
The four move into Reed's lab in the Baxter Building to study their abilities. Victor watches the news story and is told that his company is lost now. The media dubs them "The Fantastic Four" for their efforts.

Reed hands a heartbroken Ben the ring and vows to find a way to turn him back to normal. While the public cheer them for their efforts, Ben sees his fiancée leave her engagement ring on the ground and run. The four use their various powers to contain the damage and prevent anyone from being hurt. He goes to brood on Brooklyn Bridge and accidentally causes a traffic pile-up while stopping a man from committing suicide. Victor meanwhile faces a backlash from his stockholders due to the publicity from the failed mission.īen returns home to see his fiancée Debbie, but she cannot handle his new appearance and flees in fear. Reed is able to stretch like rubber Susan can become invisible and create force fields, especially when angered Johnny can engulf himself in fire and is able to fly and Ben is transformed into a large, rock-based creature with superhuman strength and durability. They return home but soon begin to develop strange powers. Ben receives full exposure out in space, while the others receive a more limited dose. Reed, Susan, and Johnny leave the shielded station to rescue Ben who has gone on a space-walk to place the samples, and Victor closes the shield behind them. The quintet travels to space to observe the cosmic energy clouds, but Reed has miscalculated and the clouds materialize well ahead of schedule. He brings aboard his chief genetics researcher (and Reed's ex-girlfriend) Susan Storm and her reckless brother Johnny Storm, a young astronaut.

Von Doom agrees, in exchange for control over the experiment and a majority of the profits from whatever benefits it brings. Victor Von Doom, CEO of Von Doom Industries, to allow him access to his space station to test the effects of exposure to the cloud on biological samples. Together with his friend, astronaut Ben Grimm, Reed convinces Dr. Reed Richards, a bankrupt physicist, is convinced evolution was triggered millions of years ago on earth by clouds of cosmic energy in space, and has calculated that one of these clouds is soon going to pass near Earth.
