In late 1961 the creative team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made comic book history when they created a new super team, the Fantastic Four, and began what we know today as the Marvel Universe. From that point until a few years ago the Fantastic Four were a mainstay on comic book stands across the world, and then due to a combination of sales issues and – if you believe what you read on the Internet – anger over the fact that Fox still own the movie rights to the franchise, Marvel made the decision to end the series. The series finally came to an end at issue #645, and the team got a hell of a “farewell” in the Secret Wars event. To me, that’s what Secret Wars was. Yes, it was an event book (and possibly the only decent one Marvel have done in a while now) and there were a lot of event-things going on with it, but ultimately what it became was Reed Richards vs. Doctor Doom one final time, and the conclusion was very satisfying as a Fantastic Four fan to say that ok, maybe Johnny and Ben will be sticking around in new roles, but the Richards family got to sign off in style and move onto their next chapter. But it’s been a few years now, and I think it’s time that Marvel bring back the Fantastic Four again… but not as they were.
Let’s think about where we left them for a moment, shall we? As I said, Johnny and Ben have moved on to new things. The Human Torch got involved in the Avengers Unity Squad, he got involved with the Inhumans, he’s more than kept himself busy in his time away from the group as a whole, while The Thing has also been keeping busy, not least of all by joining the Guardians of the Galaxy. Still, they will always be two members of the Fantastic Four to me. However, Reed and Sue are in a very different position. Reed absorbed the Beyonders powers at the end of Secret Wars and, together with his son Franklin, set about recreating the Marvel Multiverse. That’s a hell of a responsibility to be thrust upon him, but it’s almost a fitting one considering the Marvel Universe really began with the Fantastic Four, so if there’s one character who feels “right” in that role I’d say it’s Reed. Sue, on the other hand, feels wasted in her role. Yes, she’s with her husband, but in my opinion Sue has far more to offer than just wifely support for Reed and motherly support for Franklin. On top of that, Valeria also has plenty more to offer than just being the little sister of Franklin and the daughter of Reed. She may be even smarter than her father after all, so does it not feel like a waste that her story can’t continue?
The problem we have is that we can’t bring the Fantastic Four back as they were. Reed is so powerful now that any story could end with him just clicking his fingers and changing the outcome. Look at what Doom did with the same powers in Secret Wars for an example of just what Reed is now capable of. That’s the same with Franklin as well. Franklin has always been able to rewrite existence as he seems fit, which is a hell of a power for a kid to have, but is way too powerful to be part of a regular monthly comic. Where’s the story? Where’s the challenge? So, in my opinion, Marvel need to bring back the Fantastic Four with one major difference: they need to come back WITHOUT Reed Richards. I don’t want to see Reed stripped of that power for the sake of a return to the team. For one, it would do his character arc no good at all. Secondly, it doesn’t give us anything new to have the Fantastic Four back as they were. Yes, we all have a soft spot in our hearts for the original line-up, and they will always have a place in history, but in my opinion it’s not only time for Marvel to bring back the Fantastic Four but to revamp them. They were lacking in the sales department before the cancellation. It’s hard to actually think that that could be true, but it was. So, if they’re going to relaunch the comic then they need to do something new with it to generate new interest. And I know exactly what they can do.
Where To Begin?
The first question with a relaunch of the Fantastic Four is where to begin, and the answer to that, I think, is to begin where Secret Wars left off. Reed and Franklin are now the creative force behind the multiverse. They’ve got a role which is undoubtedly needed in the larger scheme of things. They would also undoubtedly be a part of the new Fantastic Four comic, but not on a regular basis. Reed would appear often as a supporting character, but he wouldn’t be one of the “Four”. Yet if you remove Reed from the group you lose one of the driving forces behind the group, that being the technology and the adventures that he caused with his inventions. Well, worry not because I have a solution for that: Valeria! As previously stated, the youngest of the Richards family is quite possibly smarter than her father. Why couldn’t she fulfil his role of technological genius? We’ve always seen the differences between Sue and Reed and the way they look at things and see the world, but it makes just as interesting a dynamic that Sue has to rein in her daughter and keep her in line when she has the smarts to do almost anything, and in theory get in to all kinds of trouble by doing so.
But if Reed isn’t a part of the new team, who is? For that let me direct you to the lovely Mrs Susan Storm-Richards. She is the character I would anchor the new team around. This year we got a wonderful event in all our lives called Wonder Woman. The first big-budget, female-led superhero movie proved that women can be just as heroic as any guys, can anchor a franchise, and can generate serious interest. The problem Marvel has is that they’ve always lacked really strong female characters. Sure, they’ve got Carol “Ms Marvel/Captain Marvel” Danvers, and they have a few smaller characters – Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman, and Kamala Khan, aka Ms Marvel, spring to mind immediately – but compared to DC Comics, Marvel really lack the iconic females. One they do have, who’s always been the number one woman in Marvel in my heart, is Sue. She’s such a great character, quite possibly the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four, one of the cornerstones of the Marvel Universe and while she’s been reduced to supporting character, wife and mother quite often over the years when she is put front and centre you get some of the best Fantastic Four stories ever written. In my opinion, you anchor the relaunch around Sue, and you leave Reed and Franklin to do their thing creating and protecting the multiverse while using them in support, leaving you to focus the new series around Sue and Valeria, their relationship and roles.
The Fantastic Four has always been about family as much as anything else. But it wasn’t just Reed and Sue at the centre of that, it’s also Johnny and Sue being brother and sister, and Ben practically being a brother to all three members. I’d want to keep that. However, I think (for now) the series could benefit without thrusting the other three members back together. That’s why I’d leave out Ben. I would, however, bring Johnny back into the group in support of his sister. Again, when you think of the great Fantastic Four stories over the years, Johnny and Sue and their relationship has been so important. Johnny as an uncle to Valeria in the new series would be just as important, with Sue, Johnny and Valeria figuring out what to do now that Reed is practically a god. To make the Fantastic Four we’d need to obviously add to these two central characters with two new characters, and I have ideas for that too, all focused around where Reed is and his position within the multiverse.
What Brings A New Team Together?
In order to do a relaunch for the Fantastic Four it’s important that you get the reasons for a new team coming together right. It’s also important that you tell a story that can’t just be solved by Reed looking at it and clicking his fingers and fixing the problem. So the story I’d tell is one actually CREATED by Reed (albeit not purposefully). The story I’d tell is one where Sue is feeling lost. Her husband has god-level powers and while she loves him, she’s unhappy with her role. She is, at her core, a hero, and she’s not done much hero-ing just lately. She’s also seen all her former friends fighting, many of them dying, and she’s been powerless to do anything about it for the most part. She’s feeling a little helpless next to the power of her husband and son, and unsure of her place, that is until she’s visited one day by a visitor from the multiverse.
This visitor, who I’ll call “The Exile” for the purpose of this story, has found his way into the Marvel universe (616) due to Valeria tinkering with experiments that have allowed him a path to them. He’s come because he’s fleeing from his own world, a world which has been ravaged by war and completely taken over by an insane dictator (and, since it’s Fantastic Four, why not go with an alternate version of Doctor Doom?). He arrives looking for Reed, aware that Reed has the power to completely change his world. He explains this problem to Sue, and she takes him to Reed to argue his case. The people of his world are suffering, and he doesn’t think it’s right. When he explains this to Reed however, Reed says he can’t interfere. He and Franklin have been creating billions of alternate worlds. They’re in charge of maintaining the stability of the multiverse, so that what happened to lead up to Secret Wars can never happen again. However, if Reed were to interfere in every world where there’s something bad happening it would be a never ending battle. There are an infinite number of parallel worlds with an infinite number of bad guys, and he CAN’T mess with the balance. That’s fair, right? He’s looking at the bigger picture. Sue, meanwhile, can only see that these people are suffering under a tyrant, and she wants to help.
The Exile is disheartened that he came to Reed for help and Reed won’t help, but Sue tells him SHE’LL help. She may not have the powers of a god, but she has a good heart in the right place, and she has friends and family that can help as well. Thus Sue goes to Johnny and she tells him outright what’s happening, she tells him about this world which is under threat, this world where there are no more heroes left to continue the fight, and she tells him she needs his help. Johnny, of course, agrees to help in whatever way he can. Why would he not, it’s his sister asking and it’s a good cause. They both agree they can’t do it by themselves however, and while they want to bring Ben back too they can’t. He’s unavailable. So they go to someone else. I’ll get to who exactly in a moment. The point is, however, they recruit a third member and, accompanied by The Exile to make four, and with Valeria assisting them, they head off into this alternate world to fight for the freedom of this oppressed people.
This is what I would make the new book about. The “All-New Fantastic Four” would be a team book with Sue at the heart of it, Johnny in a major role, my third character playing a massive part, and originally The Exile as the fourth fighting to free his own world and then joining them, or staying behind as they replace him with a new fourth (or Ben returns), while they head into the multiverse, travelling from world to world that Reed and Franklin have created and acting to fix the problems they encounter there. The “All-New Fantastic Four” become the new guardians of the multiverse, the ones who fight battles that nobody else can fight, and in the meantime they explore the dynamic of family (Sue, Johnny and Valeria, Sue’s relationship with the god-like Reed, Valeria’s finding her place in the world and Sue dealing with being the mother of the smartest girl in existence), and so much more besides. The fourth member is then either the character of “The Exile”, who could have his own story arc, or it’s a rotating spot filled with different characters every few arcs that fill a role needed for that particular story. It would be a very different comic than anything else going on however, and I think could be a fantastic read in the post Secret Wars world of Marvel, where this team don’t need to get involved in an event every year… they have much, much bigger problems to tackle!
Who’s The Third Member?
I did say I would get to who I would make the third member of the team, and now I will. When I think about the classic line-up I’ve always liked having Ben there as the physically strong powerhouse who tries to solve all the problems with punching. However, my problem with putting Ben back in that role is that it feels like he’s taking a step back in terms of the development of his character. Plus, the problem after 645 issues is what MORE can you do with Ben? That’s why I’d leave him out for the beginning, but I’d replace him with a new powerhouse. The dynamic in the Fantastic Four has normally been three guys and one girl as well, and I’d want to change that gender imbalance and even it up. My new powerhouse would be female, but it wouldn’t be the return of She-Hulk. Again, I feel like She-Hulk has done her own thing, she’s got her own stories to tell, and I wouldn’t want to hinder those by including her as a supporting character in this book. That isn’t to say, however, that I wouldn’t want a VERSION of She-Hulk. The character I’d want isn’t Jennifer Walters but rather Betty Ross, the Red She-Hulk!
To do this it would take some setting up, after all I’d want her in a particular role. She’s currently “cured” of her powers the last I knew. I’d want that undone for a start. Before the launch of the Fantastic Four comic I’d want to run a story in the Hulk comic where Betty regains her powers and loses control. She does something horrible, ends up hurting or injuring so many innocent people, and is considered a criminal. She goes through a huge fight but comes out the other side deeply regretting what happened and desperate to redeem herself. That’s where Sue comes in. Sue has heard about what happened when Betty lost control and she approaches Betty with an offer: come with her, join her and Johnny, go to this alternative world and get a chance to do some good with her powers, far away from the world which now thinks she’s worse than Bruce Banner was. For Betty, her role on the team would be about learning to control herself, learning how to fit in with this massive amount of power, and fighting for redemption, to do something good to help earn a little forgiveness for the damage she did.
That role could be made all the more difficult if she’s unable to fully control her power, unable to keep the Red She-Hulk side of her personality in check, and it creates a lot of tension as Johnny could take one stance against her while Sue is fighting for her. She has to earn Johnny’s respect and prove to Sue that she has that thing in her that Sue believes she does. Her relationship then with the characters would make a wonderful subplot for so many arcs, along with her involvement and knowledge of any versions of Bruce Banner, or any other gamma powered baddies they happen to run into on their adventures. While she’d never become the focus of the comic, Betty would make an incredible edition to the “All-New Fantastic Four”, and if/when Ben Grimm returns as the fourth member you’ve then got a ready-made battle of powerhouses, with Betty feeling as though her position on the team is under threat, and the possibility of an angry Red She-Hulk vs The Thing fight, which I’d want to give to Red She-Hulk to show just how powerful she actually is.
The Fourth Member
Then there’s the fourth member, who I dubbed “The Exile” above. I have a few ideas for this character. The main part of it would be that he’s the last surviving hero from his world, someone who’s been able to escape the villain (who, as mentioned, is an alternate Doctor Doom in my original vision for the first arc), and while we don’t know much about him we do know that he’s had some involvement with his universe’s version of Reed Richards in the past, which is how he’s found the 616 universe’s version of Reed. We also know that he’s always seen in a mask, which he won’t take off. This keeps the character mysterious, and saves the reveal of his identity for a future issue. That reveal could be either that he’s an entirely new character, a survivor from this alternate world who has no reason to stay there and thus joins the others, or that he’s an alternate version of a Marvel regular and a new twist on that character. Possible ideas for that is that he’s that universe’s version of Victor Von Doom, and that universe’s version of Doctor Doom is someone else. One train of thought I had for that is that, predictably, it’s the alternate Reed Richards in the armour – although this would be revealed before the reveal that The Exile is Victor, in order to keep the mystery up – which could make an interesting twist in the sense that it would then put Sue in the position of having to fight an alternate version of her husband, and possibly one who’s already murdered his version of Sue.
What would the future hold for “The Exile”? I do like the idea of keeping him around, making him a technology driven hero who’s willing to employ lethal force when he deems it necessary due to the world he’s come from (something that gives Johnny and Sue more conflict on the team, as they feel the need to reign that in), and yet have even his technological know-how pale in comparison to Valeria’s. Therefore that would give Valeria something to do as well, providing upgrades to his equipment and give her another “inventor” to talk with while she’s also accompanying her family on this wild adventure. If I couldn’t keep him around permanently – after all I would want to bring Ben back for at least one arc – then I’d like to have him reappear semi-frequently as a new reoccurring character, even if he only showed up as a Deux Ex Machina character to save the day when there isn’t any hope left.
What’s more, if we’ve got a vulnerable Betty Ross looking for redemption in the third character slot then the dynamic between Red She-Hulk and The Exile could prove interesting. It’s someone who’s lost his entire world and someone who thinks she could be a threat to hers. They could both learn a lot from each other over the course of time, and while I’m not sure about a romantic story developing between them, at the very least it would make an interesting clash of characters, as I’d want my supporting cast to be as interesting as I could. The problem with having the character be an alternative version of Victor Von Doom is that while I have a leading female character and a supporting female character I’d have an all-white “cast”, which isn’t ideal. It’s possible that I could race-change the Victor character but I’m not 100% sure on that. If he was a new character, fulfilling the same “smart, technology based” character role, then at least I would feel like I was doing something to address the all-white nature of comic book teams.
The Villains
And finally, my “All-New Fantastic Four” would need to have villains that keep the stories going and feel fresh and exciting. I have no doubt that I’d want to base some stories on Earth-616 and have the team come up against some classic villains – specifically the likes of Annihilus – and team up with some of the main Marvel characters for different stories as well, but for the most part I’d like to focus my stories on them travelling to alternate worlds and fighting the battles that they feel need fighting. They’d be the true protectors of the multiverse, the team who fight for the downtrodden across the multiverse, and a true team of heroes. The “main” villain that I’d want to use, both for the first arc and then others going forward, is that first villain that they go to fight. Not only would it be an excuse to bring back The Exile (if he stays on his own world) from time to time, but I think the idea of the All-New Fantastic Four squashing his evil empire would be enough to drive an alternate version of Reed mad enough to hunt them down through the multiverse. That then makes this alternate version of Reed and how difficult Sue finds fighting him a reoccurring theme.
If it went that route then for the first arc I’d like to end it where Sue has the chance to finish off this alternate Reed, and The Exile very much wants to see that happen, but she does the honourable thing, believing it would be wrong to sink to his level, and leaving that decision to come back and bite her in the future. He’d also have an intrigue in Valeria to explore, and Valeria having an intrigue in an evil version of her father. He’d be an interesting enough character that I feel like, with the way they’ve taken the Earth-616 version of Victor, he’d be a good replacement villain for the main Fantastic Four enemy.
Possible future villains are only limited by imagination. We could have them explore worlds that we’ve seen previously – giving a chance to see a “good” character, as I’d want Sue to be, take on a character like the “evil” version of Steve Rogers from recent times, along with the chance to revisit worlds that we saw in Secret Wars and beyond – along with new worlds, worlds that again are only limited by the imagination of the creative teams involved. We could involve mutants in storylines by having worlds where mutants have become the dominant race, or worlds where they’ve been driven close to extermination. We could have worlds where heroes have become villains or villains have become heroes. Or we could simply have brand new worlds with new characters that can provide a threat to our characters, where we see technology has gone insane, or we see worlds with no technology at all. “Trapping” them in a world without technology, and having Valeria have to come up with a way to get them home when she has nothing to work with, would make for a fun adventure, while the rest of the team end up dealing with a threat.
The All-New Fantastic Four
My point in this comic would be that it would be different to things we’ve seen lately. For those of you who read my recent blog about Spider-Gwen you’ll know that I’m very much in love with that character at the moment for NOT being the same old thing that we’ve seen a thousand times. In Spider-Gwen we’ve got a character who’s solved as many problems with words than she has with fists, which makes a lovely change for a superhero comic. I’d want to repeat that, if I could. I wouldn’t want stories where my characters get killed off for shock value. I wouldn’t want to have to react to all the ridiculous number of mega events that Marvel seem to be stuck in the pattern of doing. I’d want to take the All-New Fantastic Four and give them something new to do, make them heroes who do heroic things for the right reasons rather than the dark, twisted things we’ve seen in other comics, and most importantly I’d want to write stories where the impact of things going wrong actually matters, and where I don’t just retcon something to put it back the way it was after 6 months. My All-New Fantastic Four would be a throwback to the kinds of stories that I remember as a comic fan, stories that make you think and stories that give you good and evil as it should be.
With a team balanced two women and two men, with two of the original Fantastic Four line-up joined by two new characters, there would be something for the fans of the classics while also having something different enough that you wouldn’t be retreading the past but rather creating something new for the future. And best of all, with a comic book who’s primary character is Sue Storm-Richards you’d also get a strong female character, a leader and a character who’s willing to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Everything great about the original Fantastic Four could be reborn, with an eye on freshening things up and breaking from the status quo. And I’d hope that, given that kind of thinking, someone like Stan Lee would be proud to see his characters he created all those years ago taken in new directions and evolving as characters. There’s nothing I hate more than characters who can’t evolve (see: my hatred of Peter Parker). If Superman can be married with a son, and Batman can also have a son, why can’t the Fantastic Four evolve with the times as well? I think it’s time they do, and I think Marvel would be fools not to pursue that option… even if they can’t make money off the movie-rights (but on the bright side, with Red She-Hulk neither could Fox).
So, that’s why, and how, I think Marvel should bring back the Fantastic Four. Let me know what you think. If you like my ideas, why not let me know? And if you don’t, tell me why. I’d love to discuss my very favourite super-team with people. You can get me on Facebook (Facebook.com/ajebdon) or Twitter (@AlexisEbdon).
Thanks for reading, and happy Comic Book Wednesday!