The Fantastic Four by Ryan North: Fantastic For Fans and New Readers

Fantastic Four Volume 1: Whatever Happened to the Fantastic Four?

Quick Review: Fantastic Four by Ryan North is a fittingly fantastic read with exciting scientific adventures and compelling character studies. The simple archetypes ease the reader into the story before surprising you with the depth these characters hold. A catastrophe that forces the Fantastic Four out of New York City has them starting from square one, further helping the reader ease into the Four’s world even as enemies old and new crop up in issue after issue.

For long-time fans, North illuminates long-time supporting character Alicia Masters’s relationships with each of the main four, adding depth to them all while making Alicia feel like a true member of the family now more than ever. That makes Ryan North’s Fantastic Four a great read, whether you’ve been following the team since the 60s or just heard about them last week.

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Marvel’s First Family

Superhero comics can be a challenge to get into.

This isn’t a novel observation. It’s often one of the first things you hear about superhero comics, at least in regards to “The Big Two” publishers: Marvel Comics and DC Comics.

Now, in my opinion, the actual difficulty of getting into superhero comics is exaggerated, but I fully admit that there’s a lot of evidence against my claim. Between decades’ worth of continuous storytelling and creative and managerial decisions upending that same continuity on a regular basis, Marvel and DC do not make it easy for the readers.

That said, both companies have published a few comics that make for great jumping on points. These stories serve as a reintroduction of the characters to a new generation of readers. I’ve recommended a few of these titles over the last year already, such as Steve Orlando’s Scarlet Witch or Jed Mackay’s Black Cat. And I’d like to recommend another.

Fantastic Four Volume 2: Four Stories About Hope

Now, there’s a caveat; the Fantastic Four are never going to be the easiest superheroes to get into. In many ways, they’re the originals, the blueprint for all the other superheroes Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko would go on to create together. That means their history is among the longest and fullest of Marvel’s output, introducing characters and concepts that would go on to affect the entire Marvel Universe.

The Black Panther, Super-Skrull, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, Uatu the Watcher and Doctor Doom are just a few of the characters that originated in the pages of Fantastic Four only to expand far beyond those same pages. In essence, the history of the Fantastic Four is the history of Marvel Comics. That’s why creators over the decades have referred to the Four as “Marvel’s First Family.”

Taken in all at once, the Fantastic Four are a lot.

However, once you get to know the characters, they’re surprisingly grounded and approachable despite their illustrious history and sci-fi adventures. Ryan North’s take on the quartet showcases this, making it one of the most accessible and enjoyable Fantastic Four books ever written.

So let’s take a look!

Introducing: The Fantastic Four!

The Fantastic Four have one of the more famous and well-known origin stories, so we can run through it real quick:

Scientist Reed Richards and pilot Ben Grimm steal Reed’s experimental rocket after they’ve been grounded. With siblings Sue and Johnny Storm assisting them, the four fly the rocket into space. Bombarded with cosmic rays, the four are transformed:

Reed becomes the rubberized Mr. Fantastic, able to stretch his body indefinitely
Sue becomes the Invisible Woman, capable of manipulating light
Johnny becomes the Human Torch, able to create and control fire
Ben becomes The Thing, a rock creature with superhuman strength and durability

Other major players include:

Alicia Masters, professional sculptor and Ben’s wife
Victor Von Doom, supervillain, sorcerer, dictator of Latveria and self-proclaimed rival to Reed
Franklin Richards, Sue and Reed’s son with reality-warping powers (long story)
Valeria Richards, Sue and Reed’s daughter and Doom’s goddaughter (longer story)
Jo-Venn and N’kala, Ben and Alicia’s adopted space-alien kids

Breaking Up the Band

Fantastic Four Volume 3: The Impossible is Probable

Reed Richards has an extensive history of having the best intentions and causing the biggest problems. The most prominent examples come in the company-wide events Civil War and World War Hulk, in which his choices had devastating consequences.

As a result, he’s already on thin ice with the entirety of New York City—including his friends and family. His latest drastic measures—revealed a few issues in—leads to the team’s breakup and effective exile from the city.

This allows the story to take things nice and slow for the first few issues, introducing us to our characters. Ben and Alicia, Reed and Sue and Johnny and on his own each get a chapter to themselves, letting us know who these people are before revealing the exact cause of the big breakup.

Each of these introductory issues cover a lot of ground in a limited number of pages, giving us a taste of not just each hero’s power set, but the strong moral backbone that makes them heroes. They are faced with problems that they cannot punch, stretch, vanish or blaze their way out of, forcing them to rely on their intelligence and empathy.

Master of Her Domain

With superpowers being of limited use in these early issues, long-time supporting character Alicia Masters shines. Without superpowers, Alicia’s contributions to FF stories have typically been moral support or a damsel to be saved. But as Ben’s partner in dealing with freaky sci-fi occurrences, she gets to be the brains of the operation for a while.

Happily, this role doesn’t suddenly end when Ben and Alicia reunite with the rest of the team. While Reed and Sue are typically able to tackle most problems with their vast knowledge, Alicia shows exceptional critical thinking skills and an intuitive intelligence that finds answers the super-geniuses of the team might miss. Alicia is a skilled and well-trained artist, as well as a blind woman who has to navigate a world that isn’t always built with her in mind. With these life experiences, Alicia has developed a different type of intelligence that North showcases throughout the series.

Sci-Fi Adventures

Fantastic Four Volume 4: Fortune Favors the Fantastic

The first trade does an admirable job of easing the reader into the Fantastic Four’s world, but North hits the ground running once the team is reunited.

The FF are sci-fi explorers, traveling across time, space and dimensions—and they’ve made plenty of friends and enemies along the way. So at a certain point, the reader simply has to accept that sometimes a bad guy’s going to show up, have a one-sentence explanation of who they are, and you’re just going to have to roll with that.

While that might be a little frustrating for some readers, I assure you, North’s skill as a writer more than makes up for it. If anything, North knows how to make getting tossed into the deep-end a fun experience.

Our central characters and their interconnected relationships have such strong characterization that they carry much of the story. Even when a sci-fi event made me think “that doesn’t make a lot of sense” or “I don’t think that’s how that would work,” I was willing to roll with it all because seeing these characters act and react to these sci-fi events was so engrossing. I know just enough about science to be annoyingly nitpicky about sci-fi, but North was able to consistently quiet that part of my mind and make me enjoy the ride.

The adventures are highly creative with clever use of perspective. One story is told from the point of view of aliens the Four are attempting to contact, leading to chaotic misunderstandings. Another is told from the point of view of a sentient computer, while yet another is told from the perspective of a mysterious narrator who isn’t revealed until the end. At times, the series feels like a sci-fi anthology with the Fantastic Four as a framing device.

A Big Heart

If you’ve read my other reviews, you probably picked up that I value a piece of art that’s dripping with love and sincerity. It’s why I love romance stories. It’s why I love ambitious pieces of indie art. It’s why I wax poetic about blue hedgehogs and wolf goddesses and magical girls for 1,000-2,000 words a piece. And it’s why I’m about 1,000 words into gushing about the Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four Volume 5: Aliens, Ghosts and Alternate Earths

The Fantastic Four are a family, and their love for each other is constantly reinforced throughout North’s run.

The team knowing each other like the back of their hands often saves the day, but it’s expressed in lower-stakes situations as well. It’s little but meaningful things like Ben consistently providing audio descriptions for Alicia so she’s always in on the strange happenings around them, or the whole team learning braille to better empathize with her.

It’s things like Reed and Sue’s relationship being so secure that she can crack jokes about her past romances with other men, and Reed will laugh along. And it’s things like Ben standing up for Johnny and his cool new mustache.

That last one makes sense in context, I promise.

The team may start off separated at the beginning of the series, but their bonds are the driving force of the story.

Conclusion

Ryan North’s Fantastic Four is a great read, whether you’re new to the team or you’ve been a fan for years. The characters are charming, and their love for one another is deeply moving. The sci-fi adventures are creative and compelling, toying with the readers’ expectations while also providing the comforting familiarity of mid-20th-century adventure serials. And the way North builds on the characters’ long histories will delight long-time readers.

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