Marvel First Family's tricky relationship with the screen

Flops and a B-movie that got the Human Torch treatment... Tom Fordy looks at the Fantastic Fours that backfired – and why a camp 1994 version might actually be the best of the lot

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When the Fantastic Four landed on newsstands in 1961, they turned around the fortunes of the struggling Marvel Comics and began a superhero boom later known as “The Marvel Age”. As Stan Lee, the much-treasured Marvel editor and Fantastic Four co-creator, later said: "That was really the start of everything." So if Mr Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing are therefore arguably the most important characters in Marvel history, why is it that they've never been done justice on the big screen?

Tomorrow's The Fantastic Four: First Steps stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Marvel's First Family, but they're not the first actors to step into the iconic blue spandex. There have (appropriately) been four previous attempts at bringing the quartet to the big screen, none of which worked as planned: a low-budget 1994 version produced by B-movie maestro Roger Corman, which was never officially released; a pair of vapid Noughties films with a pre-Captain America Chris Evans; and a dark, lore-twisting 2015 reboot, which was panned by everyone - including the film's own director. "It's been this insurmountable challenge for filmmakers," says Craig Nevius, screenwriter of the cult Corman version.

Co-created by Lee and pioneering comics artist Jack Kirby (both have claimed they'd come up with the idea first), the original Fantastic Four story sees the foursome sneak into a space rocket - in a crafty effort to outdo the communists - and get hit with cosmic rays, which gives each of them superpowers. There's team leader Dr Reed Richards, aka Mr Fantastic, who can stretch and bend his rubber-like body; his girlfriend Susan Storm, aka the Invisible Woman, who can disappear at will and create see-through force fields; her impetuous teenage brother Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, who turns to fire and flies; and grumpy oddity Ben Grimm, aka the Thing, an orange rock monster.