(Re)Enter the Fantastic

Recent history shows that thinking "big names" is often a disaster for the Fantastic Four.

You Read These With Your Eyes (Feb 15^th, 2023)

A quick feature about selling stories, featuring the week’s newest reads.

This week we’re following up on our talk about how number ones are fine with a focus on a book that nailed their relaunch.

ONGOING | Fantastic Four #4

by Ryan North, Iban Coello, Jesus Aburtov, VC’s Joe Caramagna, Alex Ross w/ design & editorial support by Carlos Lao, Martin Biro, Annalise Bissa, & Tom Brevoort

At this point, I’ve been working in comic shops for a little over 16 years, and the Fantastic Four has had a rough go for the most of that time. The troubles kicked off right after the Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo which by all accounts, was a huge success. The run kicked off with a 9 cent issue¹ that served as a solid introduction to the team, setting things at a nice base level. The run survived the Bill Jemas years (wherein Jemas fired Waid, and Wieringo walked… before both returned when Jemas himself was ousted from Marvel) and laid down some remarkable stories.

After that run ended, Marvel tapped white hot writer J. Michael Straczynski to take over the team’s book. Despite the fact that he lit a fire within the Spider-Man line, JMS accomplished a whole lot of nothing during his FF run, evidenced by the fact that very few can tell you anything cool that happened within it, and the creator himself left the book before he saw through any plans (in what would become grand JMS tradition in comics). Dwayne McDuffie was there to pick up the pieces, but talented as he was, McDuffie was a placeholder on the book, moving it forward until Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch took over. This was another big swing that didn’t quite connect as the creators who kind of set the template for the Marvel Avengers movie in the pages of The Ultimates brought their widescreen storytelling to decidedly intimate, “small screen” characters. This run also fizzled out when the creators left the book for health and deadline issues, though some would argue it never had a spark to begin with.

After this, a fresh creator named Jonathan Hickman took over the book. The man has a name now, and he built it largely on the strength of his Fantastic Four run, which he put together as a creator on the rise. He focused on building a story engine that he crafted himself, with slight nods to the past. It blossomed and the ideas within grew to the point where Hickman was running the Avengers line, and wrapped everything up nicely in Secret Wars, a tremendous feat that also influenced the Marvel movie franchise. During this time, the team fell into a bit of disrepair. Matt Fraction was given the keys to the team, and built two very compelling narratives - one about found family with Mike Allred, and one about sci-fi adventures with a family base with Mark Bagley. While this is a run that means a lot to me², it wasn’t one that ended up landing either as Fraction had to pull back from the books near their conclusion - another high profile creator who just couldn’t connect with the team in such a way that became solid.

After that run, James Robinson took over, and turned out some comics that limped along until the series stopped for the first time since the team premiered. Now, there’s been a lot said about why the title went away, with many insinuating it was a mandate from higher up because Marvel didn’t control the movie media rights to the property at the time. If this was true, it almost definitely had something to do with the sales level of the book, as the X-Men line continued unabated, as did the Spider-Man line, both of which had media deals that Marvel and Disney did not control. 

The book eventually returned under the pen of Dan Slott when Disney acquired Fox and their entire stable of works. In an interview on Off Panel, Alex Ross spoke about how the Fantastic Four book had to go away for a time, but “a creator” had a clause written into their contract that granted them first dibs on the team if and when they returned. He discovered this after pitching for the title as a series of single issue tales that would be drawn by his own hand picked artists, staring with himself, and going from there. This pitch eventually evolved in two different ways - the first became the Marvel anthology, which was the absolutely unsearchable series where Alex Ross cast stellar creators to tell stories about Marvel characters on their terms. The other evolution became Ross’ original graphic novel from Abrams, Fantastic Four: Full Circle.

Now, the creator in question who had dibs on the Fantastic Four was clearly Dan Slott, as he took over the title when it returned a couple years back. The return of the team was heralded and definitely garnered a solid amount of attention, but the launch itself was botched (in my opinion), by teasing the team’s return in a previous high-profile storyline. The run itself was perfectly okay, but wasn’t anything I could put into a new reader’s hands - which is an ongoing problem with this team, outside of the Waid/Ringo and Hickman runs. 

That all said, things have changed with the current run from Ryan North and Iban Coello. Coming off a run from Slott that pushed for the grand cosmic, North pared things down and brought things to level. The ideas he put out were still big, but the heart of the book immediately became the people in and around the team of the Fantastic Four, and the stories reflected that.

The stories for the past four issues have hit a perfect balance of interesting sci-fi, and personal drama - the first three issues focusing on the team members themselves in different, separate situations, before bringing them all together to confront, and move past a past crime of epic proportions. The solution to the problem is not elegant, and people are hurt. But the decisions made are all done with the absolute best of intentions, with the hurt arising from a question of relative morality.

The story and these creators are exactly the kind of thing the Fantastic Four needs. It is a series built to be accessible, with a longer mystery that hooks the reader for a longer run. It a take that is built from compassion and hunger, one part providing the heart of the book, and the other providing the fuel for the stories.

It seems that, like most books that can’t rely on just “being Spider-Man or Batman”, the runs on FF that hit the hardest come from folks who have something to say. By and large, they are also people who aren’t huge names building something on top of their already storied careers. They are around to say something or prove something. That marries well with a concept that functions best when it is tackling fresh ideas in a warm, family setting.

The Pitch | Folks, if you have anyone at all who love some classic superhero comics, you need this in their hands. It captures a sense of wonder that is unparalleled. And to that end, if you have someone who is very unfamiliar with class superhero comics, but seems to be a person who loves big, fun sci-fi ideas, I would put this in their hands. This series is a gem, and it is hitting so hard at my shop because it is so versatile and fun. The industry needs this book right now. It deserves it. And I’m glad we have it.

1. This occurred during an era where Marvel attempted some low-priced introduction issues, only to discover the practice didn’t add readers to further issues in any meaningful way.

2. There’s an issue in particular where Reed, for reasons, is recording a message to say good-bye to his children. He reasons some things out, and talks about how people say if there’s nothing after this (existence) then why does anything matter? Reed then asserts that if there is nothing after this, then everything matters, because our actions today are all we have. It had informed how I approach life ever since.