How old was Reed supposed to be in the original FF run, taking only the Lee and Kirby issues into consideration...

Kirby said they were from stress after a shelling or something.

Let's say Richards and Grimm entered the war at the age of 16 in 1945 (unlikely but the youngest it can be and be within a suspension of disbelief). They'd be 32 in 1961 and the FF comics were happening when they were supposed to be published.

He had his fortieth birthday in canon.

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OP here. I'm asking with only the first 102 issues in mind.

Doesn't work. They were both college grads, then enlisted. So early twenties for Reed, maybe a year or two older for Ben, they enlisted in 1942 (we'll say). The rest of the math unfolds from there.

I'm not sure this is a good idea

10 year old children had in their late 20's. 40 at the least.

What a fucking mess.

While I do think Reed and Ben were supposed to be in their 40s in the original run I don't mind them being deaged due to their children and the sliding time scale.

Both Reed and Ben went to college and (presumably) graduated.

They were freshmen in the same year as Doctor Doom (who didn't graduate). Doom left what was clearly non war torn Latveria to attend college, meaning that the latest the trio's freshman year could have been would have been 1938.

Reed could have been passed up a couple of academic years and started college early, but as it's not stated let's assume he didn't and is the same age as Ben. If both started college at 19, they would have been born in 1918-19, meaning that the youngest Reed and Ben could have been when the FF was founded in 1961 would have been 42.

Remember that the concept of a sliding timescale/'Marvel time' wasn't introduced until much later, with characters like Johnny Storm and Peter Parker passing through high school and college in more or less real time, meaning that Reed and Ben (and Doom!) would have been in their early 50s by the time Kirby left the title.