Fantastic Four #1

History

The direct editorial context for this issue is the Onslaught crossover of summer 1996, in which the Avengers and the Fantastic Four apparently sacrificed themselves to destroy a psionic threat; in-story, Franklin Richards — the nearly omnipotent son of Reed and Susan — subconsciously shunted them into a pocket universe (Counter-Earth) where they were reborn without memories of their prior lives. Marvel's motivation was commercial: the Fantastic Four title had suffered comparatively weak sales while Spider-Man and X-Men books thrived, and editor-in-chief Bob Harras oversaw a deal in which Jim Lee's WildStorm studio took full creative responsibility for Fantastic Four and Iron Man. Lee plotted all twelve of his issues while co-writer Brandon Choi scripted the dialogue, with pencils and layouts by Lee himself inked by Scott Williams; the issue shipped with two variant covers at a 1:1 ratio, and also included a six-page 'Time Slip' promotional feature imagining how classic characters like Doctor Doom and Nick Fury might look if created in the 1990s.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Fantastic Four (Vol. 2) #1 launched as part of the 'Heroes Reborn' crossover event (1996–97), directly following Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #416, which had ended the original series' 35-year run.
• The title was produced entirely by Jim Lee's WildStorm Productions studio — one of the first times Marvel outsourced a core ongoing series to an outside, formerly competing company.
• Written (plot) by Jim Lee and (script) by Brandon Choi, with pencils by Jim Lee and inks by Scott Williams; editor-in-chief was Bob Harras, with Mike Heisler and Jonathan Peterson as editors.
• The story functions as a deliberate retelling of the original Fantastic Four #1 (1961): the team gains their powers via cosmic-ray exposure on the Excelsior spacecraft, with updated details — Ben Grimm is now a Gulf War veteran pilot rather than a WWII figure, and Susan and Johnny Storm are financial backers of Reed's project rather than crew.
• In-universe, the entire Counter-Earth setting — including all supporting characters not native to Earth-616 — are constructs of Franklin Richards' subconscious imagination, a detail only revealed retrospectively in Heroes Reborn: The Return (1997).
• The Heroes Reborn version of Kl'rt (Super-Skrull) makes his first appearance in this issue, disguised as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Wyatt Wingfoot; his true identity as a Skrull is not revealed until Fantastic Four (Vol. 2) #5.
• The Heroes Reborn incarnations of Harvey Elder (Mole Man) and Matthew Storm both debut in this issue; a behind-the-scenes, off-panel appearance of the Heroes Reborn Silver Surfer is also embedded in the issue's closing sequence, though he is not fully revealed until a later issue.
• The series ran for 13 issues (the planned 12 plus a 'World War III' crossover finale written by James Robinson); the full run was collected in the Heroes Reborn: Fantastic Four trade paperback (first published 2000, with a revised edition in 2018).

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Variants (4)