August 9, 1961: Fantastic Four #1 is published, beginning the modern era of Marvel Comics. A year earlier, DC Comics had begun publishing Justice League of America, and Marvel editor Stan Lee wanted his company to have its own superhero team. Lee and Jack Kirby created them.
Reed Richards is a brilliant scientist, one of the most intelligent men on Earth -- though, as it turns out, frequently not one of the wisest. Benjamin J. Grimm is his best friend, a former football player and a pilot, somewhat based on Kirby himself. Susan Storm is Reed's girlfriend, who eventually becomes his wife, and they go on to have a son named Franklin and a daughter named Valeria. In later rewrites, Susan was also said to be a scientist from the start. Johnny Storm is Sue's brother, a teenage racing enthusiast.
Like many of the Marvel Comics characters that Stan Lee co-created over the next few years, there was a Cold War undercurrent to their story. The 1st issue of the Fantastic Four's comic was written in the wake of Yuri Gagarin becoming the 1st person in space, and Alan Shepard the 1st American in space.
And so, in the Four's origin story, Reed designs and builds a rocket to determine what the threat to space travelers might be. Ben pilots it, and Sue and Johnny are along to observe with Reed. What happens is that their craft is bombarded with "cosmic rays" -- Lee and the other Marvel writers respected science, but they weren't very good at understanding its effects -- and it mutates them.
Sue is the first to change, becoming invisible for a minute before reappearing. Ben turns into a living orange rock with enormous strength -- Sue says, "Reed, darling, run! He's turned into some sort of... thing!" -- and attacks the others. Reed stretches his body to stop them, only realizing what he's doing once he's done it. Johnny then catches fire, and discovers that not only is he not physically burned by it, but he can fly.
When things calm down, they agree to use their newfound powers to help humanity. Sue takes the name "The Invisible Girl." It would not be until 1985, in Fantastic Four #284, well after the "Second Wave of Feminism," not to mention after marriage and a 1st child, that the writers finally changed her superhero code name to "The Invisible Woman."
Reed, his ego as overweening as ever, calls himself "Mr. Fantastic," mainly because DC already had stretchy heroes named Plastic Man and the Elongated Man. Ben, the only one who can't change back, says, "I'm what Susie called me: The Thing." And Johnny, a fan of comic books, takes the name of an earlier comic book hero, who had appeared in the original Marvel comic, Marvel Comics #1 in 1939: An android known as the Human Torch.
Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner -- a character who preceded DC's Aquaman -- had also appeared in Marvel Comics #1, as what would later be called an anti-hero: Someone not always likable, but willing to do the right thing if it benefits him.
In Fantastic Four #4, Johnny finds Namor, an amnesiac because he has been away from salt water for so long (I've often wondered whether a shower, or even simply washing his hands, would have made a difference), and takes him to the East River, where his memory and powers are restored. But instead of thanking Johnny, he goes straight back to his undersea home of Atlantis, and finds it abandoned due to the irradiation from the surface people's atomic testing, and vows revenge.
But it is in the next issue, Fantastic Four #5, that the Four's greatest enemy was introduced: Victor Von Doom, a.k.a. Doctor Doom, King of the European nation of Latveria and a master of magic. He had been Reed's college roommate, and possessed all of Reed's intelligence and all of his love for science. But he also had all of Reed's ego, and little of Reed's patience, and an experiment went horribly wrong, burning him, and forcing him to hide his face behind a mask, to which he later added a suit of armor. (Ben then replaced Victor as Reed's roommate.)
Not knowing of George Lucas' love of Asian culture and Samurai armor, Stan Lee went to his death believing that the Star Wars character of Darth Vader was a ripoff of Dr. Doom, but he never sued Lucas over it.
Stan Lee
The introduction of the Fantastic Four started what became known as the "Marvel Universe." The heroes that followed all fit Stan Lee's guidelines:
* May 1962: The Incredible Hulk #1. Lee wanted his next major character to have "enormous strength," but he didn't want a straight-ahead hero. He thought of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and used an advanced atomic weapon to turn physicist Bruce Banner into the Hulk. At first, he changed into the Hulk at nightfall, and back to Banner at sunrise. Within 2 years, this was changed to becoming the Hulk when he got angry. And the angrier he got, the stronger he got.
* August 1962 (released June 5): Amazing Fantasy #15. Lee and Steve Ditko, with Jack Kirby drawing the memorable cover, introducing Spider-Man. Lee wanted a superhero that kids could relate to, more than they could the new Human Torch, who was just 1 of 4. Peter Parker was a 15-year-old science nerd who was bitten by a radioactive spider -- there's radioactivity again, with its fear-inducing overtones of nuclear power and the Cold War again -- and he develops the proportionate strength and reflexes of a spider, plus the accompanying reduced vulnerability, a healing factor, and a "spider-sense" that warns him of trouble.
Not until the 2002 Spider-Man film would Spidey's webs be literally shot out of glands in his wrists. That was temporarily written into the comics: "My webs went internal." Most other versions, including the original comics, show Peter adapting the weapon, creating the "web-fluid" and putting it in "web-shooters" on his wrists.
* August 1962: Journey Into Mystery #83. Kirby had previously drawn Thor, the Norse god of thunder, for DC Comics in 1957. Lee said that, after co-creating the Fantastic Four with Kirby and the Hulk with Steve Ditko, he thought the only way to top it would be to write a comic book about God, and he knew he couldn't do that. But then he realized he could write one about a god. Whether he remembered Kirby's earlier Thor, only he knew.
Donald Blake was originally a mortal man, a doctor with a cane (his disability never explained), who finds a walking stick. Striking it on the ground, he transforms into Thor, and the stick becomes Mjolnir, Thor's legendary hammer. Inscribed on the hammer are these words, apparently (for the reader's benefit) in English instead of a Scandinavian language, past or present: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall have the power of Thor."
Later, it was retconned that Blake was an identity created by Thor's father, Odin, the king of the Norse gods: As a punishment for opposing him, Odin gave Thor the persona and amnesia, believing himself to have always been Blake.
* September 1962: Tales to Astonish #35. This one introduced Ant-Man. Dr. Hank Pym found a way to shrink to a small size, thus ripping off DC's The Atom; and also a way to control ants, a rewrite of DC's Aquaman and his command of sea creatures. He soon learns to reverse the process, alternating between Ant-Man and Giant-Man.
* March 1963: Tales of Suspense #39. The Cold War rears its head again, as Lee introduces Iron Man. Tony Stark is an industrialist, a brilliant scientist, drawn with a mustache as an obvious homage to Howard Hughes, to the point that, when the character was retconned as having grown up during the Cold War, his father was named Howard Stark.
Surviving being shot in the chest by a Communist agent, but having it severely weaken his heart, led Tony to create the prototype of the Iron Man armor, and use his weaponry to make money for himself and fight the Commies.
* June 1963: Tales to Astonish #44. This one introduced Janet Van Dyne, Dr. Pym's assistant and girlfriend. He designs a shrinkable costume for her, with wings that allow her to fly (which he can't do), and she becomes the Wasp. They are among the few superheroes that have allowed a second generation to really take hold: Their daughter, Hope Van Dyne, taking her mother's maiden name after a falling-out with their father, eventually becomes the 2nd Wasp; and her boyfriend, Scott Lang, becomes the 2nd Ant-Man.
* July 1963: Strange Tales #110. A fan of 1930s pulp magazine hero Mandrake the Magician, Lee wanted a magician character, so he created Doctor Strange. Stephen Strange injures his hands in a car accident, ending his surgical career, so he looks for something to do for the rest of his life. He makes his way to Tibet, then controlled by Communist China (and thus it wouldn't be allowed in the real world -- there's the Cold War again), where he is invited to train in "the mystic arts."
(One of my favorite moments from the Marvel movies came in Spider-Man 2, when Dr. Otto Octavius first becomes Dr. Octopus, but doesn't yet have the name. The Daily Bugle staff is wondering what to call him, and someone suggests, "How about 'Doctor Strange'?" And publisher J. Jonah Jameson says, "Nah, it's been taken." Although that character was never shown in the Tobey Maguire movies, he did interact with Spidey in the later MCU.)
* September 1963: Avengers #1. Lee felt that, as successful as the Fantastic Four had been, it wasn't quite the "superteam" that DC's Justice League had been. So he put Iron Man (the team's funder, so its boss, much like Batman in the Justice League), the Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp together in a team, their 1st mission to stop Thor's adoptive brother Loki, a trickster god with delusions of ruling the Earth.
* March 1964: Avengers #4. The Hulk has gone rogue, and the other Avengers need to stop him. Fortunately, they find Steve Rogers, the 1st superhero created by Kirby, all the way back in 1940, frozen in ice. Injected with a "super-solider formula," Rogers became Captain America, and was thought killed near the end of World War II. His adjustment to the modern era (whether that's the 1960s, the 1980s, or the 21st Century as in current continuity) is difficult, but his heroic instincts always kick in.
In that 1st re-appearance, Cap sees the United Nations Building, and gains a little hope. A policeman sees him, recognizes the costume, and breaks down in tears, because Cap is just the kind of guy we need in these times. The timing couldn't have been better: The country was still shaken by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
* April 1964: Daredevil #1. Lee wanted a superhero with a disability that was a part of his powers. And before you say that Daredevil is an obvious ripoff of Batman, keep these things in mind: Batman himself is a ripoff of Zorro, who was a ripoff of the Scarlet Pimpernel; and DC had a Doctor Mid-Nite, a hero who could "see in the dark, but not in the light," all the way back in 1941.
Matthew Murdock is a boy who saves a man from being hit by a truck, but a canister containing radioactive material falls off the truck and hits Matt. It blinds him, but it also heightens his other senses to the point where he can do anything better than a sighted person can, including graduate from law school.
When his father, a boxer, is ordered to take a dive (lose a fight on purpose), he refuses, and wins, but is killed for this by a mobster (later retconned as the Kingpin). Matt defends his neighborhood, in courtrooms as a defense attorney by day, and on the streets as Daredevil by night.
* July 1966: Fantastic Four #52. Lee used this issue to introduce the 1st nonwhite superhero in comic books, Black Panther. T'Challa is the King of the African nation of Wakanda, which uses vibranium, a material from a meteorite that landed there centuries ago, to build the most technologically advanced nation on Earth, but also to keep it hidden from the rest of the world. As King, T'Challa undertook the ritual of drinking from a heart-shaped herb, which gives him, more or less, Spider-Man's powers without the webs.
Three times, attempts have been made at a Fantastic Four movie franchise. The 1st, in 1994, was made just so that the film rights to the team wouldn't lapse. The film has never been released, but is available online. Another attempt was made in 2005, released and given mixed reviews, with a sequel in 2007, which didn't do nearly as well, so a 3rd film wasn't made. (Sue Storm was played by Jessica Alba, someone who is definitely better off being visible.) Another reboot came in 2015, and it tanked, leading to the cancellation of the planned sequel.
In 2022, with the film rights to the Four back in Marvel's hands, John Krasinski played Reed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Although the other 3 did not appear in it, this appears to be setting up the next attempt. which, as of this writing, is scheduled to be released on November 8, 2024. (UPDATE: What was ultimately titled The Fantastic Four: First Steps was been pushed back to July 21, 2025, and became the most successful FF movie ever.)
A 2015 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist as Stan Lee, against "Nice" Peter Shukoff as Muppets creator Jim Henson, with Zach Sherwin stepping in as Walt Disney, "taking over" the battle the way his company bought out both Marvel and the Muppets franchise.
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August 9, 1961 was a Wednesday. Comedian and actress Amy Stiller was born. She was the daughter of comedy team Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and the brother of comedian and actor Ben Stiller.
These baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees beat the Los Angeles Angels, 2-0 at Yankee Stadium. Jim Coates, normally a reliever, went the distance, pitching a 4-hit shutout. No home runs in this homer-happy season, but Mickey Mantle went 1-for-3 with a walk, and Roger Maris went 0-for-4.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at Fenway Park. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-3 with a walk. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-2 with 3 walks.
* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Baltimore Orioles, 2-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Joey Jay pitched a 6-hit shutout. The Reds would go on to win the Pennant, and Jay would win Game 2 of the World Series against the Yankees. This made him the only Reds pitcher to win a World Series game between 1940 and 1970. Frank Robinson went 0-for-4 with a walk, but Elio Chacon, soon to be a 1962 Met, hit a home run.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Curt Simmons went 7 innings, and Ed Bauta 2, for a 7-hit shutout. Stan Musial did not play for the Cardinals. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 3-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Rocky Colavito and Al Kaline hit home runs for the Tigers.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Braves, 8-3 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Don Drysdale went the distance, allowing 3 runs, just 1 earned, on 4 hits and 1 walk, striking out 11, and helping his own cause with a home run. Joe Adcock hit 2 home runs for the Braves, but Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews both went 0-for-4, and Joe Torre went 0-for-3.
* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-5 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 1-for-4 with 2 RBIs. Ernie Banks went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Matty Alou won it with a homer in the bottom of the 9th.
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