With the Fantastic Four's ongoing series finally returned at Marvel, it is clear that we will eventually see some sort of costume change for the group. It is just a standard thing for comic book series to do nowadays. Every once in awhile, you re-design the heroes' costumes. Iron Man gets a new armor, Thor gets a new look, etc. It is all fair enough, of course, but in the case of the Fantastic Four, it is particularly interesting to see how many costumes they have gone through in recent years considering they went thirty years with roughly two basic costume designs for the group - and one of them was just an inversion of the other one!

Johnny Storm, however, has always been a bit of a maverick and has had more distinct costumes than the rest of the team. So here, we will take a look at all of Johnny's costumes over the years.

RELATED: Wolverine: Every Costume Marvel's Latest Resurrected Mutant Has Worn, Ever

PRE-COSTUME ERA

When the Fantastic Four debuted, Marvel was still primarily making monster comics featuring normal looking heroes who would face off against bizarre monsters from other planets. Thus, when they first decided to dip their toes into the superhero market again, they initially stuck to the same basic look of their monster comics.

Thus, the first time that we see Johnny in action as the Human Torch, he's wearing mechanic coveralls.

Later, when the Fantastic Four go on a mission, he's wearing just a generic outdoors outfit.

ORIGINAL COSTUMES

Even when Jack Kirby and Stan Lee decided to go with superhero costumes in the third issue of the series, they still chose to make them a lot more functional in appearance than most superhero costumes. These were still, essentially, jumpsuits.

While they initially had high black collars, Kirby dropped the collars after a few issues and that look, the jumpsuit with short black collars was what Johnny and the others would wear for the rest of Kirby and Lee's run on the series, and well into the runs of the creative teams on the book after Kirby and Lee.

In fact, their looks did not change for over a hundred issues.

When there was finally a major change to their look, guess which member of the team made the change?

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Seeing%20Red!']

SEEING RED

In Fantastic Four #132 (by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Joe Sinnott), Reed Richards and Sue Richards got into a major argument over their son, Franklin, and Sue left both Reed and the team itself. Medusa of the Inhumans joined the group to fill in for Sue. At this time, they had the option of getting distinct costumes. Reed stuck with the classic look, but Medusa and Human Torch both decided to make a change. Johnny, specifically, decided that he wanted to homage the original Human Torch by changing his costumes color scheme to make the Human Torch's original red and yellow outfit...

Johnny went back to his old costume soon enough.

BLACK COLLARS RETURN

When John Byrne took over writing and drawing duties on Fantastic Four, he brought back the original high black collars for the costumes...

This seems as though it was almost like the first step in Byrne's plan to reverse the look of the costumes.

GETTING NEGATIVE

In a battle with Annihilus, the Fantastic Four had to burst through the Negative Zone and when they arrived on Earth, their costumes had become "negative" versions of their original looks, so now it was a tinted black blue and the black collars were now white...

The Byrne change proved to be a popular one and the Fantastic Four stuck with this look for over 100 issues.

MEMBERS ONLY

In the 1990s, there was a rule that said that all superheroes had to start wearing jackets at some point. It was a requirement. So sure enough, in Fantastic Four #375 (by Tom DeFalco, Paul Ryan and Danny Bulanadi), the Human Torch was given a special jacket by Reed that would help control his flames better...

ONSLAUGHT OF NEW LOOKS

During the Onslaught crossover, right before the Fantastic Four saw their comic book end and get rebooted as part of "Heroes Reborn," Carlos Pacheco took over as the artist for the last two issues and he came up with new costumes for the group. Annoyingly, it is hard to see Johnny's costume with this new design, so we'll include a shot of the others so you get the basic idea...

COSTUMES REBORN

Speaking of "Heroes Reborn," the Fantastic Four ended up on an alternate version of Earth where they had new versions of their past adventures. Jim Lee designed the new costumes for this era...

COSTUMES RETURN

They eventually returned from that universe and they had new costumes, with Alan Davis doing a nice riff on the classic uniforms...

PACHECO RETURNS

Chris Claremont and Salvador Larroca took over as the new creative team and they brought back the Carlos Pacheco costumes. Amusingly, when Pacheco himself took over as the writer/penciler on the series, he dropped the costumes that he, himself, designed and returned the team to the original Jack Kirby look, complete with the high black collars...

ROBO-JOHNNY

Soon after that, though, Johnny had problems with his powers and Reed designed him a special armor to help deal with it...

BACK TO RED

During that same period where he struggled with his powers, he adopted the red costume again briefly..

HERALDED NEW LOOK

Briefly, Johnny became Galactus' new herald, and got a new costume as a result of that new job...

A HITCH IN THE DESIGN

In Fantastic Four #544, Bryan Hitch re-designed their costumes...

SHORT SLEEVES FOR ALL!

In Fantastic Four #570, Dale Eaglesham re-designed their costumes...

A "FUTURE" WITHOUT JOHNNY

Johnny was briefly considered to have been killed in the Negative Zone, so the rest of the Fantastic Four adopted new costumes without numbers on them, with the team becoming the Future Foundation.

When Johnny turned up alive, they added the numbers again to their new costumes...

WHAT IS BLACK AND WHITE

During a brief Matt Fraction/Mark Bagley run, the costumes were changed again, this time holding roughly close to the Future Foundation era look...

Page 3: [valnet-url-page page=3 paginated=0 text='Seeing%20Red%20Again!']

AND RED ALL OVER

In the last volume of Fantastic Four before this current one, Leonard Kirk had the whole team wear red costumes...

BLUE RETURNS!

But by the end of the series, they had gone back to the classic blue outfits (just a new design)...

It was these costumes that they wore in Secret Wars, where Reed and Sue seemingly gave their lives to save the Multiverse.

AN UNCANNY CHANGE

With Reed and Sue apparently dead, Johnny joined the Avengers while also becoming the superhero liaison between the Inhumans and New York City. He began to date his former Fantastic Four teammate, Medusa...

TWO NEW COSTUMES IN ONE BOOK

More recently, Johnny teamed up with Ben Grimm, the Thing, to try to go find the missing Reed and Sue. They adopted new Fantastic Four costumes...

We shall see how Johnny adapts his look now that the original four members are reunited.