Thinking about the creation of the Fantastic Four (since I seem to be talking about it a lot this week), I wanted to make a side point.

Every now and then I see someone say that in creating the team, Kirby and Lee must have been aware of Plastic Man and the Invisible Scarlet...

...O'Neill, since they gave their powers to Reed and Sue.

I think this is nonsense, and not really how creativity works. I mean, sure, they were aware of Plastic Man at least -- who in the field during their careers wouldn't be? -- but Reed Richards' powers are so limited...

...compared to Plastic Man, who did much wilder things, that you'd hardly expect Jack Kirby to set out to copy something and do so much less with it. And Scarlet O'Neill seems to get run into the conversation not because she's invisible (an ability already well known with the...

...Invisible Man), but because she's both invisible and female, as if Kirby and Lee are so limited in imagination that not only did they have to think back to earlier superheroes to select FF members, they couldn't think of giving powers to a woman unless there was already a...

...woman in comics with those powers, which is pretty insulting.

They didn't need to do any of that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, after all. People can come up with stuff inspired by stuff that didn't previously appear in their specific field, or even independently.

I think it's far likelier that once the decision was made that the FF would have superpowers, the first thing decided on was that one would be a new version of the Human Torch, and Kirby figured, "Okay, what goes with fire?" and came up with abilities reflecting earth, air and...

...water. And that they were all body-changes, transformations.

The fact that Kirby had used three of those powers in CHALLENGERS already would make it easier for him to think that way, too.

But he didn't have to search his memory for other people's characters to copy.