The Many Deaths of the Fantastic Four, Ranked

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is finally in theaters, giving fans and newcomers alike the chance to see Marvel’s First Family in their element. While we’ve seen the team hit the big screen several times, including an infamous 1994 production that was never meant for release, this may be the first to tap into the magic Jack Kirby and Stan Lee had in the Silver Age. But don’t let the bright, retro-futuristic feel fool you into thinking the original comics have always been a cakewalk for the team. Sometimes the members of the team face challenges, and sometimes those challenges bring about an untimely end for our heroes.

Across the team’s entire comics run through to the present day, the Fantastic Four have faced death and loss several times. So, in honor of the new film’s release and the return of the team to hopeful glory, we take a trip into the darker side to run down the many deaths of the Fantastic Four throughout their comic existence. Scroll down to see the moments we thought were clear misdirections or fake, to the dramatic and meaningful demises that helped define the characters in different eras.

11) The New Fantastic Four

After being captured and reported dead by Skrulls, the Fantastic Four require some heroes to fill their shoes. Enter Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider onto the stage, brought together by the same Skrulls behind the kidnapping. Believing that the original Fantastic Four were dead, the new team came together under the mind control of Skrull telepath De’Lila, who plotted to capture the original Fantastic Four and set the plan in motion. In the end, the “dead” Fantastic Four return to life and team with the newbies to end De’Lila’s threat and turn her into the Skrulls for punishment. A cool highlight, but a fakeout in the end!

10) Onslaught Takes Them All

Another fake out of sorts, the heroes of the Marvel Universe sacrifice themselves to contain the psionic form of Onslaught after the desperate fight nearly broke the X-Men and led to the Savage Hulk’s return to the Marvel pages. After Hulk gets angry and breaks the villain’s armor, his psionic form is still there and evolving without a vessel to hold it. That’s when Thor, Thing, and Human Torch set the tone and sacrifice themselves to act as a vessel for the baddie. Their sacrifice turns the X-Men into scapegoats due to their role in attacking Onslaught, but while they seem dead, they were rushed away to a pocket universe by Franklin Richards, creating Heroes Reborn.

9) Future Sue Storm Electrocuted by Doom

During Mark Millar’s run on the mainline Fantastic Four, a standout storyline was “The Death of the Invisible Woman.” The storyline does hold up its end of the bargain, it’s just not the version of Sue Storm you’d expect to see bite it. A future version of Sue has returned to the past with her team, the New Defenders, in hopes of preventing the end of her Earth and save the 8 billion people on the planet. The story features quite a few different sci-fi flavors, including a time machine built from Galactus’ corpse, but in the end, the future Susan is revealed after kidnapping the Human Torch and Doctor Doom to power the time machine. Doom vows revenge and keeps his promise by the end of the story. The Future Sue succeeds despite her actions, with the 8 billion people of her future Earth saved and transported to Nu-Earth. Doom takes revenge and kills her instantly by electrocuting the hero.

This success is short-lived. Shortly after Nu-World is established, its star transforms into a black hole, messing with its place in time. Then the entirety of its population is consumed by Natalie X into a worldmind. Galactus soon finds Nu-World and takes revenge after learning they used his body to travel through time, with Reed Richards burying the corpse. Future Sue wins out again for not having to be around to witness everything.

8) Heroes Reborn Against Galactus

Heroes Reborn is itself a large “What If?” for Marvel’s heroes and represents the results of their deaths in the main Marvel universe. But the end of the experiment also features several major characters dying in the efforts to defeat Galactus, thanks to the wonders of time travel. One of the most memorable moments comes in the opening chapter of “Heroes Reunited,” after the Thing helps to destroy one of Galactus’ world-eating machines. Sadly, its destruction also transforms him back into a human for a split second, just in time for Black Panther to show up and for Terrax to use his powers to smash both with a giant rock fist. The heroes fail twice more before finally winning the day after Doom travels back in time to ensure Galactus is defeated.

7) Doom Killed Fighting Mad Celestials

Speaking of Doom, he ended up joining the team during Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four after it expanded to be the Future Foundation. After he ends up captured by an alternate version of Reed Richards during the War of Four Cities, Doom helps the rogue Richards to face down the Mad Celestials that destroyed the rest of the Council of Reeds. Things look grim after Rogue Reed is destroyed by a version of the Ultimate Nullifier, but then Doom stands firm and holds off the entities in a sacrificial moment that lands perfectly for the character. It’s revealed he didn’t end up dying, of course, giving him a chance to rule, lose, and eventually leave his godlike powers obtained with the two leftover Infinity Gauntlets from the other two founders of the Council of Reeds.

6) Lazy Johnny Storm Accidentally Gets Sue Storm Killed

What starts as a cleaning day for Susan Storm with a dash of overwhelming laziness by Johnny Storm, the one-shot Death in the Family shows how a normal day goes horribly wrong for the Fantastic Four. After deciding to sleep over cleaning the house, Sue Storm is on her brother’s case for carelessly ignoring his duties. But then the alarm goes off in Reed Richard’s lab, where some giant creature has escaped from another dimension into the lab and attacks the brother and sister. The beams of energy the beast shoots are reveled to pierce Sue’s force field, leaving her dead and forcing Johnny to use Doom’s Time Platform to return to the past and avoid the deaths. He succeeds in one timeline at least, since he can’t affect his own due to the nature of time travel.

5) Secret Wars

It is safe to say that things are grim from the very start of the events of Secret Wars. Most of the Fantastic Four are killed after being torn from Richard’s life raft during the culling to kick off the mini-series. But the story does take the curveball where Doctor Doom has recreated the universe after defeating the Beyonders and turned Richards’ family into his own, while sending Johnny Storm to be the Sun with his flame powers and turning Ben Grimm into the giant wall keeping the zombies, robots, and Annhilation wave from overrunning the kingdom.

Once Reed and the rest of the survivors from the old universe start to make trouble and formulate a plan against Doom, Grimm rises as a giant version of the Thing that is ready to aid in the fight. But this ends quickly after Franklin Richards shows up with Galactus and battles the giant Thing. Refusing to fight Franklin, Galactus blasts the Thing from existence.

4) Reed Richards at the hands of Doctor Doom

In the run-up to issue #400 of the Fantastic Four, we actually see Doctor Doom triumph in killing Reed Richards, using the last of his energy to grab Richards after the pair worked together to defeat The Hunger, killing his former college friend and rival. The pair didn’t actually die, though Richards did stay away from the team for quite a while. They were instead put up against Hyperstorm, who was revealed as the son of Franklin Richards from the future. Instead of death, Reed and Doom were sent to the future. Reed would return months later as the team battles Hyperstorm, sporting a beard and some long, shaggy hair.

3) The Maker Returns Home

Another return for Reed Richards, but this time it is in a vastly different form. After going through several major events, Richard became evil in the Ultimate universe after the loss of his marriage and the Ultimatum wave. The result is The Maker. The megalomaniacal variant is captured, though he gets to meddle with everybody during Secret Wars. So by the time he’s ready to go back to the Ultimate universe, so he puts a plan into motion to get back, uses time travel to move around the area, and reveals that he aims to ensure heroes don’t exist or barely exist in his universe. He makes special targets of the Fantastic Four, altering their rocket trip to ensure they never receive powers and torturing Reed Richards until he is known as that world’s Doom.

2) Human Torch Takes on the Annihilation Wave

During Jonathan Hickman’s run, the Fantastic Four experienced its first real loss for the first time in years in #587, amid the War of Four Cities. In it, Johnny Storm heroically sacrifices himself to close the door to the Negative Zone from inside, facing down thousands of foes and Annihilus as the door shuts and Ben Grimm looks on. He eventually returns in issue #600, revealing that he was revived and killed repeatedly by the monsters, forced to fight in a gladiator ring, and eventually defeated Annihilus, taking control of his forces.

1) The Thing Shot by Reed Richards

In the early 2000s, Fantastic Four returned from Heroes Reborn to restart their series with new numbering. But by 2003, they decided to move back to the legacy numbers on most of their renumbered books, just in time for Fantastic Four #500. In this issue, the family is at the end of their struggle against a Hell-empowered Doctor Doom who has kidnapped Franklin Richards and sent him to Hell.

Once that issue has been solved, it is revealed that Reed Richards was forced to blast The Thing after the struggle with Doom. It is revealed that Doom took control of Grimm’s body, forcing Richards to blast him. It’s a pretty shocking moment for both Richards and the readers, leading him to try and retrieve Ben Grimm from Heaven, and illegally stealing his body from the military.

Did we miss any memorable demises? Does one stick out from another story or event? Let us know in the comments.

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