Review: Fantastic Four: Life Story
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Matthew Kresal.
Introduced in 1961, the Fantastic Four changed the face of comics. The foursome offered a new take on the genre as a dysfunctional but loving family; their presence put Marvel Comics on the map and set up a still ongoing rivalry with DC Comics both on the page and, later, on cinema screens. They’ve been the stars not only of their own comic for much of the last sixty years but a brief lived radio series, animated television shows, and sometimes ill-fated featured films.
Imagine, though, if they and a number of their foes were real? Existing in something very close to our own 1960s and living through the decades that followed, becoming involved with familiar events and figures from American Presidents to scientists and pop culture figures? In 2022, Marvel offered just such a vision with writer Mark Russell and artist Sean Izaakse in a six issue limited series Fantastic Four: Life Story.
The second limited series under the Life Story imprint after a Spider-Man series in 2019, the Fantastic Four series would follow a similar pattern with each issue taking place in a different decade. Opening in the 1960s, Reed Richards is approached by President John F. Kennedy to do what Dr. Ricardo Jones and NASA have been unable to do: put the first American astronauts into space. The familiar tropes are at play with Reed engaged to Sue Storm and Johnny being her brother who is brought along, though Ben Grimm isn’t exactly Reed’s best friend. Together, they make the fateful trip into space that changes the course of their lives forever after and gives Reed a vision of a coming threat: Galactus.
From that vision in space, Galactus and the threat of his arrival becomes the threat that hangs over much of the story. Reed will spend decades trying to warn against the danger, seeking funding for a space defense system from a number of US presidents while his work becomes an obsession. Trying to make his case leads him to clash with Dr. Jones both in meetings with President Johnson and in public on television on The Dick Cavett Show; later on, he encounters Carl Sagan at SETI, where the two clash over the Pioneer Plaque; and in the 1980s, Edward Teller telling Richards that his proposed satellite system needs to be pointed toward the Soviet Union and not Galactus. His efforts also take a toll on his marriage and friendships, waxing and waning over the decades.
Galactus as a looming threat also plays into an interesting theme in the story that reflects on our own world. It’s something that is first realized as a danger decades in the past but given only lip service or ignored in favor of more pressing problems in front of leaders whenever presented with it. In the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson ignores it owing to Vietnam and trouble in America’s streets. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Edward Teller are more concerned with dealing with the Soviet threat (and ironically, by hijacking Reed’s idea, inadvertently aide two of the Four’s foes in almost causing a nuclear war). By the 1990s and 2000s, the threat is heralded by the Silver Surfer’s arrival, with the world forced to accept that time has all but run out while still looking for options. Watching how history changes as a result is both fascinating for some of the clear implications of what does not happen but also as an analogy for climate change, with ignorance giving way to acceptance of the terrible but also how we might come together once the threat becomes too much to ignore once and for all. Much as Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels, Fantastic Four: Life Story can be seen as something close to climate change wish fulfillment.
As Darwyn Cooke did with the Golden and Silver Age DC characters in his New Frontier series, part of the joy of the series is watching how these familiar characters interact with the changing world around them and play off of events. Here, Sue Storm’s journey plays out across the changing social dynamics of the decades, becoming involving with the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements, leading to her role as an unofficial diplomat. Johnny Storm is very much a celebrity even twenty years after the mission, and becomes an uncle (and sometime surrogate father) to young Franklin Richards while still looking for a place in the world. Ben Grimm as the Thing navigates the loss of a great love while coming to terms with his new life over the decades, offering a street level view of this alternate timeline through his relationships and visits to his old neighborhood. With action sequences, appearances by members of the Four’s rogue’s gallery (most notably Doom and The Mad Thinker) and characters from across Marvel, the result is a rich tapestry combining the comics with alternate history.
Among die-hard comic fans, however, Fantastic Four: Life Story has been controversial. Something owed in no small part to its depiction of the dynamics between Marvel’s first family over the decades. Something which is perhaps understandable given that the previous release under the Life Story imprint had been a love letter to each decade’s Spider-Man comics set outside the standard Marvel continuity. Russell, however, played around a little more with the group and their relationships with one another, especially with Reed’s friendship with Ben coming later than in the main comics and the marriage between Reed and Sue being on rocky ground for years at a time. Between those changes and the tone, it’s easy to understand criticism of Russell’s writing as less than a celebration of the foursome or their history. Yet, playing out across the alternate history, it serves to ground them and realistically explore how the relationships between might have played out between them in a world where there is no need to maintain a status quo every issue and year after year. It’s an example of something that a limited series and alternate history can do, free of those constraints, and able to tell what might be a richer story.
Fantastic Four: Life Story is also aided by the fact that Russell’s writing is brought to splendid life by Izaakse as illustrator. From the opening page set in 1961 at the White House, Izaakse captures each of the decades with their public figures and changing fashions, if sometimes playing up the retro-futurism involved in a comic universe. The central four characters and Franklin Richards are all recognizable throughout, aging in ways subtle and more apparent as the years pass inside each issue. The second half of the series sees Izaakse aided in illustrating (with Francesco Manna on issue four, Carlos Magno on issue five, with the last issue featuring Angel Unzueta and Ze Carlos) but the quality remains consistent throughout and each issue feels like a natural growth out of the previous issue. Whether it’s Oval Office meetings, domestic moments, or large-scale action scenes, the art goes a long way to sell this decades spanning story.
The results may not be for all tastes, especially if you want Marvel’s First Family to be happy throughout. But if you’re looking for an alternate history take on the characters, one which grounds them in something close to the real world and actual family dynamics, Fantastic Four: Life Story is well worth a read. Both as an alternate history of the last sixty years and as an exploration of the Fantastic Four as both characters and as a family.
Matthew Kresal is, among other things, the author of the SLP book Our Man on the Hill and short stories in the anthologies AlloAmericana, The Emerald Isles, and The Scottish Anthology.