The Way It All Began

The Way It All Began
I'll let her go, if you rename her Invisible Woman.
Premiere date	September 23, 1967
Starring	Gerald Mohr Jo Ann Pflug Jac Flounders Paul Frees Don Messick Joshua Sirola
Music composed by	Ted Nichols
Writer(s)	Phil Hahn Jack Hanrahan
Director(s)	William Hanna Joseph Barbera
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"The Way It All Began" is the third episode of Fantastic Four season one. It aired on September 23, 1967 on ABC. It was written by Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan, and produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

When Doctor Doom tries to settle an old score with Mister Fantastic, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom share their origin stories and how they intertwine with each other.

Characters

Legend
Character debut	Speaking debut	Ep. debut	No lines	Mentioned

In order of appearance:

Character	Actor
Citizen #1	Unavailable
Citizen #2	Unavailable
Doctor Doom/Victor Von Doom	Joshua Sirola
The Thing/Ben Grimm	Paul Frees
Announcer	Don Messick
Human Torch/Johnny Storm	Jac Flounders
Mitzi Miner	N/A
Professor	Don Messick
Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards	Gerald Mohr
Invisible Girl/Sue Richards	Jo Ann Pflug
Police Commissioner Robbins	Unavailable
Victor Von Doom's assistant	Don Messick
University dean	Unavailable
Nurse	Unavailable

Organizations

• Fantastic Four

Locations

• Earth
  • United States
    • New York City
      • Manhattan
        • Baxter Building
    • International Airport
    • University
    • Hawaii
      • Oahu
        • Pearl Harbor
  • Latveria (mentioned)
  • China
    • Himalayas
      • Tibet

Objects

• Fantastic Flare

Vehicles

• Torchster
• Doctor Doom's plane
• The Grimm Reaper
• Fantastic Four's missile

Music

The music was composed by Ted Nichols.

Release

Dates are in order of release:

• United States: September 23, 1967 on ABC

Behind the scenes

• This episode is adapted from two comic stories, "The Fantastic Four" in Fantastic Four #1 (November, 1961), and "The Prisoners of Doctor Doom" in Fantastic Four #5 (July, 1962); both written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Jack Kirby.
  • Interestingly, both origins are taken almost verbatim from the original comics, with no additional embellishments or alterations.

In other languages

Language	Name	Meaning

Home availability

• Warner Bros. owns the show, while Disney owns the characters, making it difficult to release this episode on any physical media.