The
Fantastic Four is a fictional
superhero team appearing in
American comic books published by
Marvel Comics. The group debuted in
The Fantastic Four #1 (
cover dated Nov. 1961), which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the
medium. The Fantastic Four was the first superhero team created by writer-editor
Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter
Jack Kirby, who developed a collaborative approach to creating comics with this title that they would use from then on.