With Matt Fraction leaving the Fantastic Four titles to focus on Inhumanity, the series will have a shift-around in 2014. FF will be cancelled, and the characters scattered into various other titles. Fantastic Four itself, however, will relaunch in February from the creative team of James Robinson and Leonard Kirk.

FantasticFourAlexRoss

As 2014 marks the 75th anniversary for the company, I imagine Marvel will be getting up to all kinds of things with the characters. For a start, there’s the Alex Ross cover above, which will be joined by variants from other artists including Katie Cook and Jerome Opena. The opening arc is called ‘Fall of the Fantastic Four’, so it sounds like things are going to be going JUST SWELL for the team.

22 COMMENTS

  1. Hard to see how this is not DOA. Robinson has had some really, really, bad reviews for his recent work and isn’t much of a sales draw, and Kirk, while reliable and a good enough artist, has never had much star power.

  2. Mark, Marvel has always counted its years as Timely as part of its existence as Marvel Comics, same as DC counts its National Periodical Publications years.

  3. “Fall of the Fantastic Four?” Didn’t Marvel just do that with Fraction? I swear I think Marvel is sabotaging FF because they can’t make movies with them.

  4. “With Matt Fraction leaving the Fantastic Four titles to focus on Inhumanity…”

    Or his contracts here weren’t renewed because sales were absolutely dismal. (I liked his “FF” okay, though.)

  5. After the way he wrote Donna Troy in his Justice League series, I lost my “fan boy” for Robinson. His Earth 2 was okay, but I felt missed the opportunity to really create something spectacular. I’ll pass on his FF.
    I really enjoyed Hickmans Fantastic Four.

  6. I feel like judging any writer based on their New 52 output is a bad idea. I loved Starman and for the most part the New 52 has felt like an editor-driven mess.

    That said, I haven’t read anything else Robinson has done.

  7. @ Kap – no doubt, new 52 has some bad editors, but Robinson has stunk well before the relaunch. His ok-to-bad run on Superman during the New Krypton era, his turrrrrrible Justice League stuff, etc.

    That being said, Starman is a work of art, and I’d like to think that James Robinson still exists in some capacity. But I doubt I’m going to spend my hard-earned money to find out if FF gets that Robinson.

  8. >> Mark, Marvel has always counted its years as Timely as part of its existence as Marvel Comics, same as DC counts its National Periodical Publications years.>>

    Not always, no. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have celebrated their 25th anniversary in 1986.

    They used to count from FF #1, but more recently they’ve tended to count from MARVEL COMICS #1.

    kdb

  9. I would totally buy a monthly Fantastic Four comic where they reprint Jack Kirby’s run with a nice coloring job like Matt Milla did on Tales of Asgard.

  10. I stopped buy FF a couple years ago when they instituted yet another gimmick storyline where the Human Torch was killed off so that they could make a big deal out of bringing him back months later. Haven’t followed it since.

  11. The Hickman run was amazing, from first issue to the last.
    Imho his letter at the last issue hit the nail on the head as to why it was so successful.
    Worth reading on its own any time.
    Don’t know how Robinson will do, as I also love his Starman endeavors, but haven’t read anything else that compares to those stories from him.

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