Ultimate Fantastic Four #1

History

The series was assembled under the direction of Ultimate Marvel project leader Bill Jemas, who assigned co-writing duties to Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis — both veterans of the Ultimate line — with Adam Kubert as penciler and Bryan Hitch providing cover art and costume design. Grant Morrison had been involved in conceptualizing the series and was at one point expected to write it, but departed Marvel for an exclusivity deal with DC Comics before the project was finalized, leaving Millar and Bendis to shape the book. The two writers worked entirely via remote communication — Millar from Glasgow, Bendis from Portland — with an agreed-upon workflow in which Millar wrote the plot and Bendis scripted the finished dialogue; both later acknowledged this unusual collaboration in the collected hardcover edition. Millar has stated he was unsatisfied with the original 1961 origin and deliberately rebuilt it from the ground up, replacing the space-race premise with a teleportation experiment centered on the N-Zone.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearances (Earth-1610 / Ultimate Universe) of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, and Franklin Storm.
• Written by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar; penciled by Adam Kubert; inked by Danny Miki; colored by Dave Stewart; cover art by Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary; edited by Ralph Macchio under editor-in-chief Joe Quesada.
• Part 1 of the six-part 'The Fantastic' arc — the characters do not adopt the superhero names Mister Fantastic, The Thing, Invisible Woman, or Human Torch in this issue; those identities emerge over subsequent issues.
• The Ultimate origin replaces the 616 cosmic-ray accident with a N-Zone teleportation experiment set at a government-funded Baxter Building think-tank, where young prodigies including Reed Richards and rival student Victor Van Damme work under the supervision of Franklin Storm.
• Grant Morrison was originally attached to write the series but left Marvel for a DC exclusivity deal before the book launched, leading to the Millar/Bendis co-writing arrangement.
• Bryan Hitch designed the characters' costumes for this series, which accounts for their visual resemblance to the Ultimates aesthetic he had established on that title.
• The issue was released with a cover date of February 2004 and has been reprinted in multiple formats, including the Ultimate Marvel Flip Magazine #1 (2005), a Marvel's Greatest Comics edition (2011), and the Ultimate Fantastic Four Epic Collection Vol. 1: The Fantastic (2025).
• Ultimate Fantastic Four was the fifth continuing series launched under the Ultimate Marvel imprint, following Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates, and Ultimate Marvel Team-Up.

Cast · 5 characters

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Key issues in Ultimate Fantastic Four

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