Thanks, Kaitlyn. All I know about the F4, I learned through cartoons so my knowledge of them is obviously limited.
Ok, this is complicated. In the alternate future, we see Sue married to Doom, and they have a teenaged daughter named Valeria.
After returning from the future, the FF go to an alternate universe the Franklin created and which Doom is trying to take over. Somehow, Reed and Doom are cosmically switched. Reed ends up in Doom’s armor, and Doom is somewhere else. The FF know that it’s Reed in the armor, but nobody else does. Because she loves Reed, Sue announces to the world that she’s going to marry Doom (really Reed).
This is where my speculation that the future Doom that Sue was married to was really Reed in Doom’s armor.
Reed and Sue actually have been separated, most notably while Reed was dead for a while.
All of this stuff is from the Chris Claremont run which was an amazingly bad rehash of ideas from his early X-Men and Excaliber stories.
If anybody likes the FF enought to want to read some of the better stories, there are three sets you want to look for. The first is the original Lee/Kirby run, currently available in Essential (cheap) and Masterworks (expensive, but worth it). This covers issues 1-100, but the first 60 to 70 are the meat of the run.
The second set you’d want to look for is the John Byrne run, issues 232–296. He was the artist for about a year before 232, but then took over as writer also. There’s only one trade available, but the individual issues are rather inexpensive, and can usually be had for about a dollar each on eBay.
You can then just skip everything else until you get to Vol. 3, number 60 throught the current 520 (the numbering changed midway). This is when Mark Waid took over as writer and his favored artist Mike Weiringo as penciller (they did a very good Flash together 10 years ago). This is old-fashioned superhero storytelling at it’s best.
No, Reed and Sue never divorced. He was imprisoned in Doom’s armor by a ticked-off Celestial while Doom was sent to an alternate Earth (don’t ask). Reed pretended he was Doom to stop Doom’s evil allies, and so he married Sue as “Doctor Doom”. Later the whole thing was sorted out, Doom came back and reclaimed his armor. So Susan and Reed never divorced, and she was never married to Doom legally in this timeline – since of course it was Reed under the armor.
After his family (parents and a sister in flashbacks) died in the Holocaust, Erik Lehnsherr escaped Auschwitz alongside a Gypsy girl named Magda. They traveled through Eastern Europe, settled in a little village, and married. A daughter was born to them named Anya, who died in a house fire. In a fit of rage, Erik killed everyone in their village with his magnetic powers except Magda, who fled from him in terror. Unbeknownest to him, she was pregnant at the time.
Magda made it to Wundagore Mountain where she gave birth to her twins, Wanda and Pietro, then ran outside to die in the snow. The twins were adopted by Gypsies and Erik (now Magneto) didn’t know they existed until years later. Somewhere along the way he fathered another daughter, Lorna, with an unknown woman. Lorna is of course the X-Men’s Polaris, and Pietro and Wanda are Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch of the Avengers.
Whew. I’ll leave Mystique’s entire extended family to someone else. But did Marvel ever explain what was up with the whole Mephisto/Satan/Lucifer thing? There were 3 or 4 different devils, all claiming to rule hell, who between them fathered several heroes/villains of varying note.
My take on the Claremont issues–and the more recent Waid stories with Doom–is that the vengeful Celestial did more than trap Reed in Doom’s armor; he did something to mingle Reed and Doom with each other, resulting in Reed exhibiting Doom’s arrogance and Doom (later) exhibiting Reed’s recklessness. (Does anyone here dispute that Reed is reckless?) Franklin’s actions notwithstanding, I think Valeria was conceived by someone who was 80% Reed and 20% Doom, and may have the genes of three parents.
Hal also has, or had, another brother, don’t remember the birth order, who’s son is named Hal Jordan, aka Air Wave. And young Hal has spent time visiting another part of the Jordan family in Texas, but I can’t remember the names or exact relationship.
And both of their parents were alive the last I knew.
It is his daughter, the mother is the assassain Cheshire, a mass murder who set off a nuclear weapon in one of the small Middle Easter countries in the DC world.
Not all of the future Flashes are descended from others. John Fox, now in the 853rd century is one that is completely unrelated. Iris Allen and Barry Allen (Flash II) are Impulse’s grandparents, XS is his cousin. Impulse and XS are the children of Don and Dawn Allen, the Tornado Twins, the children of Barry and Iris. (This is actually up in the air right now, since the latest Legion reboot. OTOH, since Mark Waid is the writer, I am pretty confident that XS and family history still exists.) Don and Dawn are both dead unfortunately.
I bow before the Comic afficianados that have posted here. You are all Gods and Goddesses.
As The Vision and Scarlet Witch know so well. At one point (their second, 12-issue mini-series) Wanda channeled what she thought was the mystic energy of the residents of New Salem, the end result being a mystical pregnancy. Everyone thought she was carrying one child but she was actually carrying two, the second of which was invisible to any sort of detection like ultrasound. I think they named the kids William (after Simon Williams, Wonder Man, whose “brain engrams” were imprinted on the Vision’s circuitry so they think of themselves as “brothers” after a fashion, much to the chagrin of Simon Williams’ actual brother Erik, an evil fellow known as the Grim Reaper, now deceased) and Thomas (after Thomas Horton, the man who supposedly created the original Human Torch android whose body was supposed to have been revamped by Ultron into the Vision, and who was step-father to Frankie Ray, later to become Nova, one-time member of the Fantastic Four and later herald of Galactus, except it turned out that the Vision wasn’t really the Torch after all, good god this is complicated). IIRC, the kids turned out actually to be bits of the essence of Mephisto, who later reclaimed them and turned them into his arms.
The Green Hornet was a relative of the Lone Ranger, though the exact relationship was not clear. Usually, Britt Reid is listed as a great grandson of John Reid – The Lone Ranger’s real name – but there are other versions.
I’m wrong. They were bits of the essence of a human mystic whose name escapes me. He sought power from a demon, perhaps Mephisto, who tore off his arms and legs and replaced them with demons. Anyone remember his name? He appeared in Avengers West Coast. He was looking for pieces of his missing soul, represented by a star-shaped hole in his belly. Anyone?
What about the gods or avatars thereof that aren’t afficianados?
According to Philip Jose Farmer’s Doc Savage: His Apocalypic Life, Doc’s official biography, he is blood kin to both Tarzan and James Bond, albeit as distant cousins.
For many years the rumor was that Claremont intended that Mystique be Nightcrawler’s father, having fathered him on Desitny, but that Marvel wouldn’t go for it when the characters were introduced in the '70’s and the storyline was dropped.
–Cliffy
Nuh-uh. No way. The Huntress is Batman’s daughter. Always will be. That other fake Huntress they replaced her with after Crisis didn’t happen. Nope. Never happened. Like Highlander 2.
That’d be the guy. I remembered his name about 10 minutes after I posted. Amazing the stockpiles of completely useless information that I retain.
You and me both, hon. If I could get paid for what I can actually retrieve from long-term memory, I’d be very, very wealthy.
Donna Troy is sort of related to Wonder Woman insofar as she was created from Diana’s reflection.
Hawkman and Hawkwoman’s son is currently Dr. Fate.
The new Supergirl is Superman’s cousin (again).
I’d agree with one exception: the Walt Simonson run of Fantastic Four, though brief (about 334-354) is absolutely essential. Time travel, dinosaurs, the best Reed/Doom battle I’ve ever seen, and of course, Rosebud II.
Good point. Add that to the list.