Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service with me Ashley Byrne.

Today we're taking you back to 1961 and the early days of a small comic book team in America

who would go on to achieve major worldwide recognition.

I've been speaking to Roy Thomas, writer and later editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics.

You know, mankind's always had these heroes, whether it's Samson, Hercules, or whatever,

so there's something in our psyche that calls out to have characters like this,

and if you do them well, you can do a lot of interesting stories.

I'm going to tell you a story about an invisible girl.

Todd's a thing and more.

He got Mr. Fantastic.

Now he's bought his Alaska. He got the fantastic fantastic for.

In 1961 a new type of comic book courtesy of the newly revamped Marvel Comics hit the stands in America.

Under the leadership of writer editor Stan Lee and writer artist Jack Kirby,

Marvel soon went on to change the world of comics forever.

At that time, of course, the only superhero comics coming out were really D.C.

They still had Superman and Batman and this handful of new ones and Archie Comics strangely enough had this

curdder called the fly and then all of a sudden there was this new thing on the

stands the first issue of Fantastic Four and it said the Fantastic Four together for the first issue of Fantastic Four. And it said the Fantastic Four together for the first time,

and it mentioned the names, the Human Torch,

Invisible Girl, Mr Fantastic, and The Thing.

Roy Thomas was a young writer and assistant editor at Marvel Comics in the early 1960s

and remembers the first time he saw Fantastic Four, Issue One.

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