Kidding aside, I am sort of amazed at how many people have taken umbrage with the Reed/Sue thing which JB established. It’s not rocket science. They met when Reed was a young college boarder. Sue had a crush on him, which of course embarrassed him, since she was literally a child. Years later, they were reunited as adults, and eventually fell for each other. As adults. 

This new bit of backstory managed to reconcile Stan’s ages for the characters with that reference to Sue being “the girl next door” from early on in the series. Nothing pedophilic or creepy about it. Sure, there’s the age difference between them, but it’s not as outrageous as some real-life May-December romances out there. 

Or, maybe more to the point, how did you want it to play out? 

This was posted on CAF this morning, and I'd never seen it before (I've never read Phoenix:Untold Story). Figured others may not have seen it either.

I was recently talking about the FF's original ages. Sue can't be too old to be the sister of a 16 year-old. But it also makes sense that there's a big gap between Sue and Johnny. It seems evident early on that, though Johnny is minor, Sue is his guardian, because we never see their parents. A later storyline confirmed this. So Sue has a big sister/parental role with Johnny, and she certainly has been written as having such I think.

Reed is older, but not too old. Ben is his contemporary. It makes for a cool "family" dynamic in the FF!