Fantastic Five Fantastic Five Fantastic Five is a fictional superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The team exists in the MC2 Universe, an alternate future to the Marvel Universe. A continuation of the Fantastic Four, the team was originally composed of the Human Torch, his wife Ms. Fantastic/Lyja (a Skrull), the Thing, Big Brain (Reed Richards' remote-controlled robotic body), and Psi-Lord (Franklin Richards, Reed's son). The team first appeared in "What If" (volume 2) #105 (1998), an issue that focused on Spider-Girl, the daughter of Spider-Man. Spider-Girl became popular and was given her own series, along with
Marvel Comics was able to capitalize on its successful superhero comics of the previous decade by acquiring a new newsstand distributor and greatly expanding its comics line. Marvel pulled ahead of rival DC Comics in 1972, during a time when the price and format of the standard newsstand comic were in flux. Goodman increased the price and size of Marvel's November 1971 cover-dated comics from 15 cents for 36 pages total to 25 cents for 52 pages. DC followed suit, but Marvel the following month dropped its comics to 20 cents for 36 pages, offering a lower-priced product with a higher distributor