I must start off by declaring that I am not a fan of The Fantastic Four. In total, including some annuals and one-shots, I own less than 20 issues of The Fantastic Four. I just wanted to set up the context of this review. I’m a fresh pair of eyes into the world of The Fantastic Four, or as Marvel’s First Family is now known as, The Future Foundation.
As a jumping on point, I think Hickman did a good job in establishing the current status quo for the FF. Johnny Storm is (presumed) dead, Reed Richard’s father, Nathaniel Reed, has returned from the Future, The FF now house an entire crew of characters where the younger ones seem to be “wards” of either Reed Richards or Susan Storm (as depicted in the 2-page spread near the end of the issue).
The story starts off with Reed Richards viewing a holographic recording made by Johnny Storm. A video last will & testament where Johnny Storm requests that Peter Parker should be his replacement on the team. I would have liked to see an actual conversation with Peter Parker about his invitation to join. Did Reed show Peter the message? Who approached Peter in the first place and how did they convince him to join?
It seems like we just skip ahead to Peter’s first day on the job. I felt a bit of disconnect there.. I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. The rest of the issue does well though. We get a glimpse into the state of mine of the main players, like Ben, Franklin and Valery.
Steve Epting handles the penciling duties and does so admirably. I was familiar with his work on Captain America and I think Marvel chose the right guy for FF, for the inaugural run at least (first 6 issues, maybe 12 at the most). It’s the right tone to use. I’ve always found a certain “sadness” in Epting’s work.
All in all, it was a decent first issue. As mentioned, being unfamiliar with The Fantastic Four, I didn’t have a certain expectation that needed to be satisfied. The sole reason I picked up this book is because of the inclusion of Spider-Man. If I see that Peter is “mishandled” within the next few issues, I will certainly drop this title, but for now… I’m intrigued. I want to see where this is going. At least Marvel didn’t just replace Johnny and kept it business as usual, they completely turned everything on it’s head and shook things up. This IS the Future Foundation and NOT The Fantastic Four 2.0. I think it’s far enough removed from the original team (including snazzy new outfits, the white is a bold choice) that long-time Fantastic Four fans shouldn’t see this new series as being blasphemous. I also like that Marvel didn’t make a HUGE promotional deal about this. They’ve managed to keep it low-key and I think that’s a good thing. I don’t get the sense that FF is being published strictly for sales figures, it seems like the creative team involved genuinely had some good ideas that they wanted to put on paper and see what would happen.
Bottom Line: You should at least give the FF a chance. You owe it to Johnny (even though he’ll be back and we all know it, lol).
3 out of 5 stars. This first issue could have benefited from a few more pages to flesh out the new status quo. Looking forward to what will happen next though.