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Marvel THEN!: Jonathan Hickman and Family Matters

By | October 31st, 2012
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Last week saw the close of a majority of runs that had redefined characters or elements of the Marvel Universe. It was a big week for a lot of Marvel fans, as Marvel NOW! edges ever closer and everything we knew becomes different.

So, as a tribute to some of the impressive work that helped shaped the Marvel Universe as we like it, we thought it would be appropriate to take a week and look back at some of those titles, to really try and dissect what it was that made it special. It could be any number of things, and it is obviously different per person, but what you’ll find in this article series is essentially our version of a viking funeral.

Today we keep the good times rolling by looking at Jonathan Hickman’s run on the First Family of Marvel.

As a note before we begin, spoilers for the entire run are inevitably discussed.

Yesterday I started the Iron Man article out with an “amusing” personal anecdote, so I figured I would do the same today just to keep myself consistent: I almost did not read and/or buy Jonathan Hickman’s “Fantastic Four” run.

In the last week of August of 2009, I was in preparation to move into the apartment I currently reside in. It is the first apartment I ever paid for and lived in on my own, having saved for the better part of a year the majority of my paychecks, and this was a big step up in responsibility for me. No matter how much money I saved by using DCBS to get all my comics, the adult in me had to make a big sacrifice when it came to my pull list. Considering that Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s run on “Fantastic Four” had just drawn to a close, it seemed as good a time as any to jump ship on what was one of my favorite franchises. I mean, at the time the name “Jonathan Hickman” was little more to me than the guy who had also written “Dark Reign: Fantastic Four” which, while really quite entertaining, was not enough for me to not take ample opportunities to cut off some ties to comics while on a budget (since I’m unfortunately one of those people who have trouble dropping books in the middle of a story).

The odd part about it was, I was avidly buying “Secret Warriors.” In fact, that was and is one of my favorite things that Marvel has produced within the last few years — so much so that I made my own personal omnibus of the entire run (in lieu of selling my singles and buying the real thing). So as I sat on my apartment floor having semi-unpacked (since I was too lazy to build the couch initially), reading “Secret Warriors” #7 fresh out of my DCBS box delivery, it hit me: there is absolutely no way that I can miss what the guy that writes this has planned for “Fantastic Four.” To do so would be just plain foolish on my own behalf. So I went out to the comic shop the next day, bought a copy of “Fantastic Four” #570, and now I’m writing my third Marvel THEN! article of the week in order to pay homage to such an important chapter in the Fantastic Four’s incredible legacy.

I share these stories to show my vivid personal connection to the comics I buy and write about, but the moral of the story is this: somewhere out there in an alternate universe (since we’re using the theory that a new universe/timeline is created upon every decision we ever make), there is a Matt out there who did not go for Hickman’s “Fantastic Four” run. And you know what? That Matt is probably homeless, alone and miserable, because he missed out big time. That’s how good this series was.

Hickman’s “Fantastic Four” run began with a bit of a backdoor pilot during the Dark Reign, sneaking in a quick multiverse hopping mini to follow-up and run alongside what Millar and Hitch were doing. Millar and Hitch had their unique vision to bring to the pages of “Fantastic Four” in that big-budget way that Millar has, yet there was definitely a stigma to the book; it seemed that, no matter how talented the creative team, nobody quite knew what to “do” with the team. They were a family and the explorers of the unknown in the Marvel U, yet that somehow isn’t what had defined them for some time. In fact, for the most part the Fantastic Four was a family unit that simply had outlandish adventures, rather than a family unit that resembled something like a family. While Millar and Hitch’s run certainly has its ups and downs with some fun high-concepts and crazy story lines, it very much wasn’t in sync with what Hickman was going to do on the book.

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So Hickman did what anyone would do in that situation: he built a bridge. One of the biggest things that Hickman would do in his tenure on the book, that which would make his story so powerful, is he put the family first before everything else. Yes, the adventures were a big part of it, but they weren’t just a team going on missions — they were a family acting as a unit. Yet, to simply switch gears so abruptly (which, I suppose is the case for those who didn’t read the Dark Reign mini…) seems like a bit of a misstep. Every incoming writer to a series changes things to his or her whims, but the hope is that it will be a logical transition. This is what Hickman gave us with Sean Chen — a story with a concept as big as anything Millar was doing (featuring the best Ben Grimm moment we’d seen in a long time) that dealt with the Fantastic Four as a family rather than a team. It was a backdoor pilot with a grandiose scale, and it led directly into everything that was to come.

As “Fantastic Four” truly kicked off and Hickman and Eaglesham took over the title as of #570, Hickman embarked on a three year mission on the title. The scope was unimaginable at the beginning, but somehow we went from a Council of Reeds that turned out to be evil all the way up to the messianic arrival of a future version of Reed’s son Franklin to do battle with an enraged Celestial. Hickman has proven himself to be the type of writer who always has a very specific endgame in ind, with “Secret Warriors” being a major example of this, and his planning to a title is absolutely uncanny. While yesterday I admittedly marveled at Fraction and Larocca’s ability to keep “Invincible Iron Man” on point for the duration of its story, Hickman’s attention to detail is a step above and beyond that. Meticulously plotted down to the tiniest of details, he’s the type of writer who doesn’t leave any stone unturned; those who joined the adventure at either the Dark Reign mini or issue #570 were given a first-class lesson in storytelling and the importance of planning, and bless whoever at Marvel decided to take the risk in letting such an audacious story be told.

But putting on a large-scale story that put the family back into the book wasn’t the only thing Hickman had on his plate for this series; he also brought a new mentality towards conventional Big Two storytelling. For the most part, your average comic at the Big Two is told in an arc to arc format (creator-owned books do this too, but there is generally more room for playful storytelling when there is no fear of editorial interference); it’s simpler, it’s effective and it is certainly what the public expects. Look at “Avengers” or “Justice League” — arc after arc after arc. “Fantastic Four” is a major franchise as well with two blockbuster films (albeit not bigger than the “Avengers” anymore, for sure), and the Millar/Hitch format of storytelling followed the arc-by-arc mentality to the T — but Hickman never fully subscribed to that. There were arcs, sure, but almost every issue was essentially a single story that could be picked up and read on its own just as much as it could be read as a sequential follow-up. The second arc of the book was barely an arc by traditional standards, yet it followed the connected path that most arcs traditionally do; every issue was part of a unified whole that was focused on a central endgame, but you can assuredly read #576 without ever having read #575 — and you won’t be lost for a second.

Of course, there are quite a few additional memorable things that Hickman did with his tenure on the book. You may remember the “death” of a certain member, leading into a title relaunch that led into dual books running simultaneously. The death of Johnny Storm and the end of “Fantastic Four” was perhaps the only time that the book veered into a territory that could’ve potentially turned gimmicky (perhaps only because of how it ended up being marketed, polybags and all), and yet in an era where comic book deaths lack impact on most fronts the final stand of Johnny Storm still ended up being an incredibly powerful scene. Hickman had woven a tale where every character was in some sort of mortal danger, leaving the identity of the deceased a mystery up until the last second (unless you read any major news site, which is a whole different issue). No matter how you came to the book, that final page mattered; you felt it in your bones, to the extent that this was one of the best executed death sequences in comics period.

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From there the stakes were raised even higher. The Fantastic Four are ostensibly the most forward-thinking groups in the Marvel Universe, considering that one of the smartest men in the room is a member of the team. Yet, despite being able to pull out a nifty gadget at the last second whenever a deus ex machina is needed, the team had been rather stagnant for quite some time. They still lived in the Baxter Building, they still quarreled with Doctor Doom every other week, Franklin and Val were still just children; it seemed like the book had been in a place of general “comfort,” because whoever was writing the title seemed fine with little character growth as long as the adventures were high-flying and full-on sci-fi. Yet with the loss of a family member, Hickman (and Marvel) used the opportunity to take things to the next level, re-launching the title as “FF” (for Future Foundation) and pushing the team boldly into a place they hadn’t been before. The line-up was expanded to include Spider-Man and Doctor Doom, Reed’s father came back to the future to help and the world was expanded from a science adventure team into a school that trained the greatest minds of tomorrow. This was a huge step up for the team and the book as a whole, since for the first time in perhaps forever a distinct and lasting change was made. The book was forever moving forward, and with any luck there won’t be a major step backwards (as some books tend to have with new creative teams — Google “Xorn” if you don’t know what I mean).

As “FF” continued on, things only got more intense. Hickman began to draw from earlier in the run towards the apex of his three-year story; the Council of Reeds somewhat returned, the wars that began brewing in the second arc of “Fantastic Four” began to boil over and all of the little seeds of future Franklin and Valeria started to have their conclusions — so much so that a single page in #582 that had an assumed meaning came back with a vengeance, creating a huge loop within the arc that only intensified the story being told. Johnny came back, Franklin fought a Celestial and the conclusion of the arc (entitled ‘Forever’) wound up being bigger than anything we’d seen before. It was like if you saw Avatar in IMAX 3D, only bigger. The road from Point A to Point B had suddenly become clear, and it turned out Hickman had performed a bit of inception on the audience; he had gotten into our heads and placed all these expectations for how ‘Forever’ would conclude, and then he went ahead and exceeded them. And as you inevitably hit that last page of ‘Forever’ and found yourself back at Hickman’s first “official” issue of the book, it was one of those moments where it was impossible not to have something in your eye.

That said, juggling two books at once most certainly helped. Assumedly, anyway. As the first year of “FF” was reached, “Fantastic Four” returned with an extra-sized #600 that kicked off ‘Forever,’ and the final story was told between both titles, allowing for an even wider scope and giving more space for our heart strings to be tugged. The books continued to read independently from one another so it wasn’t a traditional crossover, but those who read them with one another were given a story that truly was too big for one book. There wasn’t just two books in order to swell the market and pull as many dollars from fans as possible — this was a spin-off with a purpose, a very distinct function and focus, and one that kept with the title until the eventual finale last week. Add to that a few extra issues to tie off the loose ends that didn’t see finales in ‘Forever’ (Bentley and the Wizard, a few things from the future with Franklin and Val, Spider-Man’s involvement, etc) and introduce a few new ones (with the Black Panther that will assumedly see some focus in “New Avengers”) and we’ve got an incredibly well-rounded finale to one of the most bold runs the title may ever see.

So when all is said and done, what did we get? A Fantastic Four we had never seen before: a new title, a new mantra, new costumes, new characters, a newfound sense of optimism – a bold new direction. There are many people who frequently complain about the state of comics (both those that read and those that don’t), but it’s a fair guess that those people may not have followed along with Hickman’s run on one of Marvel’s biggest titles. If anything should inspire confidence in Hickman’s upcoming “Avengers”/”New Avengers” run, it would be this.

Jonathan Hickman has left his mark on the Fantastic Four franchise, and that’s undeniable. Yes, there are those new costumes I mentioned (and that will remain changed in a similar fashion for the foreseeable future), but he changed both the landscape of storytelling and how we forever see this group. It’s impossible for the book to become just another average team book again, which is very much what had happened, because now the title is singularly defined by the familial aspect. It has been a while, but this is perhaps Marvel’s biggest all-ages title again; not in the sense that most people perceive modern all-ages comics (i.e. “comics for kids”), but one that can actually be read by all ages. Fraction has stated that the upcoming Marvel NOW! relaunch of the “Fantastic Four” will be “taking back the Incredibles,” so that assuredly isn’t launched, but you should be sure to thank Hickman for so elegantly and pointedly changing the way we see comics here. That’s a feat very few have pulled off, and very few will.

And if you were once like me, and for whatever reason missed out on this fantastic era (pun very much intended), you’d do well to run to a store and ask for all their trades.


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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