The Fantastic Four are known for their close family dynamic, adventures in exotic worlds and dimensions, and unique powers and abilities that would easily stretch, shred or burn any average garment - so how do their uniforms work without doing the same? Marvel's First Family has an incredibly diverse superpower set that allows them to take on any threat, but regular clothes are incompatible with their powers (except perhaps the Thing, with the weakness of being "locked in" to his rocky form and has no control over his powers). The creation of the Fantastic Four's iconic blue suits and their unique properties is perhaps as interesting as the creation of the team itself.

In 1961, the team's debut in Fantastic Four #1 did not feature the blue suits at all. Although their astronaut suits featured blue coveralls and white gloves, they were created before they acquired their powers. The four would find themselves wearing all blue for the second time in the same issue when they infiltrated the base of the Mole Man, and it would not be until Fantastic Four #3 that all four would wear the blue suits specifically made for the team - not by Reed Richards, but by Sue Storm.

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Yes - despite nearly every other adaptation of Fantastic Four portraying Reed Richards as the designer of the suits, Susan Storm was the original creator of the uniforms in the comics. They were completely identical, which meant Ben Grimm received long pants instead of the shorts he would later be known for wearing (the helmet, also given to him by Sue, would be quickly jettisoned later in the issue - although it would later be used when the Thing received a facial scar). However, this was still in an era where the Fantastic Four's clothes changed along with their powers with no explanation. The infamous "unstable molecules", the canon explanation that allows the uniforms to conform to the powers of the wearer, wouldn't be mentioned until Fantastic Four #6. But how do unstable molecules work?

According to Reed Richards in Fantastic Four #6, his costume is "...woven from fibers containing unstable molecules that shift in structure whenever I affect the change!" But the exact way in which they work is detailed in the story "Unstable Molecules" from Marvels Comics: Fantastic Four #1 in 2000. Unstable molecules can be bonded to normal molecules; when an atomic shift occurs nearby (such as an activation of a superpower), they mimic the change and alter the normal molecules to which they've attached themselves. This is how the suits of the Fantastic Four can turn invisible, stretch, and burn along with the wearers. As the smartest man on Earth, Reed Richards' discovery is just one of many.

Of course, the above explanation is complete pseudoscience; unstable molecules are about as plausible as Spider-Man's web fluid or Ant-Man's Pym particles. But the suits of the Fantastic Four are part of their identity, to the point where fans cried foul when the much-maligned 2015 Fant4stic reboot decided to do away with the blue suits in favor of featureless black. The classic costumes of the Fantastic Four are immediately identifiable - unstable molecules or not.

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