Comics / Spotlight / Progressive Panels

Marvel’s First Family

By Andy Frisk
November 30, 2011 - 20:33

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s children, and Marvel Comics’ reigning First Family, the Fantastic Four have come a long way. A series of comic books featuring them, or some conglomerate of them, have reached the 600 count. I can’t say that their series proper has reached this number of issues, since it’s been stopped, started, renumbered, and changed titles since its original inception in November of 1961. Nevertheless, the Fantastic Four have survived longer and remained more intermittently relevant for longer than most comic book series last. Undoubtedly, their stories have swayed from intelligent and touching to silly and throwaway. They are still with us though, 600 issues and 50 years later. Most recently, and under the direction of Jonathan Hickman, The Fantastic Four have rarely been more interesting or well written. That is until Hickman really started to get popular and some of his ideas began to sprawl out of control (and the comic book reading public’s interest—just where is S.H.I.E.L.D. going anyway?) and the series fell to the worst comic book cliché possible these days: the death and return of a character.

Re-imagining of the classic cover.

Still though, the house that Hickman built in the pages of Fantastic Four isn’t easily blown down. I personally hadn’t seriously read a Fantastic Four issue since the early 1980s when John Byrne was on the title, and I can’t honestly say I read Fantastic Four “seriously” even then. I was a kid and Fantastic Four was just one of those books that my parents occasionally bought me off the rack along with my mainstay favorites. Byrne’s work on the title did make a strong enough impression on me that I still follow him today, and of course a few years later he wrote and drew one of my favorite hero’s best ever origin series, The Man of Steel. Until I was turned on to Jonathan Hickman’s work by attending a meeting of my local comic book club which was discussing his brilliant Nightly News work from Image Comics, was I lead back to the Fantastic Four through a desire to read more Hickman. When I got caught up on what he was doing with Fantastic Four, and its spin off FF (Future Foundation), both titles became regular additions to my weekly pull list. Hickman’s stories “Solve Everything,” “Prime Elements,” and “The Future Foundation” reestablished the type of storytelling, while re-introducing old characters, that paid homage to the super sci-fi stories that made the Fantastic Four’s exploits so interesting, namely parallel worlds, micro-universes, and quasi-alien/human beings like The Inhumans and Atlanteans. These stories culminated though in a storyline that featured the death of Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, and Fantastic Four founding member.

The (short-lived) fate of Johnny Storm.

Incredibly skeptical of what Hickman was going to do after the death of Johnny Storm (which has turned out to be as shorter lived than Steve Rogers’ death), I picked up FF #1 and found that Hickman was still committed to telling intelligent stories and utilizing classic characters in new ways. His brilliant use of the Richards’ super intellect gifted daughter Valeria as a center point of an ongoing plot, and his inclusion of Doctor Doom as a member of the Future Foundation have really kept the characters and concepts fresh. Of course though, Johnny couldn’t stay dead for long, and as of issue #600, the Fantastic Four is reunited as a family again…almost. Fortunately, FF will continue on as a series. Richards and company, along with Spider-Man, should still have the time to devote to sci-fi hero adventuring while guiding the geniuses of tomorrow in a sort of “Richards’ School for Super-Intellectually Gifted Kids."

Can Reed's super science "Solve Everything?"

The only problem is that, while issue #600 deserves major credit for actually telling a massive story and avoiding the silly tropes that Marvel Comics has recently been inserting into their milestone issues (like reprinting all 600 covers in Thor #600, etc.) that feel more like filler than story, Fantastic Four #600 (as pointed out by Herve St. Louis in his review of the book) really did nothing to introduce the Fantastic Four or the FF, as a concept, to new readers, clue readers into just what it means that the Kree Supreme Intelligence is back amongst the alive and kicking, as well as a whole list of other plot devices and characters that are really not that well known, even amongst the most dedicated Marvelites. The fact that some of the issues of FF (that felt like filler  in some ways) told the story surrounding the more obscure characters’ current motivations were just not that strong or, in some ways, comprehensible to new readers since they lack the background behind these cosmic characters, really didn’t help matters. Hickman does sometimes devolve into an excessive amount of heaping storytelling that requires plenty of back knowledge that many readers don’t possess (again where is Hickman’s S.H.I.E.L.D. going anyway and is it still being published? I’d like to read a finish to the story…preferably one that leads to the return of Nick Fury as a regular…).

A man at war with himself.

So, disregarding the fact that the franchise has been forced to succumb to what I’m calling the “One Marvel Dead at a Time” syndrome (Cap was dead. Cap came back. Johnny was dead. Johnny came back. Now Thor’s dead again, or something.), I believe that Hickman has injected Marvel Comics’ oldest franchise with a new sense of relevance by breathing new life into the at times difficult family dynamic that characterized the Fantastic Four and made them so unique way back in 1961 amongst comic book heroes, while injecting a new cosmic sense of relevance into the super science and sci-fi that classified Fantastic Four as a major vehicle for some great stories. Stories like “Solve Everything” crackled with energy and asked the big questions. Can super genius really answer the big questions? Can devoting oneself to saving the world really allow one to actually save the world? The answer lies at the heart of the family dynamic/confrontation theme. Humans won’t save themselves, no matter how smart they are until they learn to live with one another in peaceful co-existence. The answer lies not in the minds of men, but in their hearts. Hopefully, this is where Hickman will take Marvel Comics’ most storied franchise next. Families, like the family of humanity, might disagree with one another, but when we put our differences aside we are truly capable of great things. That's what the Fantastic Four is all about, and that's what keeps them relevant, regardless of the writer or decade.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12