Marvel’s First Family blasts off in a brand new Fantastic Four #1 this week. After writing X-Men, Invincible Iron Man and The Mighty Thor, Matt Fraction takes on Marvel’s First Family and their extended family. Fraction and Mark Bagley relaunch Fantastic Four #1 and later this month Fraction and Mike Allred give us FF #1.
The Marvel NOW! relaunch sees Reed, Susan, Ben and Johnny taking the kids on a cosmic vacation in Fantastic Four while a select team of heroes stands in for them back on Earth in FF. Fraction tells Marvel.com why he’s chosen to write the Fantastic family.
“The family unit of it all; adventure dad, adventure mom, that whole thing, when you’re a kid, is great. And The Thing. Greatest comics character of all time, or super greatest? Now I’m struck that in 102 issues, Stan and Jack pretty much built a universe. That’s a tall order, creatively, an impossibly high bar.
I want to tackle that kind of challenge, to take on a book whose mandate, whose creative soul, means to invent wildly and with reckless abandon.”
Fraction follows an epic run by Jonathan Hickman. What is the tone of the new title?
“The Incredibles.” That “The Incredibles” was kind of the perfect modern Fantastic Four story and wasn’t a Fantastic Four story is, like, a provocation of creative war, y’know? Again, talk about impossibly high bars, but there you go. Can there be a Fantastic Four that’s wildly new, wildly inventive, and that appeals to everybody that might encounter it, regardless of their age or how many comics they’ve read? Let’s find out.”
For more of Fraction’s interview here’s the Marvel.com link.
Artist Mark Bagley joins Fraction on this Fantastic voyage! Here are some images from inside their premiere issue courtesy of Marvel.com.
The first image looks like a new interpretation of the iconic moment when the four were first bombarded with cosmic rays. Ben Grimm is in human form but the kids are in the picture so…
This must be a dream as we see Franklin wake up from a nightmare. A sign of things to come?
The final shots show the family in what looks like prehistoric times complete with a dinosaur….always welcome in an adventure in time and space!
My Geek Wish: Reed Richards vs. Dr. Nemesis in a mental clash of the scientific titans! I loved how Fraction wrote the X-Club on his Uncanny X-Men run. Nemesis will be in Cable and X-Force but it would be great fun to see Reed put the arrogant genius in his place!
By Editor