Fantastic (comics) - Marvel Superheroes

Marvel Superheroes

To match its more American appearance, the contents of Fantastic were also predominantly American, starting in the first issue with reprints of Marvel's The Mighty Thor and the X-Men, as well as Iron Man stories from Tales of Suspense. The only original content featured a British superhero called Johnny Future, who started out as a prehistoric "Missing Link" (who was, in appearance, very much a Hulk-lookalike), before evolving (literally) into a superman of the future. The Johnny Future stories were drawn by Luis Bermejo.

This line-up continued until issue 51, when Fantastic absorbed Terrific: becoming Fantastic and Terrific, but continuing the sequential numbering from Fantastic. The Thor and X-Men features continued until the end of the comic's run (when Thor then continued in Smash!), but Iron Man and Johnny Future were replaced by reprints of The Avengers and Doctor Strange, both continuing from Terrific.

A distinctive feature of Fantastic was the full-colour pin-up that appeared on the back cover of most issues. Many of these were reprinted from American Marvel comics, but at least some (including a Johnny Future pin-up) were produced by a young Barry Windsor-Smith.

All the Marvel strips inside Fantastic were printed in black-and-white, with colour used only for the front and back covers. The first issue commenced with Thor's origin story from Journey into Mystery #86 ('The Stone Men from Saturn'), plus the first X-Men story (the arrival of Miss Jean Grey) from the original X-Men #1, and the origin of Iron Man ('Iron Man is Born') from Tales of Suspense.