FANTASTIC FOUR: LIFE STORY #1
This story is written by: Mark Russell, with visuals from: Sean Izaakse and Nolan Woodard.
One of the most difficult things to do for anything in media is to reuse a concept that has proven incredibly popular in the past, and make it as good as it was the first time around. We have seen it for years with movie reboots or television revivals, where you simply just do not get that same magic the second (or third and fourth) time around, with it then coming across as a shameless cash grab made by people who don’t care, or an embarrassment to the legacy of the original (hello Fantastic Four 2015). Of course, this is not just limited to film and television, as our beloved comic books have been guilty of more than their fair share of this over the years. We have Civil War II, which was literally only there to promote a new film (which was far better than the barely related comic book), we have Infinity Wars (again, same deal with Civil War II), and then we have the billion crises that DC Comics churns out to diminishing returns every few years.
Spider-Man: Life Story from Chip Zdarsky was one of the best comic book series to be released from Marvel for a good long while, as it used a concept that fans have been wanting for years, wherein we see the histories of our favourite characters happening in real time, from when they debuted, all the way to the modern day. For me, there was just something about seeing Peter Parker as an older gentleman that just made the story so much more emotional to read, and seeing how the seminal moments of his life actually affected him as he got older. Following the end of that series, fans were once again clamouring to see Zdarsky “Life-Story” more iconic characters, and a couple of months ago, it was announced that we would be getting our wish, albeit with Mark Russell as the scribe rather than Zdarsky. As always with something such as this, I took it with a far degree of scepticism as to what the overall quality of the story was going to be, mostly due to having less affinity with the Fantastic Four than I do with the Web-Head, but boy was I still excited to get stuck into this book.
I tip my hat off to Mark Russell, as he has indeed accomplished that difficult task, with this new series recapturing the “Life Story” magic of the original. However, unlike with the Spider-Man edition of this, I feel that Russell is taking the opportunity to really play around with the history of the team, taking a few more liberties with the source material than Zdarsky did, and stretching everything out so it takes place over a longer period of time, really giving us a more broadened view of how this first decade panned out for Marvel’s First Family. It also seems that we aren’t going to be getting a whole lot of detail going in to the various villain encounters either, as they was only a small focus on the likes of the Mole-Man, while Doctor Doom himself was completely absent from proceedings. The main focus of the series seems to be on the coming of Galactus, as we just kept going back to him every so often, with Reed being the catalyst for the Devourer of Worlds finding out about the Earth.
The one problem that I have found with this version of events thus far is the entire situation that is soon going to be surrounding the existence of Reed and Sue’s children. Franklin being born in around 1969, therefore being about fifty years old in the modern day, makes sense as that is how things would have happened, but it does raise one very interesting question: is Valeria even going to factor in to the story? Now technically, see was born in the late-1990s/early 2000s, so that would logistically not work for either of her parents in my opinion. Let us just say that Reed is around 35 or 4o years old in the beginning of this story, and Susan is 25 or 30 years old. By the time Franklin is born, Reed would be approaching his 50s as most, and his early 40s at the least; while Susan would be late 30s at most, early 30s at the least. That would mean that, if we go by how things actually would go down, Reed would be almost in his 70s when his daughter is conceived, let alone when she is born, and while this logistically does work for one of the male persuasion, just look at Hugh Hefner, for Susan, I don’t think she would exactly be in her prime child-bearing years by the time she is in her late-50s/early-60s. Basically, what I am saying here, is that this is likely going to cause a bit of a mess very soon, and it would probably be best to do a slight bit of retconning, and have Val be born in a couple of years, rather than way in the future, as she is really only two or three years younger than Frank in theory anyway.
My final point, as I think that I have rambled on for plenty of time at this point, is to compliment the artwork. Sean Izaakse seems to have been the absolute perfect choice to pencil this series, as it looks like he has the ability to emulate the style of this particular era, and considering that the person drawing the Fantastic Four at the time was “The King” Jack Kirby, that is not an easy task to complete, and I would say it is high praise indeed. He doesn’t just make it look like a 1960s Fantastic Four comic book adventure either, as he offers quite a few improvements, in order to make the whole thing still look and feel like a modern tale as well, which made it a much more fluid reading experience, as it did not take an absolute age to get through. Nolan Woodard’s colouring was the M.V.P of the whole thing though in my opinion, as he really brought every seen to life, whether it be just a mundane conversation between Reed Richards and President Kennedy, or that first time that Johnny catches fire on the space shuttle, everything felt incredible.
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