sue stuck at the bottom of the ocean between several warring Atlanteans, and Ben, Johnny and the kids facing down an attempt by Annihilus to invade via the Negative Zone portal. Ultimately, it's Johnny who dies, holding off Annihilus's troops. But he gets better.
• Didn't See That Coming: One of the Council of Reeds tries manipulating the Universal Inhumans as part of their plan. He didn't know they were capable of seeing he was lying, and gets killed for it.
• Dope Slap: Future Valeria delivers one to her younger self while finding her sketching out a way to conquer the Kree Empire.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Having been dragged along to a meeting with Reed and Black Bolt, Spidey makes a nervous quip about his now having five wives. Reed and Black Bolt glower at him.
• Enemy Mine: As part of FF, Doctor Doom is invited to stay with the team to help solve the problem of the Reeds in exchange for fixing the brain damage the Intellgencia gave him.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Valeria recounts what happened when she went through The Bridge, one of the alternate Reeds comments after their lucky escape from the Mad Celestials that it's lucky they didn't combine. Toward the end of the arc, guess what happens.
  • In the last issues, the time-travelling future version of Franklin drops some hints of future events that he's lived through, which would only be revealed in his Avengers run and Secret Wars (2015). First, Franklin stops the war between the Inhumans and the Kree by showing Black Bolt a glimpse of an upcoming future catastrophe, which he should focus on instead of waging war. We do not yet learn what the catastrophe is, but the words "everything dies" are dropped, their significance becoming clear in Hickman's New Avengers. And in the final issue of Hickman's Fantastic Four, future Franklin encourages his present day child version to use his imagination and populate the pocket universe he had created (in the beginning of Hickman's run) with all sorts of fantastic beings, hinting that his boundless imagination together with his reality-altering powers would one day be of utmost importance.
• Funny Background Event: In FF issue 14, Bentley is seen saying something to Katie Powers. Whatever it is he said, she slugs him for it.
• Future Me Scares Me: Mixed with I Hate Past Me. Neither Valeria likes the other. Young Valeria thinks her future self is cold and scary, Future Valeria thinks her younger self is an arrogant little twerp-hole.
• Giver of Lame Names: When Franklin and Leech start playing in Franklin's pocket universe, Franklin uses the names "Psi-Lord" and "Hyperstorm" for their alias. Future Franklin snarks about how terrible this is.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: After screw-ups with keeping things to himself or asking his villains for help, Reed finally decides to just call in his actual friends for help. Of course, being Reed, he forgot this one five minutes later.
• Good Wears White: The team switches to white costumes after the formation of the Future Foundation, mainly because of angst over Johnny.
• Guile Hero: Valeria Richards is this too, especially when written by Jonathan Hickman. She seems to have inherited her dad's smarts - and her mom's wits.
• Happy Ending Override: Millar's run had the inhabitants of a Bad Future escaping their time to go to Nu-Earth, a recreation of Earth made for the rich and powerful to run to if and when things got bad. Here, when Johnny and Ben go for a visit, things have gone extremely wrong for everyone there.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: The flashback showing the origins of the Inhumans has the Supreme Intelligence see the future the project will begin, and asks the scientists, who are obliviously unconcerned about the fact their god-emperor has just screamed, if this is all the information they have. Once they say yes, he tells the Accusers to get to work... however, it turns out they hadn't actually given it all the information.
• Long-Lived:
  • Franklin's powers make him immortal. He stops aging as a young adult.
  • As a side-effect of the Future Foundation's serum, Ben only ages the one week a year he's in human form, meaning he will live to be thousands of years old before dying of old age.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Asked about by Sue in the final issue as to why Future Franklin has to leave. It isn't, and Franklin and Reed stare at her like she's an idiot.
• Not Now, Kiddo: On a visit to Nu-Earth, things go wrong. Val ends up with the planet's designer, who's trying to come up with a solution to their problem. Val tries to chime in, but he keeps brushing her off.
• Once More, with Clarity: The first issue of "Three" has Valeria recount what happened when she went through the Bridge, but with no speech bubbles, save ones with pictograms. It's not until FF issue #3 a few months later she gives the full details of what happened.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Kristoff, Doom's protégé / heir just sort of vanished after a while. Hickman's run brings him back with the mention that Doom had sent him in to exile for whatever reason. The same with Nathaniel Richards.
  • Alicia, who'd been out of focus during Mark Millar's run in favor of a different girlfriend of the week, returns during the "Three" arc.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Johnny invites himself to live with Peter Parker. Peter gets increasingly irritated by Johnny's antics over the next few weeks, finally reaching his breaking point and kicking Johnny out when he finds Annihilus sitting on his toilet.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: Advertising for the "Three" storyline hyped up how one of the Four would die, permanently for reals. It was Johnny. He didn't, returning in a year.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Doom manages to create an entire universe using an Infinity Gauntlet. It takes about a week for them to turn on him.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Played with in Valeria's case. She is insanely smart for her age, but has some massive gaps brought on by the fact she is still a child (if that), and a pronounced Lack of Empathy, not understanding why her dad would chose family over the "greater good".
• You Can't Fight Fate: A theme of Hickman's run. Despite everything Nathaniel and Valeria can think of, the Mad Celestials always end up killing the Fantastic Four. Much of the run is spent with Val trying to find a way to Screw Destiny.

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