The Backstory

Dr. Reed Richards had been the key scientist working on a project to develop a spacecraft capable of interstellar flight. When a government pull-out of funding threatened to undermine his project, he hastily decided to make an unauthorized test flight.

His pilot and best friend Ben Grimm objected to Reed's rash course of action but ultimately chose to back the man he had known since their college days. Reed's then fiance Susan Storm and her brother Johnathan Storm insisted on accompanying them on this historic flight to which Reed acquiesced.

Unfortunately, Richards had made a serious miscalculation in the amount of shielding his spacecraft would require to protect its passengers through Earth's Van Allen Belt and beyond. As a result of an unexpected solar flare, all four were exposed to an unusually high bombardment of cosmic rays.

Having to abort the mission and return to earth, each flight member found that their physiologies had been mutagenically altered by the cosmic rays, endowing each with incredible powers.

Reed (later dubbed Mister Fantastic) found his body could become malleable, allowing him to stretch, compress, and otherwise reshape himself to almost any contiguous form at will.

Sue (later dubbed Invisible Woman) could turn invisible and later learned could turn other objects invisible and project invisible "force fields."

Johnny (later dubbed Human Torch) became able to surround his body in fiery plasma and could control and project flames.

Ben (later dubbed Thing) became a rock-hided creature of tremendous strength and endurance.

To assuage the despair and confusion over their predicament, Reed proposed that they use their new found abilities for the betterment of humankind. They eventually banded together to become the Fantastic Four, who continue to find strength in each other from being a tight-knit family as much, if not moreso, as being teammates.