Marvel Comics have announced “Fantastic Four: Life Story,” a limited series by writer Mark Russell and artist Sean Izaakse, will celebrate the team’s 60th anniversary this year.
The series will chronicle the team’s entire history, with a single decade’s key events being recounted per issue, and in real time, with the events being incorporated into the actual events of the decade. Issue #1 will start with the ’60s, when Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and Johnny Storm got their powers as a result of an accident during a journey into space.
Russell stated, “What I’ve always loved about the Fantastic Four is how it reduces the cosmic struggle of human survival to the scale of a family squabble while treating personal relationships as a matter of truly galactic importance.” He continued that the process of weaving the Fantastic Four’s history with the real world’s acted as reminder “of how smart it is to approach life like that.” Izaakse said that it is not only an honor to work on a Fantastic Four story, but that the honor is increased because of the opportunity to “tell such a moving and heartfelt story about these iconic characters, their struggles and triumphs in a new way that draws on what has come before.”
This is the second “Life Story” from Marvel: the first, “Spider-Man: Life Story,” by Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley, was published in 2019.
The Fantastic Four made their debut in their own series in November 1961 and were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This series marks Russell’s first Marvel series, following last year’s one-shot “Captain America: Marvels Snapshots,” while Izaakse has previously penciled the “Fantastic Four” ongoing under current writer Dan Slott.
“Fantastic Four: Life Story” #1 will be released in May. You can check out the preview pages here.
