The Fantastic Four movie is a trip into the 1960s design of a great forgotten comic book artist

The world of The Fantastic Four – First Steps is nothing like the Marvel Universe we’re used to. There are no familiar heroes, no recurring villains, and most strikingly, no recognizable visual identity. It doesn’t even look like it takes place in the present. The setting feels more like the 1960s—or rather, a version of the present filtered through the lens of that era’s design, social habits, and the idea of America as broadcast by its own media. But even that isn’t quite right. The deeper the film goes, the clearer it becomes that it’s not set in the past, nor in the present, but rather in the “world of Jack Kirby”—and that is its strongest card. Jack Kirby was the most influential artist Marvel ever had. He helped create countless characters who later became pillars of the brand, designing their suits, accessories, and the very poses and motion grammar we now take for granted in superhero iconography. His work throughout the 1960s laid the visual foundation of modern comics. Yet, until now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe—despite its frequent tributes to writer and co-creator Stan Lee—had almost entirely overlooked Kirby’s legacy. This film changes that, and does so in spectacular fashion.

Earth-828 is the version of our Earth where the story is set, and Kirby was born on August 28 (8/28): an Easter egg that actually says a lot. Right at the start, we get a recap of what has happened so far: four astronauts, hit by cosmic rays on a space mission; mutation; the powers they gain; and their new life as a picture-perfect superhero family. These events have the tone of stories drawn by Jack Kirby—often they’re direct summaries of sagas he worked on. In some cases, the scenes are exact replicas of famous covers he drew, including the iconic first issue. 

That world of Googie design, sunken living rooms with bold colors in a ‘60s style, monitors inside spherical frames, a rocket that looks like a needle or a lava lamp, and all of Reed Richards’ lab tech—it all follows Kirby’s design language. His drawing style and how he adapted trends of the time to comic books are reflected everywhere. Everything is just a little more extreme, more stylized. These are the 1960s of media and comics.

And the story of the film is, again, one of the most famous and important arcs from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four run: the arrival of Galactus, the world-devourer, heralded by Silver Surfer, and the Fantastic Four’s race to stop a cosmic entity from consuming Earth. The plot has been heavily reworked—especially its ending—to fit into the broader narrative this movie begins, which will culminate in Avengers: Doomsday at Christmas 2026. But the essence is there. More importantly, it carries the same societal ideals that those comics conveyed—the same optimism about others that now feels out of step with our time, if not downright unbelievable. It’s not a great superhero movie, in fact, its story is quite conventional: the heroes want to do good, a major evil threatens humanity, and they’re willing to risk everything to save it. The point, and what makes it unique, has always been the design. The promotional material focused on that, the story’s introduction highlights it, the characters' speech and tone revolve around it. From the very first titles and the Marvel logo—stylized in Googie fashion—that’s the message. For once, in a superhero film, the only truly important thing, the real selling point, and the one element that might justify a ticket purchase, is the art direction.

Even the script bows to this choice. In the film, everyone behaves like characters from 1960s stories. This isn’t Mad Men, a hyper-realistic take on the ‘60s that feels contemporary. The model here is not realism (as it was for Thunderbolts), but the style of TV serials, cartoons, comics, and light-hearted tales that were popular in that era. The Fantastic Four – The Beginning is the product of 1960s American media culture on steroids, reimagined and staged for a modern audience who, rather than feeling nostalgic for an era most never lived through, steps into a completely new narrative dimension—Kirby’s dimension. And even if the film doesn’t have great writing—with all its sense of innocence, the protagonists’ impossible goodness in an age of antiheroes, and that unwavering faith in America’s big ideals—its strong personality through design makes it unique and seemingly valuable.
 

You could say without hesitation that The Fantastic Four – The Beginning is a live-action version of a Jack Kirby comic book, complete with cute little robots, moral clarity, and a sense of tenderness. The entire subplot around Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, who feels sidelined but politely so, is unthinkable today and only makes sense in a “stylized” film. Likewise, the sweet, sad Thing—ostracized because he’s different but accepted by the girl next door (blind in the comics, though the movie didn’t go that far)—is exactly Kirby’s Thing, hat and all when he’s off duty.

There’s only one moment in the entire movie that doesn’t fit this style, and indeed, it was directed by someone else: the mid-credit scene, which teases parts of Avengers: Doomsday, was shot by the Russo brothers. But the post-credit scene—the one after all the credits have rolled—is the perfect ending to a film like this. It shows a clip from a Fantastic Four cartoon, perfectly recreated and heavily inspired by Kirby’s drawings. It’s a showcase of characters, especially villains, who have exactly the designs Kirby invented. A tribute to the variety of styles and creativity, interrupted only when a robot hand turns off the TV. That’s how a film ends that felt like watching a live-action version of those cartoons—where flying cars look like they came out of The Jetsons (the classic flying tub the Fantastic Four used is missing), and every New York extra wears a hat, while the women sport Jackie Kennedy hairstyles.