Fantastic Four: Atlantis Rising Primer

In the 1990s, epic multi-title multi-issue story arcs were over-saturating the market, one of the many causes for the comic book crash of the 1990s. Most of Marvel’s attempts at these types of stories was to try and replicate the popularity generated by the X-Men’s Age of Apocalypse and Spider-Man’s Maximum Carnage story arcs. Tom DeFalco made his attempt with Atlantis Rising a crossover that featured the Fantastic Four, Fantastic Force, the Inhumans, Thor, and the Sub-Mariner. It saw the raising of Atlantis by Morgan le Fay and the return of Attilan — home of the Inhumans — to Earth after a period on the moon.

It was an attempt to tie up loose ends in the recently cancelled Namor the Sub-Mariner series and loosely involved Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch (who were part of the crossover but weren’t involved in the main conflict). It was such a wash that the various plot changes were dropped, or ignored following the Onslaught event. The only lasting change was Attilan being returned to Earth, but this was later undone in the Inhumans mini-series of 1998.