Wondering what's so fantastic about Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four? Well, new writer Jonathan Hickman has a plan to bring back the series' forward-looking aspect by literally looking to the future and telling old people to get out the way. What...?
Talking to Newsarama.com, Hickman explained that - as part of Marvel's Heroic Age branding - Reed Richards is going to form something called the Future Foundation for Marvel's fictional scientists. But what is the Future Foundation? Hickman explains,
The Future Foundation is an outreach of the Fantastic Four. It's kind of a side project of his that has to do with his kids, and his responsibility to them, ensuring that there's a better world for them to grow up in... I mean, I just think that there's this thing where a scientist can only handle one scientific revolution in their career, because once they experience that revolution, it changes everything, and they spend the rest of their life defending it. I think that's what happens when you get old. You try to squeeze every drop out of life instead of remembering that as human beings, we do bold, fearless things to push the race forward, and that's not a sport for old men. Like I said earlier, I think we're just kind of at a place where, not to be agist or anything like that, but I think a generation is coming to an end of their usefulness, and we're at a place where it's time for something new. We don't need people who are afraid of tomorrow running things. It's dangerous, and it's not good.
It's an interesting concept, especially for a nearly-fifty-year-old concept to be exploring. Marvel has historically been stymied in trying to bring the FF to an Avengers-like level of success; will returning the series to glory days where it was consistently inventive and "new" be the way to do that?
Fantastic Four #579 is released in May.
Hickman's "Manifesto" For Fantastic 4 In The Heroic Age [Newsarama.com]