The Fantastic Four’s Worst Costume Change Just Became Their Funniest Story

Superhero comics cover all kinds of genres. They can be campy, child-friendly adventures that exist to educate or inspire hope, or they could be scathing, nuanced examinations of the human condition, painting a picture of people in a way that only superhero comics truly can. They can be horrible, gut-wrenching tragedies that leave you depressed for days afterward. Of course, they can also be the funniest thing you’ll ever read, and that’s exactly the type of story that we’re here to talk about today. Fantastic Four (2025) #15 is a celebration marking sixty-five years of Marvel’s First Family, and it just gave us one of the funniest stories of all time.

The comic had a truly heartwarming celebration of the Four’s history and what they mean to people worldwide, but its final story was all about comedy, and it knocked it out of the park. Comedy is one of the hardest genres to focus on in any medium, but it can be especially difficult to manage in comics. Yet, this comic did it in the greatest way possible by finally delivering on a development that fans have literally been begging years for. Johnny Storm finally shaved his mustache, and in doing so, saved New York City. 

A Mustache’s Final Goodbye

This story centered around the Fantastic Four’s confrontation with Nicholas Scratch, who sent the Four careening back in time after leading them into a trap with feral past versions of themselves. The team found a workaround to escape Scratch’s time travel trap, but upon arriving back in the present, they found themselves on the back foot against their monstrous counterparts. They did a decent job of holding their own, but they couldn’t find a way to defeat the Feral Four. They needed a new strategy, and the Human Torch found exactly that. He burned off his mustache to impersonate his past self, which let him get a necessary sneak attack against Scratch, which reset the timeline and saved the day.

Johnny loved his mustache, despite the fact that nobody else in the world seemed to. He held onto his lip rug for years despite everyone around him telling him to let it go, but he never let them sway him. Yet, when push came to shove, he was willing to burn away his favorite facial hair to save the day. On some levels, this is the perfect way to end an anniversary adventure for the FF. It’s a creative solution to a problem that nobody but the team would have discovered, and the Four are built on the ideals of creative solutions to save everyone. This is a legitimate showcase of the team’s ideals and Johnny’s unique brand of genius. It is also absolutely hilarious on every level. 

A Hilarious Use of Every Fan’s Rage

Fans, for the most part, have hated Johnny’s mustache since day one. Johnny traditionally goes clean shaven, and plenty of fans are going to be against change in every regard, but the big reason that fans stood against this stache is that it’s just not good. It’s loud and obnoxious, which fits Johnny’s character, but it’s so darn gross to look at. This is the type of facial hair that hasn’t been popular for decades. Long story short, fans hated Johnny’s mustache and have been begging him to get rid of it since it showed up. Nobody expected it to last half as long as it has, frankly, but the way they finally sent it off to pasture is the perfect use of fans’ hatred.

By keeping the stache around for literal years, fans have become near-rabid for it to disappear. Shaving the stache was always going to make fans cheer, but tying it into the Four’s actual adventures is the perfect way for it to go out. Now, we literally owe something we’ve hated for years. Johnny Storm’s terrible, disgusting, no-good mustache saved New York City, meaning that it will go down in history as the world’s greatest mustache, judged exclusively by humanitarian levels. We all owe this stache a great debt, and the fact that it helped save the day with its final breath will always be downright hilarious. Johnny’s stache saved the day, but I think we’re all happy that it’s finally gone.

Fantastic Four #15 is on sale now!

I love the Fantastic Four, and am very excited to see everything Marvel does with its First Family in the next sixty-five years. Here’s hoping that Johnny stays clean-shaven for most of it.