The Fantastic Four: Marvel’s Blueprint For Humanity In A Superpowered World |
As the franchise’s latest reboot, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, streams on OTT today, it’s worth tracing how these flawed heroes reshaped the Marvel universe — on page and on screen.
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THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, the second cinematic reboot of the franchise, arrived amid high expectations. While cinema-goers have responded enthusiastically to many of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the history of the Fantastic Four on the silver screen is less heralded. Earlier adaptations have had mixed fortunes — several were poorly received, and the 2015 film became an infamous box-office bomb.
By contrast, First Steps has enjoyed broadly positive reviews and a strong box-office debut, grossing over $500 million worldwide — signalling renewed faith in the franchise. Yet in comics history, the Fantastic Four have always been up to the challenge of driving a popular media enterprise forward — something that First Steps seems to have achieved, much to the satisfaction of producers and Marvel fans alike. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! In the 1960s — the era in which Fantastic Four: First Steps is notably set — the comics presented a new class of superhero.
From their 1961 debut, Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic, Sue Storm/the Invisible Girl, Johnny Storm/the Human Torch and Ben Grimm/the Thing were celebrities who rented office space in a Manhattan high-rise and found themselves variously beloved and reviled by both the public and the government. The team also rejected secret identities. Until the third issue of their series, they even eschewed superhero costumes (in part because of a restriction imposed by the owner of Marvel’s then-distributor, DC Comics). |
Pushed representational boundaries The Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s also pushed boundaries in a number of significant ways. They featured the first pair of married superheroes (Reed and Sue wed in 1965) and the first superhero pregnancy (Sue gave birth to her son Franklin in 1968).
In 1966, Fantastic Four No. 52 introduced the Black Panther, who is widely recognised as the first high-profile Black superhero.
And though not canonical until 2002, it has been suggested by scholars that Ben Grimm was always envisioned as a Jewish superhero by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, offering another milestone in representation (at least for those readers attuned to the character’s Jewish coding).
These milestones emphasise a dedicated concern for the human aspects of superheroes. |
A family with relatable issues Set amid fittingly fantastic science-fiction landscapes inspired by Space Age optimism was a story about a family who “fought among themselves, sometimes over petty jealousies and insults,” in the words of Christopher Pizzino, an American scholar of contemporary literature, film and television.
This approach of building character dynamics out of internal conflict proved deeply influential.
Famed comics writer Grant Morrison argues that through the example of Fantastic Four, “the Marvel superhero was born: a hero who tussled not only with monsters and mad scientists but also with relatable personal issues.”
In his bestselling book All the Marvels, comics critic and historian Douglas Wolk concurs that the “first hundred issues of Fantastic Four are Marvel’s Bible and manual,” establishing the style, theme, genre and approach of the company’s comics for decades to come. ALSO READ | The Fantastic Four: First Steps — A Bad Rebirth, A Good Newborn |
Defining personal conflicts In contrast to moral paragons such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (all published by rival DC Comics), each member of Marvel’s Fantastic Four had defining personal conflicts.
Reed Richards, the team’s patriarch, was a world-altering genius who often fell victim to his own hubristic ambition.
Two years before American feminist author Betty Friedan identified “the problem that has no name” in The Feminine Mystique (that post-war suburban housewives faced social expectations of being fully fulfilled as wives and mothers), the Fantastic Four gave audiences Sue Storm, with the superpower to render herself — and others — invisible at will.
Storm, according to scholar Ramzi Fawaz, “made the concept of women’s social invisibility an object of visual critique by making invisible bodies and objects conspicuous on the comic book page.”
Her younger brother, Johnny Storm, a playboy and showboat, had a lot of growing up to do, a journey frustrated by his flashy powers.
Ben Grimm, Reed’s college roommate turned best friend turned rock monster, oscillated between childlike rage and world-weary depression, his rocky hide granting him super-strength and invulnerability while burdening him with social isolation.
While none of us are likely to acquire superpowers through exposure to cosmic rays like the Four, we’ve all dealt with anxiety and grief like these heroes. |
Origin of the Marvel universe The world of the Fantastic Four didn’t just feel unusually human. It also felt unusually lived in, partly because the Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s weren’t just the origin of the Marvel style of storytelling — they were also the origin of the Marvel universe.
Fantastic Four began and became the model for Marvel’s shared continuity universe, in which dozens of superheroes passed in and out of each other’s stories and occasionally intersected long enough for whole crossover story arcs and events. For a time, Marvel’s superheroes even aged alongside their readers, with teenage characters like Johnny Storm graduating high school and enrolling in college.
Previous superhero comics hadn’t embraced this shared continuity in a meaningful way, tending to prioritise discrete stories that did not affect future tales. But Fantastic Four pitched what comics scholar Charles Hatfield calls “intertitle continuity,” which quickly became “Marvel’s main selling tool.”
Case in point, the Fantastic Four shared the cover of 1963’s Amazing Spider-Man No. 1, helping sell the newly created wall-crawler to their adoring readers. Get your Marvel fix on OTTplay Premium for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! |
Voluminous, chaotic universe The 1965 wedding of Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four Annual No. 3 showcased how quickly the Marvel comics universe became vibrantly voluminous and charmingly chaotic.
This event featured at least 19 superheroes fighting 28 supervillains and foregrounded the Fantastic Four’s symbolic mother and father as the progenitors of an extended super-family.
It also featured a cameo by the Fantastic Four’s creators, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, previously introduced in 1963’s Fantastic Four No. 10 as the official creators of imaginary adventures starring the “real” Fantastic Four, further blurring the boundary between fiction and reality.
Decades later, this sprawling comics universe would become a sprawling cinematic universe. This informs the pressure facing the latest Fantastic Four adaptation.
Phase 6 of the MCU
Fantastic Four: First Steps marked the start of what Marvel calls “Phase Six” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which began in 2008 with the first Marvel Studios film, Iron Man.
Essentially, Fantastic Four: First Steps is meant to launch a new cluster of shared universe stories, just as Fantastic Four No. 1 did for Marvel Comics in the 1960s. This cluster will culminate in the release of Avengers: Secret Wars in December 2027.
J Andrew Deman is a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo. This essay originally appeared on The Conversation and has been republished here under the Creative Commons License. Psst...The Fantastic Four: First Steps is currently streaming on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. |
Hridayapoorvam & The Vanishing Tenderness Of Sathyan Anthikad’s World
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Hridayapoorvam arrives with all the hallmarks of a Sathyan Anthikad film — family dynamics, gentle humour, and moral warmth. Yet, the narrative rarely achieves the poignancy that its premise promises, writes Neelima Menon.
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IN AN EARLY SCENE of Hridayapoorvam, when Haritha (Malavika Mohanan) meets Sandeep Balakrishnan (Mohanlal), her father’s heart recipient, the expectation is one of poignancy — as cinematic convention would dictate. And given it is Sathyan Anthikad, who has long mastered the art of mixing warmth with a touch of humour, one might even anticipate a moment laced with gentle mirth. Instead, the film takes a deliberate detour: the encounter unfolds casually, with nostalgic asides and a sprinkle of social-media-style aesthetics. But then the result is a scene that hovers in a curious in-between space — not serious enough to stir, not playful enough to charm. And this tonal imbalance becomes symbolic of the film’s broader narrative strategy: pleasant on the surface, accessible in its design, yet strangely devoid of the emotional gravitas one associates with both the premise and Anthikad’s best works. Take the characterisation of Sandeep. Beyond the detail of his profession as a caterer, there is little to distinguish him from several roles Mohanlal has essayed in Sathyan Anthikad’s films since the early 2000s. Premachandran in Rasathanthram, Gopakumar in Innathe Chinthavishayam, Ajayan in Snehaveedu, or Vineeth N. Pillai in Ennum Eppozhum — all of them, despite their different occupations and settings, are variations of the same persona: the affable, large-hearted, morally upright do-gooder. Sandeep, too, falls neatly into this mould. Stream the latest Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada releases, with OTTplay Premium's Power Play monthly pack, for only Rs 149. The question then arises: what draws us specifically to Sandeep, beyond the presence of Mohanlal himself? The character is written as an ordinary man, with no particular contradictions or complexities to hold our attention. And yet, to service the aura of Mohanlal’s stardom, the film inserts contrived embellishments — a gratuitous fight sequence that feels out of place, and a half-formed romantic track that is mercifully abandoned before it takes root. These additions do little to enrich the character; instead, they highlight the film’s uncertainty about whether it wishes to present Sandeep as a relatable everyman or as a star vehicle cloaked in the guise of simplicity. For a filmmaker long celebrated for breathing life into even the most fleeting of side characters, Hridayapoorvam feels unusually barren. Anthikad, once the master of detail and nuance, struggles here to make his supporting cast either memorable or meaningful. Sandeep Prathap’s Jerry, the nurse who shadows Sandeep, feels less like a fresh creation and more like a hand-me-down — a diluted echo of his Amal Davis from Premalu. His camaraderie with Sandeep brings fleeting warmth, hinting at the textured subplots Anthikad once excelled at. But even this thread fizzles out prematurely, abandoned before it can gather emotional heft. CONTINUE READING... |
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