You would think that ranking the members of the Fantastic Four would be quicker than doing this for the original Legionnaires or the Avengers… and it is… but there are a lot more than four members of the Fantastic Four.
We have to establish a few rules:
1) main timeline only, so no What Ifs
2) the so-called “New Fantastic Four” (Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk and Ghost Rider) have been considered “real” Fantastic Four only in the What Ifs, so they are not counted
3) no members of the Future Foundation, since at the time it was treated as being a separate thing from the Fantastic Four
4) members are ranked on how they fit into the team, how much family they feel, and of course personal preference.
And that still leaves us with a surprising amount of people!
Not members: Tigra and Thundra
Did not join: Fantastic Four #177 (1976)
They are sometimes listed as members. While it’s not TECHNICALLY correct, the backstory to this is one of the dumbest things ever written so I HAVE to talk about it.
The Frightful Four have captured the Fantastic Four and, since they currently have only three members, they hold a supervillain audition in the Baxter Building.
It’s even dumber than it sounds.
It’s a low point for the series, but also the first appearance of a couple of minor heroes: Texas Twister (the guy who was bitten by a radioactive tornado) and Captain Ultra (a powerhouse who is deathly afraid of fire).
Both Tigra and Thundra pretend they want to join the Frightful Four, but it’s only in order to free the Fantastic Four.
The confusion comes from the fact that both ladies hang around the team for a while.
But they are never made official members, despite what some online sources say.
24) Iceman
Joined: Fantastic Four v6 #3 (2018), kind of
This is a weird one.
In this issue Reed summons everyone who has ever been a member of the Fantastic Four (including the New Fantastic Four that I’m not including), and for some reason Iceman.
Dan Slott elaborates on this in issue 24…
…which includes a continuity insert set in the Silver Age.
It’s a cute little story where Johnny leaves the FF after throwing one of his tantrums, right when Iceman has run away from the X-Men, and he hangs around for a bit.
It’s a neat story, but I agree with Johnny. That was a team-up, not a full membership.
23) Namorita
Joined: Fantastic Four v3 #43 (2001)
On the other hand, Johnny is being a bit hypocritical there.
Because in this issue of the Pacheco run where he has to rescue the Fantastic Four, he assembles a team that includes both former FFs She-Hulk and Ant-Man… he also recruits his occasional girlfriend Namorita, and he doesn’t object considering her a full member.
She does absolutely nothing notable in the story. There’s not even a mention that she used to date Johnny.
Unfortunately, like most things in the Pacheco run, this doesn’t really go anywhere.
22) Jack of Hearts
Joined: Fantastic Four v6 #40 (2022)
Also from the Slott run, a cosmically enhanced Reed recruits Jack of Hearts as his substitute while he does cosmic stuff.
At this point Jack is She-Hulk’s boyfriend, and while I really liked their relationship in the She-Hulk series, I don’t think Slott made proper use of the character.
This was towards the end of the Slott run; despite these low rankings I really liked that run, but it was clear he was running out of steam at this point.
21) Storm
Joined: Fantastic Four #543 (2007)
During the underrated McDuffie run, Reed and Susan left the team for a while; Black Panther and his then-wife Storm took their place.
Black Panther is much higher on this list because of his extended history with the team, but I didn’t think Storm was integrated at all.
Except for this bit.
20) Devil Dinosaur
19) Moon Girl
Joined: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #29 (2018)
Another weird one. Moon Girl is a supersmart kid, supposedly smarter than Reed, and she’s recruited by the Thing and the Human Torch during the period where Reed and Susan were believed to be dead.
The Moon Girl series is a bit hit-and-miss for me, but she had a good chemistry with the other two.
As for Devil Dinosaur… he’s a dinosaur with a Fantastic Four costume.
No notes.
18) Flux
Joined: Heroic Age: One Month to Live #3 (2010)
I had never head of this miniseries before researching for this article.
Protagonist Flux gets matter manipulation powers that also give him, as the title says, one month to live. The Fantastic Four recruit him for a mission.
It’s a shame that this miniseries isn’t more well-known. It has great characterization and can be a lot of fun despite the heavy subject matter.
It’s clear that the FF make him a member because of his illness, but he still does manage to create a bit of personal relationship with them (which is more than I can say about the ones I ranked lower).
17) Luke Cage
Joined: Fantastic Four #168 (1976)
Ben Grimm has lost his powers again, and since the Fantastic Four are supposed to have four members Reed simply hires Luke Cage to take the Thing’s place.
He doesn’t stay around for long, which is unfortunate. His street-hero perspective could have been explored more, since already at this point the Thing was accustomed to all kind of hero nonsense.
But it does make sense that it doesn’t last long: Reed hired Luke just long enough to finish the Thing’s new exoskeleton.
16) Darla Deering / Ms. Thing
Joined: Fantastic Four v4 #2 (2012)
The Fantastic Four get a few “replacement members” to take their place for 4 minutes during a time travel experiment, but obviously it goes wrong and we get a whole parallel series.
Darla is a former girlfriend of Johnny, who gets to use the Thing’s old exoskeleton.
She’s also a reference to the AWFUL Hanna-Barbera cartoon where a teenager transformed into the Thing by using a couple of “thing rings”.
She was the only normal person on the replacement team, serving as the point-of-view character for the most absurd stuff. But she starts a trend in this list: new members that have notable relationships with only one other member and barely interact with the others.
Because while her relationship with Ant-Man was interesting, the rest of the team didn’t spend much time with her.
15) Black Panther
Joined: Fantastic Four #543 (2007)
Told you he’d be higher than Storm. In fact, considering how close he’s always been to the Fantastic Four, I can’t believe it took THAT LONG for him to become a member.
However he’s not particularly high because, while I did like the McDuffie run, the issues where Black Panther and Storm are in the team are my least favorites because it felt more like “the T’Challa Show” than Fantastic Four.
14) Medusa
Fantastic Four #132 (1973)
The sixth member of the Fantastic Four, and the first one I read besides the founders.
Replacing Susan once she left the team, I personally rank her very low because… well because she didn’t do much!
There was the smallest possible hint of a potential romance with Reed, but that went absolutely nowhere. That left Medusa with barely any interaction with anyone else on the team, and to me she never truly felt like “one of the family”… just that the FF need a girl on the roster, so we get one of the team’s closest friends to join.
She’s friends with everybody but not TOO friendly, her “fish out of water” status is not explored, and while she certainly has a creative fighting style she fades into the background next to the others.
13) Ms. Marvel / She-Thing
Fantastic Four #306 (1987)
Once again we have an addition that is only relevant to one other member, but for once it’s Ben.
Fitting, considering she debuted in his solo series.
She’s… problematic to say the least.
There’s also the problem that she brings no variety to the team, considering she’s just super-strong. This gets even worse when she’s transformed into She-Thing (a name she never uses herself, by the way).
Things got better (pun intended) in the Simonson run, when Ben turned back into human so she wasn’t just duplicating his role.
But she still BARELY interacted with the other three.
12) Lyja
Joined: somewhere after Fantastic Four #382 (1993)
This is tricky. Most lists of members exclude her, but at SOME point in the DeFalco run she was definitely a member!
And while I detested the “Johnny didn’t really marry Alicia” retcon as much as everybody… I liked Lyja as a member of the team.
Her shapeshifting powers gave some variety to her contribution to the team, and it was nice to have a Skrull on the side of the good guys for once.
She’s held back by, once again, having scenes mostly with one member of the team. Not to mention the quality of DeFalco’s writing was fluctuating WILDLY.
For example, when she became pregnant with Johnny and gave birth to an egg (!!!), I found the thought of exploring Johnny’s fatherhood to an alien to be incredibly fascinating…
…only for DeFalco to quickly crap on any story potential by revealing that the “child” was just a monster created to kill the FF.
Words cannot express how insulted I felt when DeFalco did this.
Still, that’s not Lyja’s fault: in the hands of a better writer, she could have worked.
Too bad Marvel has basically decided she was a bad guy all along, in the VERY few appearances she’s made after that run.
11) Ant-Man (Scott Lang)
Joined: Fantastic Four #384 (1993)
He’s first recruited in his civilian identity to handle Reed’s inventions, while he was considered dead.
Him being Ant-Man was kind of secondary, but he managed to get in good terms with everybody.
Even if he did feel out of place the entire time.
10) Frankie Raye / Nova
Joined: Fantastic Four #238 (1982)
Continuing the trend, Frankie was almost exclusively in scenes with Johnny. She developed into a fascinating character once she became my favorite herald of Galactus, but her (brief) time in the FF didn’t allow her to shine.
Still, she’s significant to me because her origin story is one of the earliest Fantastic Four comics I read, and in fact she’s the first “new member” I was ever introduced to.
That definitely bumps her up in my personal ranking… but not too high, as her membership was quite brief.
9) Kristoff
Joined: Fantastic Four #400 (1995), kind of
What’s better than a redeemed Skrull for your team? The redeemed son of Doctor Doom!
He’s typically omitted from lists of Fantastic Four members, and I understand why, but he’s absolutely a member in the latter half of the DeFalco run.
In fact, his presence is one of the best parts of the run! He manages to act like a hero while ALSO being an insufferably smug jackass with his own agenda.
Not to mention his sitcom rivalry with Ant-Man was comedy gold; DeFalco’s humor is usually a miss for me, but he nailed these two.
8) Valeria Richards (Brainstorm)
7) Franklin Richards (Powerhouse)
Joined: Fantastic Four vol6 #22 (2020)
One of the criteria is “feeling like a member of the family”, and you don’t get any more family than THIS. Franklin has acted like a sort of member plenty of times before, and you sometimes see lists including them as members from the Secret Invasion tie-in from 2008… but they don’t join anything there
No, for their actual membership we have to wait for the Dan Slott run again, where there’s the need to assembly a replacement team AGAIN.
I’m not counting Spider-Man and Wolverine because, while they do help around, they’re not acknowledged as members to the point that they don’t get a 4 on the costume.
Incidentally, Slott’s characterization of Franklin is controversial… he aged him up to a teenager, where he got a rebellious streak and dyed his hair black.
I found the controversy overblown: this was the first time Franklin felt like AN ACTUAL CHARACTER, and I’m so glad that instead of going backwards the following Ryan North run (which I’m absolutely loving) kept evolving him.
6) Crystal
Joined: Fantastic Four #81 (1968)
The first ever addition to the team (if we ignore the nonsensical Iceman retcon, as we should).
But she’s not this high on the list just for historical reasons. She was a great addition to the team dynamic: not only she has a VERY versatile power… she was arguably more useful to the team than Susan was for the longest time.
Her lovey-dovey scenes with Johnny could get a bit repetitive, sure…
…but she truly felt like one of the family and was immediately respected by everybody.
It was also one of the lengthiest substitutions (lasting 37 issues, an eternity for most of this list) and came back a second time in the 80s.
Hilariously, her first thought when asked to return was that Susan was pregnant again.
5) She-Hulk
Fantastic Four #265 (1984)
Another lengthy substitution (34 issues), and probably one of the most unexpected surprises for the series. John Byrne integrated her perfectly in the team, making her feel as part of the family while also giving her a different perspective on the crazy FF world.
I place her very slightly above Crystal for two reasons.
On a personal note, I did read her Fantastic Four issues when they were coming out, while Crystal’s membership was something from the past for me.
But more importantly, She-Hulk managed to have a more consistent presence on the series even when she wasn’t a regular member.
Crystal tends to show up only when there’s something involving the Inhumans or there’s a plot focusing on Johnny.
She-Hulk, on the other hand, feels like a friend to everyone. Whether the Thing needs someone to have a beer with, or Susan needs a girls night out, or Johnny wants to throw a party, or Reed… well Reed only calls her if there’s a legal issue or if the Hulk is involved, but that’s Reed for you.
And now comes the hard part… ranking the original Fantastic Four.
This is like choosing your favorite parent, and the difference in ranking between these four is veeeery thin.
But placing all four in first place would be the coward’s way out.
I can’t use the same approach of the other members: I can’t truly rate how they play against each other, because they all work PERFECTLY. And I can’t rank how much they feel like a member of the family because they are THE family (one of them not by blood, but who cares?).
So for these four only, I decided to rank them based on 4 distinct categories:
1) how often a run successfully focuses on them
2) how well they work outside of the main series
3) how essential they are (meaning how much the team works when there’s a substitute)
4) how much I want to see them explored as characters
Giving a maximum of 4 points per category, because why break the theme?
4) Human Torch
Successful focus: 1 / 4
Johnny begins the run as an immature flat character, only to evolve into a better person as a better hero, only for the following run to start all over again. Does this narrow it down, or does this sounds like ALMOST EVERY FF RUN EVER?
Even some runs that I really liked, like Waid and North to name a couple, run into the same exact problem. Out of the big runs, I think only Byrne and Hickman don’t begin by resetting him to his immature status. Well, technically there’s the Lee&Kirby run, but they’re excused: they literally can’t reset him to an earlier status!
And of course there’s the long list of runs that don’t do anything interesting with him.
Outside the team: 2 / 4
He’s one of the best heroes to team up with Spider-Man… and basically nobody else.
He’s also the last member of the FF to briefly join the Avengers, once the FF had disbanded following the 2015 Secret Wars. He also didn’t do much there.
Essential: 1 / 4
I’m kind of surprised Johnny isn’t replaced more often. There’s no technical reason why he shouldn’t go solo AT LEAST as much as the Thing, considering his rebellious streak.
Personal interest: 2 / 4
I’m being so harsh only because I think that a lot of writers really, REALLY underestimate Johnny Storm. There’s still so much to explore with him, to the point that I don’t think we’ve have a run that gives a definitive version the way the others have. The closest thing is probably the Byrne run, but not to the same extent of his teammates.
Total: 6 / 12
3) Invisible Girl / Woman
Successful focus: 2 / 4
It’s pretty much a given among Fantastic Four that there are two separate eras for Susan: before the John Byrne run, and after the John Byrne run.
He was the first to truly focus on every aspect of her life and personality, and to truly mature her… almost literally, since that’s when she switched her codename to Invisible Woman.
However after that EVERY single writer seems to try giving a shot at her… and the results are typically disappointing.
For example both DeFalco and Claremont gave her a ton of attention but wrote themselves into0 circles, and both Straczynski and Millar spent so much time trying to correct past mistakes that they forgot to do anything special, and even the revolutionary Hickman run didn’t do much.
Although recently both Slott and North gave her a lot of new territory to explore, now that both Franklin and Valeria are old enough to have personalities.
Outside the team: 0 / 4
You basically never see Susan without the rest of the FF or at least her husband, unless maybe if She-Hulk or the Wasp need to talk with a friend. An action scene outside of the main book, unless it’s a company-wide crossover? Forget it.
Essential: 4 / 4
Every time that Susan gets replaced it’s either because she’s pregnant, because she’s pursuing a new life with Reed, or if she’s believed to have died. And the only two times where she was replaced without also replacing Reed were her pregnancy and her separation.
Which is to say that Susan IS replaceable, but it’s really really hard to do it without having to also replace Reed with her.
Personal interest: 2 / 4
While I don’t think we’ve exhausted all story potentials with Susan, we’ve reached a point that when a writer begins a run stating “I want to focus on Susan” I immediately fear I’m not going to like it. Which isn’t a guarantee, I’ve been proved wrong on this, but it goes to show how common it is for writers to shift attention towards her, and too often it’s to the detriment of the other three.
I know she wasn’t the focus for the first 20 years of the series, but at this point it’s nothing new.
Total: 8 / 16
2) Thing
Successful focus: 4 / 4
Has there ever been a Fantastic Four run that doesn’t focus on him, at least a bit? And while a couple only repeat the same story beats, I don’t think he’s ever been the worst written member.
Outside the team: 4 / 4
He had a separate team-up book where he had adventures with new heroes every month, and it lasted 100 issues. Then he had a solo book that lasted 36 issues.
Then a second solo book that lasted 8 issues, a third solo book for 6 issues, a fourth solo book that is currently ongoing. He was also a West Coast Avenger for five minutes and one of the Guardians Of The Galaxy for a while. If that doesn’t tell you that the Thing can work on his own outside of the Fantastic Four, I don’t know what can.
Essential: 1 / 4
He gets a couple of brief replacements and one LONG replacement with She-Hulk. Which as you saw I consider the best replacement. Adding to how much he has proven time and time again that he can sustain his own book…
Personal interest: 3 / 4
Come on, who doesn’t love this blue-eyed idol of millions? He was stuck into a never-ending cycle of misery for SO long that I was very happy when, in the Slott run, not only he finally managed to marry Alicia but also made himself a family by adopting a couple of alien children.
And much to my relief, the North run decided NOT to undo this. I’m quite worried for a future character to get rid of the kids or break his marriage.
Not only because I want something good to happen to Ben for once (and really, who doesn’t?) but because the old “he’s depressed because he’s a monster” story thread has been completely exhausted at this point.
Total: 12 / 16
1) Mister Fantastic
Successful focus: 3 / 4
I consider John Byrne the first writer to absolutely NAIL Reed. Besides the brief Simonson run, it took until the Waid run for someone else to write a proper and consistent Reed.
Up until a few years ago, I would’ve said that we needed more focus on Reed. But since then McDuffie, Hickman, Slott and North also did a great job.
Not a perfect score, but close enough.
Outside the team: 2 / 4
Like Susan, Reed had a brief and absolutely disastrous membership (possibly by design) in the Avengers. But he’s firmly established as THE guy that EVERYBODY can call for a scientific problem, so he tends to show up all over the Marvel Universe. And being friendly to a fault, he usually does help. Although he rarely goes on proper adventures.
Essential: 4 / 4
Reed is one of the members that gets replaced the least, and for good reason: if you remove him, you have to find SOME other way for the team to go on space and cross-dimensional adventures.
Despite my criticisms of the run as a whole, I consider DeFalco to have been the first writer to find a way to write a Fantastic Four lineup without Reed… for a while at least.
Personal interest: 4 / 4
Reed Richards is an endlessly fascinating character to me. He appears simple on the surface, and many writers make the mistake of thinking of him as “the unemotional science guy”.
But Reed is deeply human, endlessly passionate and compassionate, and one of the most emotionally complex superheroes.
Total: 13 / 16
And yes, the irony of a Doctor Doom superfan considering Reed Richards his favorite member of the Fantastic Four is not lost on me.
