As Marvel prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Fantastic Four – Mark Russell, Sean Izaakse, Nolan Woodard and Joe Caramagna’s Fantastic Four: Life Story #1 takes the famous quartet back to their humble beginnings in the ’60s. Much like its predecessor, Spider-Man: Life Story, the new series will follow the heroes through the decades and explore the ways the team is influenced by events in American history.
Fantastic Four: Life Story #1 begins in President John F Kennedy’s office in 1961. Kennedy is desperate to win the space race against Russia, so he recruits the one and only Reed Richards to design a new type of spaceship. Reed is thrilled to have an opportunity to build his ship that he plans to power using an experimental new subatomic fuel. Sadly, the other scientist involved in the project calls everything off due to concerns about the fuel and a degree of professional jealousy. In an impulsive act of obstinance, Reed decides to take his ship for a test drive without the permission of the government. With the help of his girlfriend Sue Storm, her brother Johnny and his friend Ben Grimm – Reed blasts off and the four become the first Americans to fly in outer space. Of course, the ship malfunctions, and the whole team is mutated into the super-powered Fantastic Four.
The rest of the issue follows the team as they adjust to the positive and negative aspects of their new powers and appearances. Throughout the ’60s, they can be seen appearing on tv with the Beatles, battling the Mole Man and marching alongside civil rights activists. It is fun to see the Fantastic Four against the background of the ’60s, but aside from the initial impetus of the space race, the time period doesn’t play too much of a role in the central story. In many ways, the comic is a fairly standard Fantastic Four origin story.
That is the formidable challenge contemporary creators are faced with. They are tasked with finding fresh ways to tell stories most readers are already familiar with. After all, this is the 60th anniversary of the titular heroes. But, Mark Russell does a great job of introducing a new and compelling element to the familiar story while hitting all of the classic notes. Russel includes Galactus in the team’s origin. Reed Richards glimpses the villain while they are out in space and proceeds to obsess over the cosmic threat he represents for the rest of the issue. This simple addition to the well-known origin story and the ways it impacts Reed Richards’s sense of self breathes fresh life into the narrative.
Izaakse follows Russell’s lead and takes a fairly traditional approach to the characters while adding a few subtle, new elements to the design of the world. The most visually stimulating sequences are the scenes in space. Izaakse excellently communicates the beautiful and ominous nature of the universe. Looking at his drawings of the stars makes it easy to understand the allure and the danger of space. Nolan Woodard’s colors add a great deal of depth to these scenes. Readers are accosted by flashes of orange and blue in the vast blackness of space.
Fantastic Four: Life Stories tells a familiar story with a twist and sets up all the elements of an engrossing plot. Now that Russell and his collaborators have established their characters, they can really begin to play with the universe. Readers with any amount of familiarity with Marvel comics will have an easy time predicting the events of the first few pages, but after that, they will be in unfamiliar territory along with the Fantastic Four.
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