Fantastic.

Superheroes have always been a little silly. The Fantastic Four might be the silliest of the lot. On a spontaneous trip to space, four people gain powers: one guy turns into a rock, another can vanish at will, another can light himself on fire, and the final guy can stretch like taffy. Put next to the gritty realism common in postmodernism, these guys are off-the-wall bonkers.

It helps that the Fantastic Four, along with many Marvel Comics superheroes, grew out of the fantasy-horror tales that Marvel was famous for. The first issue of "Fantastic Four" (as collected in "Essential Fantastic Four, Vol. 1, my latest read) is essentially a creature feature. The Mole Man, shunned from society, gathers terrible underground-dwelling monsters to steal the world's atomic energy centers. It's up to the ridiculous Fantastic Four to stop them.

Thank heavens Marvel doesn't take itself too seriously. On the one hand, we get overdramatic statements of the obvious and heartfelt commitments to justice. On the other, Marvel kind of knows that it has a laughable commodity on their hands, and they play it up. The following two issues are an alien invasion, to play up the world's UFO conspiracies, and a man who can perform miracles. The Thing is often seen subverting those overdramatic statements that were (and sometimes still are) a trope of comics. When Mr. F explains how a machine works, the Thing goes, "You don't have to make a SPEECH everytime you do it!"

Marvel Comics superheroes are drastically different from other superheroes of the time, though - by which I mean, largely, DC. While the competition had a boy scout as their iconic hero, Marvel has a dysfunctional family. In the first few issues, the Fantastic Four barely have the will to stick together. This collection provides an awesome arc, in that by the end, the four not only can stand each other, but love and trust one another like a real family - despite their various rivalries (Thing and Torch) and regrets (Thing, perhaps the most fun character to write, detests his permanent transformation).

On the other hand, the villains are usually pretty good, but the writers never hit their stride in this collection. Generally, Fantastic Four antagonists are either human or alien. Returning villains are largely human, perhaps due to the slowness of interstellar transportation. And they're generally really good; the Puppetmaster, Dr. Doom, and the Sub-Mariner make repeat appearances in this collection, and they all provide a viable threat. But my prediction is that FF gets REALLY good when its returning villains are aliens. There is one instance of that here - the Skrulls launch two offensives on Earth - and it's done reasonably well.

Perhaps it's unfair to compare this to a comic that came a year or so later, but this is not as good as Spider-Man. The writers of Spidey always found ways to keep us coming back the following week. Would Spidey take pictures and have enough money to eat? Would he ever meet that mysterious red-haired girl who keeps showing up? Will Aunt May pay her rent? They were little things, but they mattered to Peter, and they were our gauge of whether Spider-Man felt that he succeeded as a hero. With the Fantastic Four, there is as of yet no through-line. The most interesting one is Sub-Mariner, whose story comes to a climax with the annual issue, in which he finds his people and attacks the human race. His conflict between earth and water is a very interesting one to read. But the only reason early readers had to pick up the FF comic was to read more of the same. It's very good stuff, even with all the tropes that it follows, but it doesn't seem to have a purpose. The FF join and decide to fight crime on a whim; Spidey tripped over the crimefighting business while he was looking for work. The FF are good at saving the world, but I wish they were a little better at doing something else, too.