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What Is The FF?

Ten years ago was a very different time in comics. The shock of The New 52 was just cooling, as comic fandom anxiously anticipated what at first appeared a similar turn of events in Marvel NOW!’s relaunch of the Marvel Universe. One of the more interesting reshuffles was with the Fantastic Four. One of Jonathan Hickman’s major changes to the franchise was giving the team a legacy, students in the Future Foundation (or FF). After Reed Richards observes that the world’s scientists and leaders were inadequate to the changing world, he began gathering children from all walks of life in order to form the FF, a think tank designed to solve problems. They end up becoming important in events like partially curing the Thing’s inability to return to human form, saving the world from other-universal Reeds and the Celestials, and end up becoming a core part of the family.

Matt Fraction’s relaunch of Fantastic Four with Mark Bagley and FF with Mike Allred and Laura Allred left this dynamic largely unchanged. The new premise of the books was the Fantastic Four with their children Franklin and Valeria departing the universe for a road trip that would last only four minutes in real time, though for those four minutes they each pick a member for a temporary Fantastic Four to guard the universe in case things go wrong. This of course being comics, things go wrong. But more importantly, it’s a story about rebuilding when you’ve lost everything and how lasting relationships can be forged even in tragedy. [Read more…] about Marvel THEN! FF by Matt Fraction, Mike Allred, & Laura Allred!