Profile: Invisible Girl/Woman

Sue Storm, Invisible Girl/Woman
First appearance: Fantastic Four #1, 1961

Current status: member of the FF and mother of two children

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: underplayed in the first several issues of the FF when it first began (until she got her force shield powers, she was hardly that effective in portrayal), then, when John Byrne was writing in the mid-80s, she had a miscarriage (later reversed, with Valeria becoming the second child), was tortured along with Mr. Fantastic by Mephisto in his astral lair of hell, and was even turned evil at one point. Oh, did I mention that lately, with J. Michael Straczynski writing, she went into death limbo? (Of course it’ll be reversed, and better be too, but it’s still bad enough.)

What’s wrong with how this was done? Well, I suppose I can overlook Stan Lee’s underwhelming depiction of Sue at the time it all began, because it wasn’t exactly, you know, excessively violent, but John Byrne’s writing was a lot more worrisome and questionable. Did Sue really have to go through that initial miscarriage?

There was also that other point where she got brainwashed into badness. And the time when both she and Reed and, lest we forget, their son Franklin, got trapped in Mephisto’s astral plane of hell. Who needs it?

And now, in 2006, the House of Ideas seems to think they’re clever by writing a story in which Sue’s the latest to go into presumed death limbo. We’ve already had Reed and Ben do that (and her brother Johnny will probably be next), but it’s already old news, and aggravating at that.

Was there anything good to come out of any of this? It was the miscarriage being reversed in recent years, and the result was in birthing Valeria. But even so, why couldn't Marvel have given Sue the chance at bearing a second child even back in the 1980s?

For a character who’s the strongest member of the FF thanks to her force shield powers, I’d think she deserves better than that.