Millar completely rewrote the origin for the protagonists because he was not satisfied with the original 1961 story, in which the four team members steal a space craft to beat the Soviets to the moon. In their version, Millar and Bendis wrote a story in which Reed Richards is a child prodigy, protected by his burly friend Ben Grimm from bullies, who had invented a method of teleportation in his youth. He is discovered by government official Willie Lumpkin, and subsequently recruited into a think tank/school located in the upper floors of the Baxter building. There he meets Professor Storm, who leads the project, and his children, bioengineer Susan Storm and her younger brother Johnny. Reed also becomes the rival of Victor Van Damme, a fellow student. When Reed turns 21, he plans to teleport an apple into a parallel universe (the "N-Zone"), but Van Damme claims Reed's calculations are wrong and changes the setup at the last minute. The five students are teleported through the N-Zone, and when they rematerialize, they return heavily mutated. After the Fantastic Four return to the Baxter building, they face their first opponent, Mole Man.