A comic book character published by Marvel Comics and created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961. Sue Storm went along with her boyfriend, Reed Richards, her kid brother, Johnny Storm, and Reed's pal, Ben Grimm, to test an experimental rocketship. But the ship's shielding was faulty, and all four were exposed to cosmic radiation. While Reed became the stretchy Mr. Fantastic, Johnny became the scorchy Human Torch, and Ben turned into the rocky Thing, Sue acquired the ability to turn invisible, so she called herself the Invisible Girl. The four of them, of course, became the Fantastic Four.
For a while, Sue wasn't much more than a handy plot device. She was frequently used as a hostage that the three men could rescue. She had a few flings with the Sub-Mariner before marrying Reed. And her lone superpower wasn't used for anything much more than making sure the bad guys couldn't see her.
Before long, Sue's powers were expanded beyond just invisibility. She was now able to turn objects other than herself invisible, and she gained the ability to project invisible forcefields, which were useful for both defense (stopping bullets and death rays) and offense (squashing tanks and smacking Dr. Doom around with big invisible fists). But it wasn't until the 1980s--after she'd been married and had a child (Franklin Richards, who was a mega-powerful mutant-baby)--that Marvel finally changed her name from "the Invisible Girl" to "the Invisible Woman".
Nowadays, Sue is still seen largely as the FF's token female, but she's widely acknowledged as the team's most powerful member (those nifty forcefields again) and was even the team leader for a while when Reed was dead.
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