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Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman: Family and the Future

February 15, 2023 by Doug Smith Leave a Comment

Try to imagine a solution to everything; not just the problems of the world, or the universe, but everything in existence. How do we reach this perfect world? And what will it cost to bring that vision to life?

Since their creation at the hands of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the Fantastic Four have stood as a monument to our limitless hope and imagination: a family bound together through a shared love of adventure. While the team shared countless stories over the years, taking them to the fringes of the unknown, even hope can start to dwindle over time. Decades of fear brought on by the information age would lead to a darker vision of the future, but it would be Marvel’s Civil War that ultimately fractured the four, with Reed Richards’ role in Iron Man’s regime driving a wedge between himself and his family. While talented writers like J. Michael Straczynski and Dwayne McDuffie would take steps to reunite the team, readers were still looking for someone to bring back what made them great in the first place: their desire to explore the unknown, and build the foundations of a better tomorrow.

This return to form would arrive through writer Jonathan Hickman, and a sprawling three-year run that would leave ripples across the entire Marvel Universe, re-establishing the Richards family as its beating heart. Pulling from the team’s past, present, and future, Hickman and an extensive team of artists, inkers, colorists and letterers would deliver a saga that would redefine the Fantastic Four, both as the world’s greatest comic magazine, and the family behind it all.

It Always Begins The Same Way…

Even the grandest stories have to begin somewhere, and for writer Jonathan Hickman, the story of his Fantastic Four begins with one man: Reed Richards. Arriving on the book in 2009 with little knowledge about the team, Hickman began devouring the book’s previous stories, where he found two major sources of inspiration: the FF’s dual identity as both team and family, and Reed’s transformation into a colder, more pragmatic figure. While comics in the early 2000’s had been embracing a darker tone for some time, Reed’s involvement in Marvel’s Illuminati and Iron Man’s pro-registration forces were seen as a complete betrayal both in and out of fiction, with the rest of the FF leaving him behind as his desire for a perfect world boiled over into an obsession. Countless writers would address this shift, with Straczynski and McDuffie having Reed and Sue rebuild their marriage while Mark Millar would bring back the team’s high-concept adventures. But for Hickman, Reed’s turn showed something deeper: a shift in his outlook from boundless optimism to something colder and darker. Something that Reed would have to confront within himself for the team to move forward.

[Read more…] about Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman: Family and the Future

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: Fantastic Four

The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Part 3: Terror & Wonder, 1966

September 3, 2022 by David Bowen Leave a Comment

[FF covers/interiors by Jack Kirby (p), Joe Sinnott (i), Stan Goldberg (c), Artie Simek & Sam Rosen (l)]

Part 2 of our Evolution of Marvel Cosmic series can be found here (along with a link to the first piece).

Yes, yes, these tales of moody pulp adventure likely never terrified anyone, not even the rugrats of 1966, but they did and still do offer visual wonders galore, from cosmic grandeur to those little melodramatic glimpses of a character’s essence (Ben Grimm’s deep sadness; Reed’s Jekyll/Hyde-like smooth arrogance breaking into cruel hysterics; Sue’s put-upon fury—these are, of course, their Silver Age iterations); now, admittedly these character moments are of types, sculpted, often grotesquely, in the bold manner of peak Jack Kirby. He and Stan had a knack for taking unsettling bizarro ideas from the surreal pulp magazines of their youth, but where Stan’s talent was for rather simplifying the interesting concepts behind these stories, for the sake of broader or perhaps just more juvenile consumption—Kirby’s pencils kept the weirdness alive and thrilling in demonstration of how deeply attuned he was to the art of mid-century, pop fantastika.

[Read more…] about The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Part 3: Terror & Wonder, 1966

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: Fantastic Four, marvel cosmic

The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Pt 2: Molecule Man, Skrulls & Inhumans!

May 28, 2022 by David Bowen Leave a Comment

[covers drawn by Jack Kirby; respectively inked by George Roussos, Joe Sinnott and Chic Stone]

Find part of our Evolution of Marvel Cosmic series here!

There’s no doubt that with the arrival of Galactus eager to feast upon our Earthly life energies or whatever in Fantastic Four #48-50, Stan Lee and, in particular, Jack Kirby finally opened up a whole new vista of storytelling within the nascent Marvel Universe. The invigorating potential for Kirby’s genius particularly unlocked not just the best Fantastic Four stories to come but also the King’s streak of cosmic epics in Thor, which maybe wouldn’t be surprising to Thor readers of the past decade. These two early titles are really where, post-FF #48, virtually everything about what we think of as Marvel Cosmic was first conceived.

The only major cosmic players to appear almost fully realized before Galactus were the Watcher and Super-Skrull. The Skrulls themselves, however, Stan and Jack weren’t quite sure how to depict, although their subsequent appearances over the first few years after their debut in FF #2 were far in advance of their original almost embarrassingly goofy conception. If not for their useful native shape-shifting abilities, they would’ve certainly gone the way of the vast majority of Marvel’s early one-off alien species.

Instead of the typical ignominious fate of many an early Marvel alien species, the Skrulls returned with increasingly sophisticated visual embellishment courtesy of Jack Kirby as he was really coming into his own as the King of this fledgling medium. [Read more…] about The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Pt 2: Molecule Man, Skrulls & Inhumans!

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: Fantastic Four, marvel cosmic, skrulls, watcher

The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Pt 1: Watchers and Skrulls

April 3, 2022 by David Bowen Leave a Comment

[cover by Jack Kirby (p), Paul Reinman (i), Stan Goldberg (c), Art Simek (l)]
[cover by Jack Kirby (p), Paul Reinman (i), Stan Goldberg (c), Art Simek (l)]
This series of articles will track the early rise of all the elements (the recurrent alien beings and venues) that lay the foundation for what will later be known as Marvel Cosmic. So you know this will be a love letter to the wonder-working duo of Stan “the Man” Lee and Jack “the King” Kirby. We’ll focus on moments where some new critical element is added or significantly revised or retconned. We’ll also look at what was happening at the time in US society and global affairs, broadly speaking (obviously, we’ll have many references to and analogies with the [first] peak of the Cold War but also sci-fi and even the counterculture). Our aim is to simply create a chronological guide to this particular (but vast) aspect of Marvel comics that hopefully inspires a deeper appreciation of our favorite cosmic characters and settings as they pop up throughout the Marvel Universe.

With the introduction of each new significant cosmic player or element from the early ’60s on, we’ll look at just the original portrayal, but I’ll try to clarify to the best of my ability how readers of the time would likely have seen these Kirby wonders, distinguishing them from the way we read them now in the 2020s.

Again, we’ll mostly focus on the alien, but the progeny of Earth, humans and otherwise, will be included as they appear, even if they aren’t immediately cosmic players or take their sweet time getting off-planet (like Adam Warlock and the High Evolutionary). (Rick Jones, however, very much to your chagrin no doubt, must wait until he’s bound to Captain Marvel.)

(Also, a side piece on Jack Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown at DC in the late 1950s might be of interest down the line. After all, it would prove, in retrospect, a trial run for exploring many of the zany sf elements he more successfully expanded on in FF—more grounded by Stan Lee’s character-focused melodrama, however much their contrary styles would see the creative team drift apart over time.)

Anyway, it’s going to be hella fun just salivating over some of that classic Kirby crackle and giant hat porn 😉 [Read more…] about The Evolution of Marvel Cosmic, Pt 1: Watchers and Skrulls

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: Fantastic Four, marvel cosmic

FF by Jonathan Hickman | Grief, Hope, and the Quest for a Better Tomorrow

February 23, 2022 by Doug Smith Leave a Comment

Since their arrival in 1961, the Fantastic Four have stood as timeless icons of relatability and imagination, with their dysfunctional-yet-loving dynamic as Marvel Comics’ “first family” taking them across the stars and into the frontiers of the unknown. But when tragedy strikes, and that timeless bond is broken, the surviving members of the family will see their team and their mission evolve into something else entirely. Welcome to tomorrow. Welcome to the Future Foundation.

To many, writer Jonathan Hickman’s tenure on Fantastic Four is one of the title’s most definitive runs, weaving together years of separate stories and firmly re-establishing the team as the beating heart of the Marvel Universe. Hickman would introduce countless iconic stories over his run, but the writer’s greatest mark on the title would come through a 2011 relaunch, with the series re-emerging under the new title “FF.” Following the team as they rebuild in the wake of an immense loss, the story acts as the throughline for Hickman’s vision of the Fantastic Four, digging deep into its characters and resting cosmic, existential adventures atop a more grounded tale of grief and hope. But while the story acts as a re-invention of its characters and themes, it’s also a celebration of Marvel’s First Family, and how even in the face of tragedy, hope and adventure can spring eternal. [Read more…] about FF by Jonathan Hickman | Grief, Hope, and the Quest for a Better Tomorrow

Filed Under: Featured, Marvel Reviews Tagged With: Fantastic Four, hickman, Marvel

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