History of the Fantastic Four, 1963

The following is a history of the Fantastic Four for the year of 1963, in which the team began to discover the breadth and richness of the universe around them.

History

Doctor Doom and the impostor Reed

With help from a passing Ovoid ship, Doctor Doom returned to Earth. Wasting no time, Doom kidnapped Reed Richards and used a technique that he had learned from the Ovoids to switch minds with him. Baiting Richards' teammates to his secret lab, Doom convincingly took his place in the team, sealing Richards-as-Doom in a plexiglass prison in the basement. Doom-as-Richards then convinced the heroes to take part in a demonstration of his new reducer ray, which he claimed would enhance their abilities by shrinking and re-growing them. Richards-as-Doom was able to escape Doom's lab, and desperately went to Alicia Masters's apartment. Invisible Girl happened to be there visiting and attacked him, but when the other heroes arrived, Richards maintained that his and Doom's minds had been switched. They returned him to the Baxter Building, and upon seeing his foe, Doom attempted to begin the reducing right away. Richards stopped him, convincing his teammates of his altruism and turning them against Doom-as-Richards. In Doom's distress, he lost control of the switch, and the two minds returned to their owners. In the ensuing combat, Doom inadvertently activated the reducer ray on himself, causing himself to seemingly shrink into nothingness.

The mischievous Impossible Man

A short time later, a bizarre being known as the Impossible Man, coming from the planet of Poppup, appeared on Earth and began causing all manner of chaos. Though he was simply looking to have fun, Impossible Man's ability to transform into anything at will allowed him to cause a state of danger and panic without even trying to. The Fantastic Four initially offered resistance, but they proved no match to Impossible Man's ostensibly-infinite power. Mr. Fantastic deduced that the best way to repel Impossible Man was to ignore him, and he conveyed this message to the authorities across the country. Suddenly receiving no reactions to his attempts at hijinks, Impossible Man quickly grew bored with Earth and flew away, declaring that he nor any other Poppupian would ever return.

The Hulk and the Wrecker

While on a date with Alicia, the Thing was attacked by a group of soldiers who mistook him for the Hulk, a similarly powerful creature who was sought after by government forces. Later that day, the Four were contacted by Thunderbolt Ross, the general in charge of taking down the Hulk. He told them of a series of sabotages of missile installations that he believed only Hulk could have done. At a meeting on the site of the most recent sabotage, Mr. Fantastic met with Bruce Banner—the secret human identity of the Hulk—who was naturally confident that the Hulk was not responsible. Banner himself was responsible for the most recent destroyed device, a nuclear-missile defense system. In truth, the culprit was Karl Kort, Banner's assistant, who dropped his wallet on his way out of the meeting. Inspecting it, Banner's friend Rick Jones discovered that Kort belonged to a subversive communist organization. His secret exposed, Kort kidnapped Jones and left a note for the Hulk demanding that he rid the area of the Fantastic Four. The Four continued to believe that the Hulk was behind the sabotages, despite Banner's insistent pleas to the contrary. Banner transformed into the Hulk and set out to find Jones at the same time that the Four set out to find him. They finally met and engaged in a grand battle, which was interrupted by a large robot piloted by Kort. Invisible Girl stealthily defeated him and freed Jones, and Kort was taken into custody as the Hulk slipped away unseen. Also around this time, the young vigilante Spider-Man approached the Four and offered to join the team, interested in making some money, but changed his mind after learning that they didn't pay and after receiving an icey reception from the bulk of the team.

Communist apes on the Moon

Through studying a meteorite, Mr. Fantastic discovered what he believed would be a method of jet propulsion that would be powerful enough to propel a ship to the Moon. He initially planned on taking this mission alone, remembering the last time that he recruited partners for a space flight. But the other members of the Fantastic Four insisted, and soon the Four were on their way back into space. Shortly after leaving Earth, they saw a bizarre transparent spaceship with a Soviet Union emblem emblazoned on it. Wearing a special suit that allowed him to flame on through space, Human Torch observed Red Ghost and the Super-Apes: a malevolent cosmonaut and three apes who had just deliberately absorbed the cosmic radiation that gave the Four their powers, and gained power themselves. Landing on the moon, the Four discovered an ancient city there, along with an atmosphere apparently constructed by whatever race had occupied the city. Mr. Fantastic, Torch, and Invisible Girl left to investigate, leaving Thing alone. He was ambushed by Red Ghost, who could make his body "unsolid" at will, and the Super-Apes, who possessed the powers of super strength, shapeshifting, and magnetism.

Thing's confrontation with the villains was cut short by Uatu, an imposing figure known as a Watcher. He explained that his people are tasked with observing and documenting the happenings of the universe without interfering. He anticipated that the conflict between Red Ghost and the Fantastic Four could escalate into all-out war between the Soviet Union and the United States; this in itself was of no concern to him, but now that they had brought themselves to the Moon, he had to intercede. He commanded them to resolve their conflict there and then, transporting all eight participants into the middle of the large, ancient Moon city. An intense battle ensued until Red Ghost captured Invisible Girl and brought her underground in a nearby pneumatic car. The other three followed him underground and back again, and in the process the Super-Apes were fed, relieving their intense hunger and ceasing their motivation to follow Red Ghost's commands. They turned on him and chased him across the Moon, as Uatu declared that he would find a new place from which to observe Earth now that this one had been compromised. The Four returned to Earth to great fanfare, having become ostensibly the first humans—and certainly the first Americans—to reach the Moon.

Namor and the Puppet Master

After a short rest at home, the Fantastic Four soon found themselves the unwitting victims of a revenge plot courtesy of the Puppet Master. He had survived the great fall he suffered in their previous encounter, and had spent the few months since in a mental institution. Crafting a puppet effigy of Namor the Sub-Mariner, Puppet Master easily took him under his mental control and used Namor's influence over Invisible Girl to lure her to his undersea lair, further using her as bait to bring the rest of the Four there. Thing also brought Alicia along after she expressed concern over his safety. The men took the fight to Namor, freeing Invisible Girl from her confines at the mercy of a giant octopus. The octopus swam out into the sea, attacking the Puppet Master as he sat in a submarine and observed the events from afar. The octopus crushed the sub with its mighty arms, again leaving Puppet Master's fate in perilous doubt. Recovering from his hypnosis, Namor wondered whether Invisible Girl had at last come to him to take her place by his side. She declined, still unsure about where her heart lay between him and Reed. He commanded the Four and Alicia to leave, and they returned home without incident.

The Thinker and the Android

The Four continued to feel the wear and tear of vigilantly defending the city, and longed for a change of pace. They were each individually approached by people who could give them just that: Mr. Fantastic by an electronics company; Invisible Girl by a Hollywood director; Thing by a professional-wrestling promoter; and Human Torch by distant relatives from the circus. Unbeknownst to the heroes, these meetings were arranged by the Mad Thinker, a villain who used advanced computer modeling to predict the future. Thinker sought to remove the Four from New York in order to conquer the city and establish a monarchy. The heroes each went their separate ways, but quickly found themselves restless in their new vocations and returned to New York at the same time. As a precaution, Mr. Fantastic asked mailman Willie Lumpkin to, at a certain time, ring a secret doorbell outside the Baxter Building, which he had previously rigged to deactivate all the equipment in the building, just in case of an intruder. This preparation proved fruitful, as Thinker had indeed invaded the Baxter Building and taken hold of the group's many pieces of advanced equipment. The Four navigated a series of traps, including a confrontation with the Awesome Android—a mechanical creation designed by Mr. Fantastic and constructed by the Mad Thinker—before finally confronting Thinker himself. Thinker attempted to fire on them with one of their own anti-matter guns, but Willie Lumpkin came through right on time. Alone and unequipped, Thinker was easily trounced and taken into custody.

Doctor Doom in the Micro-World

Each member of the Four soon separately experienced a bizarre occurrence: suddenly shrinking down to an inch tall, only to return to normal size soon afterward. A few days later, Human Torch returned to the Baxter Building to find his partners again shrunk down. After they grew once more, Mr. Fantastic proposed that there was only one man they should contact regarding these unexpected events: the hero Ant-Man. Unbeknownst to them, Ant-Man was notified of their idle conversation by way of his citywide ant network, and arrived on the scene in a few moments. Mr. Fantastic asked for his help shrinking down to find the cause of what was happening, and Ant-Man granted them a formula that allowed them to shrink and grow at will. Over the following day, each of the heroes began to hear a strange woman's voice warning them of the wrath of Doctor Doom. Unimpeded, the Fantastic Four consumed Ant-Man's solution, and through complex scientific means soon found themselves in a "Micro-World" that had been conquered by Doctor Doom.

Doom had arrived in Micro-World after being shrunk to seeming nothingness in his last encounter with the Four, and had used his scientific expertise to overthrow the world's peaceful, benevolent rulers. Doom used a special ray to further shrink his foes, and threw them in a dungeon along with the world's king and princess, Pearla. Pearla explained that it was her voice warning them of Doctor Doom, and that he was planning both to marry her against her will and to align himself with the evil Lizard Men of the planet Tok, handing over the Four to the Lizard Men as slaves. Their dungeon was surrounded on all sides by deadly acid; Invisible Girl observed that the walls of the dungeon were impervious to the acid, and she and Mr. Fantastic suggested using that to their advantage. To that end, Torch and Thing carefully used the inner layers of the wall to build an airtight submersible, escaping to the surface of their acid prison with the king and princess. They found Doom waiting for the Tok contingent, with Ant-Man in binds—the hero had been captured after arriving on the scene himself. The Four engaged their archnemesis, freeing Ant-Man and deflecting the visitors from Tok. Doom managed to escape, enlarging and returning to Earth's dimension before his foes could give chase.

Pursuing Doctor Doom

The Four and Ant-Man themselves returned to Earth, and the inch-high hero was seen off by his new allies. The team searched high and low for Doctor Doom, but the brilliant villain had escaped their grasp for the time being. One day, while out on the town, they met a kindly janitor in a mall, who politely asked to shake their hands. Unbeknownst to them, the janitor was in fact Doom in disguise, and planted small tracking beacons on them during each shake. Soon after, each hero began being pursued by a strange, ethereal robot that followed them everywhere but did not harm them. The group met up once more, and Mr. Fantastic determined the root of the problem, destroying the beacons on their hands and the robots in the process. He rightly assumed that Doom was the cause, and that he'd been spying on them; Doom then appeared to them as a technological vision, warning them not to track him down, lest his prisoner Alicia come to harm. Doom contacted the U.S. government, demanding a position in the president's cabinet and threatening his wrath otherwise. His demands were not met, and so the following day he enacted an electronic sabotage of various critical systems across the country. Mr. Fantastic then began his plan to defeat Doom once more, analyzing his dirigible from the ground. He discovered that the robots that were following them had perfectly scanned their molecular structures, and Doom had aligned disintegrator rays on his ship to those structures. Mr. Fantastic gave Thing—who was eager to do whatever it took to rescue Alicia—a sample of one of his many attempts at a formula to revert him to normal, which would last long enough to get him past the rays. Thing was indeed carried past the rays by a small magnetic aircraft, and destroyed the rays once onboard and again his rocky self, allowing the rest of the team to enter. The Four split up across Doom's labyrinthine airship, each maneuvering through various traps, freeing Alicia. They again forced Doom to flee, this time simply jumping out of his ship, allowing him to regroup once more.

The many powers of the Super-Skrull

Since their previous defeat at the hands of the Fantastic Four, the leadership of the alien Skrull race had been planning their revenge. Skrull scientists genetically engineered an individual that they called the Super-Skrull, who possessed hyperpowered versions of all of the Four's abilities. The Super-Skrull made no bones about this second attempt at invading Earth, landing alone in the streets of Manhattan and declaring an imperial Skrull conquest. The Fantastic Four soon arrived on the scene, engaging the Super-Skrull in combat. Unable to coordinate their attacks effectively, the Four were repeatedly fought back by the invader and his inherently superior abilities. They retreated to the Baxter Building, where Mr. Fantastic theorized that the Super-Skrull was simply too powerful to not rely on some external energy source. He discovered that indeed, the Super-Skrull was being powered from afar on the Skrulls' home planet, and developed a jamming device that would block the signal when affixed to the Super-Skrull. He sent a kind of floating P.A. system to the Super-Skrull to challenge him to one final battle on a deserted island, to which he agreed. The Skrull and the Four met on the island, where the alien revealed his fifth power, the ability to hypnotize his target by staring into their eyes. Mr. Fantastic, Thing, and Human Torch baited the invader while Invisible Girl was tasked with quietly sneaking up behind him and attaching the small jammer to his body. As promised, the Super-Skrull's powers were stripped, allowing the Four to trap him in a nearby deep crater, and Torch to seal off the top with fused sand.

Doctor Doom meets Spider-Man

Doctor Doom soon made his presence known once more, having survived his fall from the airship with a "jet-powered flying belt." He hijacked the television airwaves, claiming to have captured the young hero Spider-Man and demanding that the Four surrender to him within the hour or forfeit Spider-Man's life. Unbeknownst to Doom and the Four, the boy he had in his possession was Flash Thompson in a Spider-Man disguise, and the real Spider-Man had soon arrived to confront Doom himself. The Four made their way to Doom's hideout as quickly as they could, and he retreated as soon as he learned of their coming, believing himself unable to fend them off in addition to Spider-Man. Spider-Man himself also fled, and when the Four arrived they found a scared Flash, whom Human Torch recognized as not being the real Spider-Man. In the end, Doctor Doom had evaded their grasp yet again.

Atlantis invades New York

The Fantastic Four soon opted to take another vacation, of sorts. Mr. Fantastic had received reports of bizarre, monstrous sea creatures appearing across the world, and used the trip to investigate these events. They indeed spotted a large monster while aboard a cruise ship, and took out a dinghy to investigate. The monster was in fact a trap, and the Four were taken under the sea in a plastic bubble for an audience with their most frequent nemesis, Namor the Sub-Mariner. Namor had reclaimed his crown as prince of Atlantis, and told the Four to relay a message to the United Nations: he declared dominion over the planet's seas and the skies above them, and any human presence in his territory would be considered trespassing. He sent the Four back to New York in a water-pressurized rocket, and soon Reed Richards requested an emergency session of the UN. He explained that Namor was a threat to be taken seriously, and a scientist was called to explain the history of the Atlanteans to any delegates in doubt. Richards insisted that they must fight as soon as possible, prompting the scientist to rip off his disguise and reveal himself as Namor.

Namor declared war on the human race, fleeing the building and signaling his troops to action. A massive Atlantean force invaded New York, and took control of it in a matter of hours. Namor enacted martial law on New York as several major cities across the globe met the same fate. Realizing that a direct confrontation was out of the question, Mr. Fantastic deduced a more surreptitious way of defeating the Atlantean army. He noted that Namor, as a half-human, was able to breathe air long-term, but the rest of the Atlanteans were equipped with water-breathing apparatuses. He constructed a large device designed to evaporate the Atlanteans' life source, with Invisible Girl's assistance. Just as they finished, the device collapsed and Reed threw himself into harm's way to save Sue. His elastic frame absorbed much of the shock, but he was still injured. Under his instructions, Sue and Thing operated the evaporation device, which worked exactly as intended: the Atlanteans, save Namor himself, began to suffocate, and quickly fled back into the ocean.

Namor quickly and correctly surmised the catalyst of this event to be Mr. Fantastic. The Atlantean prince arrived at the Baxter Building, pulled the injured hero out of his bed, and attacked him. The rest of the Four soon arrived, but Namor grabbed Invisible Girl and fled before they could do anything more. After briefly formulating a battle plan, the heroes sent out Human Torch first, flying and trailing Namor to the ocean. The Sub-Mariner had taken Invisible Girl into an undersea submersible, safe for the time being. He surfaced and fought Torch, and Mr. Fantastic and the Thing arrived soon after in an amphibious vehicle. They fought Namor and his supporting sea creatures, who quickly capsized their vehicle, their only means of escape as far as they was from shore. Underwater, Namor's warlord Krang and cousin Dorma also stood in the submersible observing the battle. Invisible Girl noticed that Namor was in danger, and expressed her concern, much to the Atlanteans' confusion. Krang put two and two together, deducing that there was some connection between her and Namor. Before Namor's return, Krang had been romantically linked with Dorma and sought the crown himself, but she quickly left him for the returning prince. Now, seeing Invisible Girl as a threat to her romance with Namor, Dorma sought to eliminate her. She smashed the window of the submersible, causing water to pour in and forcing a bound Invisible Girl to dive into the surrounding sea.

Namor and Thing fought underneath the surface and witnessed an unconscious Invisible Girl caught in some undergrowth. The two immediately broke off their fight, freeing her and bringing her to the surface. Namor and the male members of the Four discussed how best to save her, and Namor decided to use one of his own seacraft to quickly take her to a hospital in New York. In doing so, he confronted Krang and Dorma, who both objected to his infatuation with a human woman. Namor successfully brought Invisible Girl to a hospital in New York, forbidding the heroes from coming with him as their weight would slow down his craft. The rest of the Four arrived later in their repaired boat to find that Sue had survived her ordeal, apparently by a matter of minutes. Namor returned to Atlantis, only to find it empty and barren: his people had abandoned him.

Rama-Tut and the blindness cure

One day, Reed Richards noticed a curiosity in an ancient Egyptian museum exhibit: several years had been omitted from a historical account, and hieroglyphics from that time seemed to indicate a radioactive cure for blindness. Reed organized the team, believing this to be a potential solution to Alicia's blindness, much to Thing's excitement. The Four and Alicia traveled to Doctor Doom's abandoned castle, where his time machine from their Blackbeard adventure lay untouched. Alicia operated the machine to send the Four back to ancient Egypt, where they were quickly set upon by guards and a mysterious man with a ray gun that sapped their abilities and willpower. The man was known as Rama-Tut, a pharaoh who was a time traveler himself: he'd come from an alternate universe's year 3000, crashing his time machine and severely damaging his eyesight in the process. The natives had given him a rare herb that, combined with the radioactivity from his time machine, cured his eyes. The weakened Four were subjugated: Invisible Girl was taken as his queen, while the others put their powers to use serving the pharaoh. Thing was assigned to rowing a ship in the blazing sun, the rays from which had a surprising effect, transforming him back to his standard human form. Newly unaffected by Rama-Tut's gun, Grimm fought his way to the pharaoh's palace and stole the gun, firing it at Invisible Girl as he transformed back into the Thing and back into submission. Invisible Girl freed her teammates, and the Four pursued Rama-Tut back to his time machine, where he fled back to the future. Among Rama-Tut's personal belongings, the Four found a sample of the blindness cure and attempted to bring it back through their own time machine. When they arrived however, they found that it was gone: Mr. Fantastic surmised that its radioactivity had barred its passage. While Thing was despondent over their apparent failure, Alicia was happy that they had simply made it back safely. Mr. Fantastic made it a goal of his to reproduce the cure in his lab.

The omnipotent Molecule Man

The Four soon witnessed the presence of a bizarre floating blue orb outside the Baxter Building. After they interacted with it in various ways to deduce its nature, Invisible Girl fell into it, vanishing. The other three followed her and found themselves in what seemed to be another dimension, where they were greeted by the Watcher Uatu. Uatu warned them of a coming villain that threatened the very existence of the universe: a man who through an accident at an atomic laboratory had gained control over all inorganic molecules, calling himself the Molecule Man. Though forbidden from interfering, Uatu felt obliged to warn the Four given the drastic threat that Molecule Man posed. Traveling back through the portal, the Four found that Molecule Man had arrived: he had lifted the Baxter Building from its foundations and caused it to levitate, standing at its front step. He declared to all that he was the new law. The Four took the fight to him, but he repeatedly and effortlessly fended off their attacks with various molecular manipulations. The heroes retreated, and Molecule Man placed a glass case over the city, declaring that no one would enter or leave until the Four were his prisoners. They took refuge in Alicia's home, and Reed deduced a potential way to defeating Molecule Man: his inability to target organic matter. He had Alicia cover the team in plaster, making them out to be statues. Alicia brought Molecule Man to her apartment using the Four's signature signal flare, and presented the "statues" to him as a tribute. On a lark, he attempted to alter the statues, but suffered a severe reaction as he tried to do so, causing him great pain and temporarily disabling him. Uatu's orb materialized, taking Molecule Man away now that the Four had claimed victory. The villain's wand was left behind, allowing Mr. Fantastic to claim it.

The Hate-Monger

The Four next had their attention drawn to a bigoted zealot known as the Hate-Monger. They witnessed him giving a speech in the streets of New York, donning a masked purple hood, inciting the huddled public to a fever pitch with vitriol denouncing foreigners. The increasingly angry mob began hurling insults and objects at any supposed foreigners in sight, many of them citizens themselves. Angered by this shameless display of xenophobia, Thing fought back against the rioters until the Hate-Monger pulled out his "H-Ray," firing its beam at the heroes. The Four soon found themselves overflowing with mutual hatred, and began fighting each other. Brainwashed by the Hate-Monger's ray, each of the Four declared that they were leaving the team, dramatically splitting up in front of the New York public. Returning to the Baxter Building, Reed saw that his old Army comrade Nick Fury was trying to get up to see him. The two spoke in Reed's penthouse, where Fury informed him that he was now a colonel and working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Fury came with a purpose, to inform the Fantastic Four that the South American republic of San Gusto, which was being positioned as a potential democracy, was undergoing a potentially disastrous rebellion. Fury was hoping the Four could handle it, but Mr. Fantastic took it upon himself to go there alone. Across the city, the other heroes witnessed his departure by pogo plane, and were filled with feelings of jealousy and selfishness. They each returned to the Baxter Building, where Fury waited to tell them of the situation and flew them to San Gusto. Meanwhile, Mr. Fantastic, after incapacitating a large number of San Gustan rebels, he was captured by the Hate-Monger's forces. Hate-Monger had also seen Richards leave New York, and had quickly followed him to San Gusto. He revealed that he was responsible for the rebellion: a test run for a larger hate ray before applying it to all of Earth. Suddenly, Nick Fury stormed in and forced Hate-Monger at gunpoint to give Richards the antidote to the hate ray's effects. Hate-Monger and his men were able to escape, but Richards also grabbed a vial of antidote pills before leaving. As the rest of the Four arrived, Reed got the team together one by one by tricking them to swallow the antidote, snapping them out of their vitriolic feelings. The reunited heroes and Nick Fury fought their way to Hate-Monger's ray, and Invisible Girl surreptitiously diverted the villain's handheld hate ray to target his own men. The soldiers turned their gun on their leader, shooting and killing him. Reed removed his mask, revealing the face of Adolf Hitler to the shock of all, though Reed speculated that it may be "one of [his] many doubles." Indeed, Hate-Monger was a clone of Hitler, produced through complex Nazi scientific processes.

See also

• History of the Fantastic Four, 1962
• History of the Fantastic Four, 1964
• Earth-772, an alternate universe in which Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four