The Fantastic Four (1978)
Generally similar to IOTL, but instead of the Human Torch being replaced by HERBIE, he’s replaced by Jessica Drew, aka Firestar, Johnny’s replacement from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (which was originally going to feature the Human Torch alongside Spidey and Iceman). What? You’d rather me just include the Human Torch? But I can’t! He was tied up with Universal at the time! Separate from the rest of the Fantastic Four, yes. No, I’m not kidding.
In lieu of the actual Human Torch, Firestar was essentially given his personality. Hot-headed, impatient, and rather jokey. While there was a bit of focus on the former two, network censorship meant that more significant focus had to be placed on the latter, not only cracking wise against villains, but also the one to always to make a pun at the end of an episode, having a prankster side in several episodes, and even having a series of comedy shorts on NBC when the show was a part of the SatAM schedule, called “Ha-Ha-Hot Stuff with Firestar”, where she told jokes. She also became a teenager, to serve as a kid appeal character, while being female helped even the gender balance and appeal more to girls. (In terms of appealing to boys, the ever-popular Thing, despite being a grown man, became their “boy appeal” character.)
In terms of character relationships, while unlike Johnny, she was unrelated to any of the Four, she fit right in the family dynamic as the “little sister”. She looks up to Sue, respects but doesn’t quite get Reed, and her quarrels with the Thing carried over from Johnny are emblematic of a sibling rivalry. Again, due to network censorship, their spars are exclusively verbal and slightly toned down (just slightly). She also doesn’t call him the Thing, which would be nice for Ben… except that she teasingly calls him Benjy instead. The Thing is also given baggage where he can’t fight ladies, which gives him issues against characters like Medusa. Luckily, Firestar has no such qualms.
THING
“Aw, jeez… I can’t fight a lady!”
MEDUSA
“How quaint. Your chivalry is most commendable… but it shall be your downfall!”
FIRESTAR
“Well, if Benjy can’t hit a girl, then it looks like this girl will have to hit for him!”
In the show itself, Firestar’s costume is the usual uniform of the F.F., and her “costumed” hair IOTL is just her normal hair. In Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, her costume is the same as IOTL, but without her mask (none of the Fantastic Four had secret identities), though the rest of the Fantastic Four did sometimes show up (sans Johnny, duh), and when they did, she’d don the old blue and white one more. She was aged up in Amazing Friends to college age, like Peter and Bobby, though it’s heavily implied she was still a teenager when she gained her powers. More emphasis was placed on her temperament here, to differentiate her from similarly jokey Spider-Man, though while the wall-crawler took care of the quips, Firestar still told the odd joke and even played the odd prank.
While she was still controversial for replacing the Human Torch, Firestar was nowhere near as reviled as HERBIE IOTL, thanks to contributing more to the team and being more able to fill that Human Torch-shaped hole due to her powers. Combine that with her slightly different, jokier personality, and her appearances in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, and Firestar quickly became a fan favorite.