Creating Mr. Fantastic

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Mr. Fantastic

It all started when an experienced aeronautical engineer named Reed Richards, born in Central City, California, made some miscalculations which resulted in newfound superheroes. With Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grim, Richards got caught off course into a comic ray, and transformed each person in the rocket in a different way. Richards gained the power to stretch his body in unrealistic lengths while Sue gained invisibility as her power. Johnny acquired a new flammability which therefore gave him the name, Human Torch, and Ben with the unfortunate power of turning into a “rock man” earned the name as Thing. Especially for Ben’s transformation, Richards held himself accountable for the accident since it was his rocket. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created this quaternate alliance in 1961, coined as the Fantastic Four (FF), they were trying to bring a group of ordinary and unmasked heroes into a group, and represent the flaws of ordinary people in superhuman as well. Richards was named Mr. Fantastic as the fatherly figure of the group, with his beloved Sue, or now Invisible Girl, at his side. Mr. Fantastic and the rest of the Fantastic Four are just a few of the hundreds of superheroes created by the hopeful citizen to better American society one city at a time. The American superhero is depicted as an optimistic and wishful representation of the good, values, and morale that all Americans encompass deep within, just as Mr. Fantastic symbolizes the well-rounded man everyone hopes to be.

Creating Mr. Fantastic stemmed from creating a new fatherly superhero. Lee and Kirby wanted to portray a more ordinary circumstance of the becoming of a superhero. To the mass market of children that the comics reach, t...

... middle of paper ...

... can happen, and with that, the country has developed into a more hopeful place to be.

Works Cited

Cotilletta, Anthony. "Mr. Fantastic." Marvel.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .

"Fantastic Four (Earth-616)." Marvel.wikia.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .

Misiroglu, Gina Renee, and David A. Roach. The Superhero Book. N.p.: Visible Ink, 2004. Print.

"Mr. Fantastic." ComicVine.com. CBS Interactive Inc., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .

Weiler. "What Impact Have Superheroes Had on American Popular Culture?" Teen Ink: n. pag. Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .

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