The same week as we get a lost story from Stan and Jack we have the first chapter of the Fantastic Four as brought to us by Mark and Bryan. Will Millar and Hitch have the same sort of lasting impact on the Fantastic Four as the characters’ creators have had? Probably not, such an influence is rare and its doubtful that either creator is up to the task.
But boy do they make a good Fantastic Four comic. I loved the pair on The Ultimates, and they’ve still got whatever spark it is that they bring to projects together. Far more character driven than anything we’ve seen from Millar’s Marvel work in recent years, this is the first chapter of getting new readers comfortable with Marvel’s First Family. The status quo button has been partially pressed, with Storm and the Black Panther no longer hanging around the Baxter Building, but we all knew that was going to happen eventually. The marriage is still sort of on the rocks, but let’s face it Reed and Sue are probably always going to remain the most stable couple in the Marvel U. As much as writers will play with breaking them up, or the tensions in their marriage, it’s not going to happen. That doesn’t mean that Millar is above tweaking that angle slightly, with an elementary school staff room of teachers talking about trying to bed the scientist when he swings by for show-and-tell.
What we get then is the prototypical FF comic, focusing on the family and the fantastic. The FF under Kirby and Lee was always best when it was inventing new worlds and using science fiction as a launching pad for stories, and here we get the beginnings not of a great superhero story but maybe a great science fiction tale.
It’s a first issue so there’s room for it either to spread its wings and fly, or discover that those are not wings strapped to its arms they’re salmon fillets and fall to the ground dramatically. Still it’s well worth a read and I’m on for the first arc at least.