Marvel’s Fantastic Four power ratings quantify the advantage of teamwork
Debuting in 1961, comic book superhero team the Fantastic Four has been central to the narrative continuity of Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the Fantastic Four possess a variety of superpowers, and Marvel’s official power ratings provide an analytic means to gauge each team member’s relative strengths.
In The Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961), Lee and Kirby present the team’s origin story over the course of five pages: pilot Ben Grimm argues with scientist Reed Richards and his girlfriend Susan Storm about the potential dangers of cosmic rays to any crew of Reed’s experimental space rocket; Ben eventually relents, and the trio, along with Sue’s teenage brother Johnny, crew the rocket and launch into space; Ben’s concerns about cosmic rays turn out to be justified, as the radiation turns Ben into the monstrous, super-strong Thing, Reed into the elastic Mister Fantastic, Sue into the Invisible Girl (later, Invisible Woman), and Johnny into the flame-powered Human Torch.
In Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, author Grant Morrison recounts this origin:
When the stricken spaceship crash-landed, and the four stumbled from the wreckage one by one, we watched the rays wreak upon each a terrible transformation: Sue turned invisible for the first time. Johnny burst into flames and learned he could fly, on fire. Reed’s entire body became elastic, and Ben drew the short straw as his reward for trying to prevent this whole insane escapade from ever taking place, when he transformed into the monstrous orange-plated Thing, unable to return to his human form.
From the very beginning, with that first argument over the dangers of cosmic rays, team conflict was a central feature of the comics series; the team’s differing personalities often generated friction. As Morrison observes:
Reed, quite rightly, blamed himself for Ben’s shocking deformity and loss of a normal life. Sue, meanwhile, had attracted the amorous attention of a renovated Prince Namor the Submariner, back from the deep like a horny Peter Pan, and Johnny struggled with youthful impetuousness and a “hotheaded” temper. The Marvel superhero was born: a hero who tussled not only with monsters and mad scientists but also with relatable personal issues.
Despite contentious team dynamics, the Fantastic Four always prevail by coordinating their various skills and diverse superpowers to save the day. While the team’s combined superpowers are impressive, an analysis of each member’s respective power levels offers insights regarding the distinctive advantages of each character.
In various character encyclopedias, Marvel provides statistical power ratings for its heroes and villains, using the following six categories, which all range in numerical rating from one (lowest) to seven (highest):
- STRENGTH (“Ability to lift weight”), with descriptive levels ranging from “Weak; cannot lift own body weight” to “Incalculable: in excess of 100 tons”;
- FIGHTING SKILLS (“Proficiency in hand-to-hand combat”), with descriptive levels ranging from “Poor” to “Master of all forms of combat”;
- INTELLIGENCE (“Ability to think and process information”), with descriptive levels ranging from “Slow/Impaired” to “Omniscient”;
- DURABILITY (“Ability to resist or recover from bodily injury”), with descriptive levels ranging from “Weak” to “Virtually indestructible”;
- ENERGY PROJECTION (“Ability to discharge energy”), with descriptive levels ranging from “None” to “Virtually unlimited command of all forms of energy”; and
- SPEED (“Ability to move over land by running or flight”), with descriptive levels ranging from “Below normal” to “Warp speed: transcending light speed.”
Comparing the individual power ratings of each team member, Mister Fantastic is ranked highest for intelligence, while the Human Torch is the fastest member of the team. Invisible Woman does not exceed her colleagues’ comparative power levels in any category, while the Thing excels in strength, durability, and fighting skills.
The utility of any superpower depends upon the comic’s narrative: if you need to decipher the deactivation codes of an alien doomsday device, a superhero with high intelligence is ideal, whereas if you need to punch a cyborg ninja dinosaur, a hero’s strength and fighting skills are paramount. But the quantitative aggregation of a character’s power ratings gives a sense of that character’s theoretical overall utility in any narrative scenario.
While Invisible Woman does not exceed her teammates in any one category, her aggregate power ratings reveal that she is the overall second most powerful member of the group; her significant ratings for intelligence, durability, and energy projection combine to make Invisible Woman a formidable superhero.
Thing’s aggregate power ratings make him the overall most powerful member of the team, exceeding the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic by three points, and Invisible Woman by one point, largely due to his exceptional strength and fighting skills, compared to his teammates.
But the Fantastic Four’s real advantage is not the individual powers of its members, but everyone’s ability to cooperate as a team in combating more powerful threats. It is interesting to note that the aggregate power ratings of the Fantastic Four’s archenemy, Doctor Doom, are nine points higher than the aggregate ratings of the most powerful Fantastic Four member. And yet the Fantastic Four frequently prevail over Doom and other villains when the team overcomes its internal personality conflicts and all work together. While Marvel has no official power rating for “teamwork,” this quality is arguably the Fantastic Four’s greatest asset.
NOTES AND FURTHER READING:
Marvel Encyclopedia Vol. 6: Fantastic Four (Jeff Christiansen, et al.; Marvel Comics, 2004) [This volume lists the power ratings referenced in this article. Also, power ratings can be found in more recent Marvel character guides, such as the Spider-Man Character Encyclopedia, 2022 edition.]
Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human (Grant Morrison; Spiegel & Grau, 2011)
All of the Marvels (Douglas Wolk; Penguin Press, 2021)
Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol. 1 (Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al.; Marvel Comics, 2015) [This volume reprints the first ten issues of The Fantastic Four.]
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