Fantastic Four in the 2000s
The 2000s saw the Fantastic Four go from a rough slog to some of the best stories written about the characters since the 1980s.
Issues #25-32 were the last issues of Chris Claremont’s run on the title. While I usually praise Claremont’s work, the later part of his Fantastic Four run was dismal. After Heroes Reborn fizzled, he apparently Claremont thought readers wanted more Heroes Reborn. At the time he penned two Heroes Reborn one-shots that gave us a glimpse of what happened to Counter-Earth after all the heroes left. It mostly featured Doctor Doom taking over that world. This bled over to Fantastic Four, where Doom and his generals (different warlords of Counter-Earth) try to conquer Doom’s own world. This leads to a rather convoluted plot where Mister Fantastic gets trapped in Doctor Doom’s armor and has to pretend to be Doom in order to keep these generals under control. It features a “shocking” wedding between the Invisible Woman and “Doctor Doom”, this was all a round-about way to ultimately trap these generals on Counter-Earth’s version of the Baxter Building where they are never heard from again. Claremont’s last work on the Fantastic Four was a one-shot titled the “Fantastic 4th Voyage of Sinbad” which also saw the return of Marvel Girl (Reed and Sue’s adult daughter from an alternate future) and Franklin Richards. This would effectively bring them back into the main title since Chris Claremont put them away for safe keeping where they were mostly forgot about.
After Claremont’s departure, there was an odd two-parter by John Francis Moore where the Fantastic Four investigate weird happenings in the town of Revelation. It’s got aliens, time travel, ghosts, and a lot of other bizarre things. I suppose it’s worth a read if you ever wanted to see the Invisible Woman team-up with Kid Colt.
They then gave writing duty over to Carlos Pacheco, who worked as writer and artist for most issues between #35 through 50. Pacheco’s run had some new and interesting takes but also was mostly he was brought on to clean up some of Claremont’s loose ends and re-establish some of the status quo, which is an annoying habit Marvel has when things change a little too much. The run had two major arcs issues #35-44 and 46-50. The first arc introduced the Gideon Trust, an organization that wanted to buy up all of the Fantastic Four’s secrets mostly to get access to a working Negative Zone portal so they could exploit its natural resources. In the middle of all of this was a sub-plot about the Fantastic Four teaming up with Noah Baxter to build a brand new Baxter Building which ends up being placed in the ruins of the old Four Freedoms Plaza. The Noah Baxter plotline was an odd one, suggesting that Noah Baxter build the building specifically for Reed Richards, which negates all previous fact that the building existed in 1949 and was built by the Leland Baxter Paper Company. Or that it was also the former headquarters to the All-Winners Squad of World War II. There are some continuity gymnastics you can make to explain it all. I choose to think that Noah Baxter inherited the building and help Reed redesign the top floors to serve as the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, but I digress.
The real reset button arc was the next one which introduced a new cosmic level villain named Abraxas. About a year earlier, Marvel published a limited series titled Galactus the Devourer which saw Galactus go out of control and in need of some putting down. That story ended with Galactus being turned into a star, effectively killing him off. They decided to walk that back realizing they just got rid of a major foe whenever they wanted to do a space adventure. Pacheco’s told a story that said that Galactus was the only thing keeping Abraxas back. See, a lack of Galactus left a universe open to invasion and destruction at the hands of Abraxas, a multiversal being that really got his rocks off destroying alternate realities for… well, reasons. This whole plot was a roundabout way of bringing back Franklin’s mutant powers and using them to not only bring back Galactus but also his unborn sister who died during childbirth in Fantastic Four #267. This replaced Marvel Girl with a fetus which was now growing inside the Invisible Woman again. I could go on for hours about Franklin’s bizarre relationship with sex and his parents, but that’s something for one of my comedy articles. Anyway, the whole point of the story was to give Reed and Sue a second child. At the same time, it was a really odd catch-22 where Marvel was walking back something they did in the past, were trying to re-established the status quo, and yet also move the characters forward. It’s all very confusing.
If you read Chris Claremont’s run and you’d think that they were trying to push away from Reed and Sue being married, in that they shuttered Franklin away for months on end and there were a few “will she or won’t she?” stories with the Sub-Mariner. Likewise, the introduction of Alyssa Moy, Reed’s old flame, raised the same questions. Sanity seemed to reassert themselves when they remember that oh yeah, the Fantastic Four is supposed to be a book about family. The thought to bring back stillborn Richards baby is a puzzler, especially since they had Sue go through that pregnancy a second time. It’s also dredging up a plot from 18 years ago. Why they didn’t just have Sue get pregnant with a new baby is anybody’s guess. In heindsight, what made this kind of stupid idea unregrettable was having good writers do something useful with Valeria Richards after the character was finally born, but that doesn’t come until later.
Issues #51-54 had Pacheco’s working with both Karl Kessel and Rafael Martin. Three writers working on one story is never a good sign, and his was done to wrap up Pacheco’s dangling plotlines involving a human/Inhuman hybrid series called the Hidden Ones as well as rush through Sue’s second run on her second pregnancy. Like all previous pregnancies, this one was no less dangerous for Sue or her baby. This time, Reed isn’t around to save her and they are forced to enlist the aid of Doctor Doom. Kissel did the next few issues, including a three part story arc in issues #57-59 which featured an entire world overrun with off-springs of the Thing. During Pacheco’s run, he decided to make it so Ben Grimm could change back and forth between his human and Thing forms at will. Since Marvel prefers it if Ben Grimm is a constant prisoner of his own body who suffers the fear and rejection of normal people all the time. So this three part story served to have Ben sacrifice his humanity (again) to save the world from being overrun by an army of Things.
This all opened things up for Mark Waid to take over with artist Mike Wieringo. It was another attempt to take things “back to basics” but also fit the Fantastic Four into the new millennium. The Fantastic Four was now, suddenly, a corporate savvy organization that has an entire corporate wing that manages licensing rights. The title also went back to telling fun stories that weren’t heavy in tone or requiring a lot of knowledge about past continuity. This was actually a refreshing alternative to most other Marvel books that were published in the immediate post-9/11 days which took a sorrowful, angry, or conspiratorial tone. It was understandable since at the time the entire world was shaken by the tragic events of that day. Marvel Comics being headquartered in New York City, the terror attack was certainly more painful and personal for most. Fantastic Four, at least, was untainted by this anger and hurt. Leave all the terrorist hunting to Captain America, or the sorrowful tributes to the perpetually dramatic Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four was a title about not only family, but also unlocking scientific mystery and exploring strange new places and themes. Waid succeeded in this for the most part. But unfortunately, without many teeth, the Fantastic Four title didn’t really have many memorable stories at the start of his run.
It wasn’t until issue #67 did Waid really start to shake things up. He wrote a five part story called Unthinkable. In this story, Doctor Doom decides to attack the Fantastic Four in a way he had not done before. This time, Doom attacks the Fantastic Four using his occult knowledge, something that Reed Richards knows very little about. This included making baby Valeria his familiar, banishing Franklin to Hell, and ultimately scarring Reed’s face. It was such a big deal, they decided to revert the title back to its legacy numbering with issue #500. It seemed that big changed were in order as the Fantastic Four had to deal with the fact that Doctor Doom attacked the team to their very core. Franklin was deeply traumatized and Reed was now embittered and seeking some kind of revenge. Ah, now here comes the post-9/11 themes.
Now, I will give Mark Waid some credit here, instead of doing the revenge fantasy thing that was going on in other books, Fantastic Four was used as a commentary about the price and folly of revenge and striking in anger. Issues #503-508 featured a story arc titled “Authoritative Action”. In it, Reed decides the ultimate revenge against Doctor Doom was to take over Latveria and liberate its people. This puts the Fantastic Four at odds with the United Nations who were against this move. Despite the fact that the Fantastic Four uncover that Doctor Doom committed some horrific atrocities against his people, they soon find themselves at odds with Nick Fury and SHIELD. Even though they liberate Latveria, the Latverian people want nothing to do with the Fantastic Four. Adding to this massive cock up is some tragedy when the Thing is killed in the final battle. If there was a better commentary at the time for the subsequent US led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11, I haven’t read it. Granted, it’s a grossly simplified commentary, but it still stands up some 20 years later with the same war still going on with no end in sight. It’s a cautionary tale that nobody in power at the time would bother to listen to, any such talk was considered unpatriotic in a time when blindly supporting the President of the United States. But I’ll save the soapbox since I can’t really say any more about the War on Terror that hasn’t already been said in the 20 years since 9/11.
That said, if you thought that any of the changes Mark Waid had made during those issues were going to stick, you’d be disappointed. In a very un-Fantastic Four story, “Hereafter” was a 3 part story where Reed builds a device that transports the team to heaven so they can petition God to bring the Thing back to life. Naturally, this huge gambit totally works and God (who happens to look like Jack Kirby) draws the Thing back into existence. This all kind of flies in the face of all the science that is typically behind the Fantastic Four. Also, the idea of a machine that can bring you to heaven really made death very pointless in the Marvel Universe. Why even worry about mortality in a comic book when one of the main characters can take a quick spin into the afterlife and petition God for a take-backsies. Thankfully, this device is never seen or used again, not that doesn’t stop other writers from finding ways of bringing dead characters back to life all the time, but I digress.
Another interesting arc during Mark Waid’s run was a story he co-wrote with Karl Kissel titled “Dysfunctional” which ran from Fantastic Four #514 to 516, at least as a gimmick. This story features a new version of the Frightful Four that was a polar opposite to the Fantastic Four in nearly every way. The Wizard now has a wife and daughter, with a very rapey back-story and well, Hydro-Man, since he’s the easiest opposite you can have to counter the Human Torch. This incarnation of the Frightful Four didn’t last longer than this arc, and Salamandra and her daughter Cole are never seen again. The next arc, running from issues #517-519 was part of the Avengers Disassembled event. This story has the Fantastic Four defending the Earth from alien invaders who want revenge against the Earth for allowing Galactus to live even though they had multiple chances to kill him off — you know that old chestnut? The only difference was that they were also seeking to capture the Invisible Woman because her powers could be used to kill Galactus. This story was supposed to show that stopping alien invaders without the Avengers around was, like, super hard. Except for the plot kind of loses credibility when you remember the Fantastic Four do it all the time without the help of any Avengers, thank you very much. That’s the problem with most of the Avengers Disassembled crossover issues, except for the main arc which happened in the Avengers, the other titles don’t have much impact on the main story and are more like “what are we going to do without the Avengers?” only, the answer is literally every comic that doesn’t feature the Avengers as guest stars. The point I’m getting at is, while the Avengers breaking up was a huge deal for the Avengers, it really wasn’t that earth-shattering for everyone else. Keep in mind, this was before the first Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and the Avengers weren’t really that central to everything in the Marvel Universe yet. At the time, an “X-Men Disassembled” would have had bigger consequences.
Anyway, that whole storyline actually leads to another one of Mark Waid’s more interesting arcs in the run. Issues #520-524 featured an arc called “Rising Storm” which took a look at a few aspects of the Fantastic Four. In the previous arc, Reed uses a device to swap Sue and Johnny’s powers. So for most of this arc, Johnny and Sue have to learn how to control new sets of powers. It gives both characters a greater sense of their individual struggles. The story also features the Fantastic Four temporarily separating Galactus from his power changing him back to Galan of Taa. They take this as an opportunity to try and teach Galactus to remember his centuries-lost humanity by taking him around Earth and showing him what everyday life is life for normal people. What they don’t expect is that Galan is a pompous dick with a superiority complex bigger than his appetite when he’s Galactus. It’s an interesting take, trying to humanize a being that usually considers itself beyond good and evil, and forcing him to see things from the perspective of the “ant’s” he mostly ignores when he’s chomping down on a planet. Obviously, Johnny and Sue get their powers swapped back and Galactus goes back to his planetary binge-eating like nothing happened, but it is still an interesting deconstruction of three unique characters.
After some filler issues by Karl Kissel, J. Michael Straczynski took over as a writer in issue #52.7. This came after Straczynski breathed new life into Amazing Spider-Man, and my guess is Marvel wanted him to repeat the same success with the Fantastic Four. It doesn’t go quite as well. In his first arc in Amazing Spider-Man, Straczynski brought up the idea that Spider-Man’s powers actually had a mystical connection to an ancient spider-totem, that he was destined to get those powers instead of the powers is that of an accident. The concept shook Spider-Man to his core an caused him to think of his abilities in ways he never thought of before. At the end of the day, Marvel’s answer to this question is “both”, but the mystic elements of Spider-Man’s powers have not been totally ignored since, as they were a major part of Dan Slott’s wildly popular Spider-Verse event.
Straczynski tried to repeat that same idea in Fantastic Four #529-532, which suggests that the cosmic rays that gave the Fantastic Four’s powers weren’t just ordinary cosmic rays, but a message sent by an alien entity. It’s an interesting take at trying to remove any remaining outdating science fiction from the Fantastic Four’s origins, namely that cosmic rays give you super-powers. They don’t… unless you consider cancer a super-power… However, it was just the same idea he had for Spider-Man but with different window dressing. I think if there is any takeaway from this, it’s that instead of trying to go back and re-explain the Fantastic Four’s origins in the most minute detail, it’s just better to keep it vague. They went on a space flight, they got hit by cosmic rays, the got powers, end of the story. Anything else is just needlessly complicating things.
Anyway, from there Straczynski’s plots were usually tied into whatever was going on in other Marvel books, or setups for events. For example, issues #533-535 had the Thing and Human Torch battle the Hulk after he trashed Las Vegas. This is a catalyst that leads into the Planet Hulk storyline where the Illuminati — a clandestine group of heroes that includes Mister Fantastic — decide to exile the Hulk in space. Issue #536 and 537 acted as one of many prologues to the Civil War event, it involved Doctor Doom returning from hell and trying to reclaim Thor’s hammer, which had reappeared following the alleged death of Thor during Avengers Disassembled. This is not only the lead-in for Civil War, but it also sets up Straczynski’s run when they relaunched Thor about a year later.
Issues #538 to 541 is Straczynski’s most interesting run and it happens smack in the middle of Civil War. In a nutshell: a new law comes into place that would force superheroes to become authorized government agents so that there is some accountability for their actions. This raises a lot of moral, ethical, and constitutional issues and naturally, the superhero community is divided over it which leads to a war between the two sides. Mister Fantastic takes the side of the pro-registration forces, while Sue and Johnny eventually side with those against. I guess Reed forgot that he was opposed to the idea the last time the idea was brought up 10 years earlier during Acts of Vengeance, but I digress. Lastly, you have the Thing, who realizes that he can’t choose sides and instead opts to step away and leave the country and let everyone sort it out on their own. The real breaking point is the revelation that Reed has been working on a massive calculation to “solve everything” and that he foresaw the registration act coming and got involved to manipulate events in the most beneficial way possible. The fact that he kept this secret from his family is the wedge that splits the Fantastic Four apart. On the lighter side, the Thing goes to France where he joins a team of superheroes there. Ben comes to enjoy how simplistic and easy things are in France, and he also gets to say “It’s Time to Fuck” in French in the middle of a battle.
Where Mark Waid’s take on the government in the post 9/11 world was simplistic, Straczynski’s take on it was more layered and examines it on an individual level. The war was a very divisive issue where Americans had to balance their individual freedoms with the fear of future attacks, and the need for more security. Was government intervention a necessary oversight, or a human rights nightmare waiting to happen? Not only does it touch on the for-and-against arguments, it also takes the time to explore the position of people who can’t decide and would rather step aside. Who are the real patriots? Who is right? Who is wrong? Well as far as Civil War went, everybody kind of lost in the end because it tore a family apart as much as it divided an entire country. Straczynski also took it as an opportunity to also compare the Marvel Universe to the competition. It’s not a coincidence that the heroes that Thing pals around with in France are all based on the DC Comic’s Justice League of America. Civil War was a story that was dense with continuity and interpersonal relationships between characters. Compare that to DC Comics at the time, it was a simpler place. Characters were interconnected, sure, by there isn’t that weight of history in a fictional universe that hits the reset button ever decade or two. It’s a gross simplification of the differences between Marvel and DC, but it works if you look at it from a “the grass is always greener on the other side” point-of-view, which I think Straczynski kind of felt as he briefly jumped over to work for DC a few years later for a run on Superman that was widely panned.
However, Straczynski’s run was cut short, and he was replaced with writer Dwayne McDuffie took over and finished the Civil War plotline starting with issue #542. This arc ends with a poignant story in issue #543, which serves as an epilogue to Civil War. Framed around the Thing and Johnny watching a “behind the music” style documentary about the Fantastic Four, the team is reminded of everything they have been through over the years and that in the end, they are a family. The story ends with everyone agreeing they should get the band back together, but there is a lot of work and soul searching that needs to be done before they can ever function the same again. However, with the change in writers, you can already guess that some kind of deep introspective changes were going to be ignored in favor of an eventual return to the status quo. That’s exactly what McDuffie set out to do in issues #544-550, which saw Reed and Sue temporarily leave the team, giving their spaces over to the Black Panther and Storm (who had recently gotten married). It was an interesting take since T’Challa was a scientific genius in his own right as much as Storm was a suitable replacement for the Invisible Woman. Unfortunately, any attempts at exploring this new team was seen more in Black Panther’s own book. Here, Dwayne apparently didn’t think the Fantastic Four could support itself without two of its founding members, so Reed and Sue are always lingering around. Also, just when the new team is starting to work well together they switch things back to the status quo. More disappointingly, Duffie’s follow up arc “Epilogue” (from issues #551-553) basically comes up with a flimsy excuse for everyone to suddenly be okay that Reed basically deceived and lied to them about his secret formula with a weak ass time travel story where they interact with future versions of themselves where everything turns out a-okay if they just stop bitching and agree with Reed.
The creative teams switched again after this, with issue #554 to 565 with stories written by Mark Millar and mostly drawn by Bryan Hitch. The pair were still fresh off their wildly popular runs on the Ultimates (the Ultimate Universe version of the Avengers). I personally don’t like this run, but it did bring forward some important elements that made future Fantastic Four titles work so much better. The first arc from issue #554-557, involves the return of Alyssa Moy. It at least ties up the lose end about why she and Reed Richards broke up in the first place. It does, however, revolve around a dull plot about Moy and her husband Ted Castle building a new Earth for all the rich and famous people to escape to when the planet Earth becomes uninhabitable and ends with the Fantastic Four and nearly every other hero fighting a giant robot based off Captain America that is nearly indestructible.
The following arc titled “Death of the Invisible Woman” is a cheap shot that runs from 558-562, which leads you to believe that Sue Richards is going to get killed off. Well she does, and she doesn’t. As it turns out she was a version of her from a possible future that goes undercover as the Fantastic Four’s nanny for Valeria so she can manipulate events so her future ends up working out. It also features the “New Defenders” a team of characters from the distant future that is a possible future of a possible future of the Old Man Logan storyline. Frankly, it’s filled with new characters that you could care less about and features the death of a major character without actually having to kill them off. An interesting element to this story, however, is that it’s revealed that Valeria Richards is actually a super-genius and despite being a toddler, has an intelligence far beyond her years and this whole time she’s been “playing dumb”. It’s a suitable development for the character who, by this point, was just a prop that was pawned off to babysitters whenever there was adventure. This allowed writers to do something with a character who would be a baby for many years and allowed them to get away from the same baby trap that Franklin always put writers in. Either Franklin was a liability that needed to be hurried away from danger, or he was a dangerously powerful mutant that could destroy them all with a thought. At least with Valeria they gave her a more rounded skill set, but also created a character that could keep up with and challenge her father. Valeria’s bond to Reed would be much stronger than the one he has with Franklin, whom Reed always seemed to have a hard time trying to relate with.
In the middle of this, the Thing proposed to his new girlfriend, Debbie Green and there is a wedding on the way. This gets quashed in the next arc, “Doom’s Master” which ran from Fantastic Four #566 to 569, and is the final arc of Millar and Hitch’s run. The story suggests the idea that Doctor Doom was actually trained in everything he knows by someone called the Marquis of Death. The Marquis of Death was a way of following up on Clyde Wyncham a character Millar created for his retro-series Marvel: 1985. It’s bland, takes away from Doom’s past as a self-made-dictator, and he also killed off Aunt Petunia. You can’t just kill Aunt Petunia! That’s the Thing’s favorite Aunt.
From there, Marvel gave the series over Jonathan Hickman and Dale Eaglesham who would ride out the rest of the decade. Their work would lay the foundation to one of the best and well regarded Fantastic Four runs since John Byrne. The stuff they worked on here would also play into the grander scheme of things to come in the Marvel Universe. It is also the last good run of Fantastic Four before the “dark times” when Marvel canceled the title in an alleged attempt to blackball 20th Century Fox’s attempts to make more movies about the franchise and waiting out the rights agreement on film deals for the properties. More on that in my next installment. Hickman’s first arc, “Solve Everything” has Reed finally putting his intelligence to good use: solving everything. But before we get into that, Hickman did a prelude to his run-in Dark Reign: Fantastic Four, a limited series that was tied into the Dark Reign event. This all leads to Reed discovering that there is an interdimensional council that exists that consists of counterparts of himself from across the multiverse. Their goal? Making their world’s utopias. Of course, it all looks good on paper, but these guys aren’t entirely on the up-and-up as we will soon learn in the 2010s.
