The Fantastic Four: The End is Fourever

With the coming of an unpopular “Fantastic Four” movie a few years ago, Marvel Comics pulled the plug on its first family.

“The Fantastic Four” was the first superhero collaboration of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. 

Scientist Reed Richards, girlfriend Sue Storm, her teenage brother Johnny Storm and best friend test pilot Ben Grimm flew into space. They encountered cosmic rays that transformed them respectively into the stretching Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Girl (later the Invisible Woman), the fiery Human Torch and the rocky, muscle-bound, ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing.

The Fantastic Four battled a rogue’s gallery of bad guys, the Mole Man, the Puppet Master, Dr. Doom, Galactus. They discovered lost World War II-era characters such as Namor, the Sub-Mariner. The comic book introduced the Black Panther and the Silver Surfer.

After “The Fantastic Four” came Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, Dr. Strange, the X-Men, Daredevil … after the Fantastic Four came all of the Marvel characters. All of them.

So, it marked the end of an era when Marvel discontinued the comic a few years ago. Though it also seemed cynical since many readers believed Marvel ended the longest-running superhero title because the company had years earlier sold the movie rights to the characters to another movie studio.

But then again the 2015 Fantastic Four movie was pretty bad. Why promote a film that doesn’t remain true to the comic book characters by another studio when Marvel Studios had blockbusters of its own to promote?

So, when Disney recently acquired Fox studios, meaning Marvel (owned by Disney) might soon have creative movie control again of Fantastic Four and the X-Men (movie rights owned by Fox), it only made sense that the FF comic may return.

The new Fantastic Four comic is scheduled for release Wednesday, Aug. 8. Lots of speculation about where the FF have been the past few years, who the villain will be, etc.

But before finding the new FF, perhaps a visit to the old FF.

“Fantastic Four: The End is Fourever” collects those final issues from a few years ago. In truth, the end was anti-climactic. It is a happy ending, mostly. It is accompanied by solo ends for each of the Four. 

But it is not really the book to visit for a reminder of what made the FF great.

Except for an included feature of a “World’s Greatest Covers” gallery. It highlights some of the great covers in the 50-plus-year history of the FF. Which is indicative of some of the great stories.

Stories worth visiting, or revisiting, to celebrate the return of the Fantastic Four. My money’s on revisiting the first appearance of world-eating Galactus and his herald the Silver Surfer.

The 1960s storyline emphasizes what made the Fantastic Four, well, fantastic.