The Return of the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine?

Back in the summer of 2007, Marvel announced that the creative team of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch had been lined up to create tales of Marvel’s First Family: The Fantastic Four. The duo, best known for the chart-topping Ultimates and Ultimates 2, said in a couple of interviews that they were going to try to make FF the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine once again. It has been years since the comic was a top seller for Marvel and they wanted to see it become a top book again. While they love classic Fantastic Four runs like those created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby or John Byrne, they are not going to pay tribute to them by telling stories with the FF battling Galactus or meeting up with the Inhumans. Instead, the readers have been told to expect inventive stories featuring new ideas and mostly new characters.

**spoilers ahead**

Well, with Fantastic Four #554 we finally get to see if Millar and Hitch deliver the inventive chart-topper they promised. The issue, first in a four-part story arc entitled World’s Greatest, gives us a FF that travels time, an Invisible Woman that creates a new all-woman super-team, a rock star Johnny Storm, and a Reed & Ben that make appearances at elementary schools. The issue doesn’t really start delivery the story arcs plot until about halfway through when an old flame of Mr. Fantastic’s drops in at the Baxter Building and recruits him to aid in a world changing science project. Overall, Millar and Hitch deliver a straightforward story with classic versions of the main characters and classic Ultimates-style pacing with plenty of Bryan Hitch-patented “wide-screen” panels.

**spoilers end **

The question is, though, “does the issue pay off on the hype?” Millar and Hitch deliver a collaboration of the same quality as their previous collaborations. Unlike its immediate predecessor the Ultimates 2, however, FF is much less interested in creating melodramatic tension on an epic scale and is much more interested in giving the reader a fun, laidback adventure starring the first superheroes of the Marvel Age. If this run will be the return of a chart-topping World’s Greatest Comic magazine, that is for the readers to decide. To help in the decision-making, here is a link to six preview pages of the current issue.

Nick