Fantastic Four

The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel’s transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy Collects Fantastic Four #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 48, 49, 50, 51, and Fantastic Four Annual #6. It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few. Throughout the 1960s, the Fantastic Four doubled as the flagship title and the creative laboratory of the Marvel Universe. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced dozens of new characters and concepts in its pages, while expanding the emotional bandwidth and visual vocabulary of the Super Hero genre with every issue. This collection gathers some key tales from Lee and Kirby’s lengthy tenure—from their first experiments in generic hybridity to the remarkable fusion of the cosmic and the quotidian that is the “The Galactus Trilogy.” A foreword by Jerry Craft and scholarly introductions and apparatus by Ben Saunders offer further insight into the enduring significance of the Fantastic Four and classic Marvel comics.