Join me as I read through the Ultimate Marvel universe. Today, I read Ultimate Fantastic Four #1-6. I collected these issues in the trade paperback Ultimate Fantastic Four vol. 1: The Fantastic. You can also read them online with Marvel Unlimited. This arc reboots the Fantastic Four for the Ultimate Marvel universe. In it, they are reimagined as young geniuses caught in a freak accident that grants them super powers.
Review
Ultimate Fantastic Four is an interesting comic book. Its main characters are scientists, so there is a lot of science jargon in speech and thought bubbles. Of course, the writers of UFF aren’t scientists, so we get a lot of what we regular folk would think scientists sound like. There is not much action in these issues until the very end. But even then, we only see individual members punching at a large monster. The teamwork and family dynamics that the group is known for is not yet developed here.
I find it a bold choice to start with a slow development for the Fantastic Four. Will they become the lovable family of heroes that Marvel fans adore? Who knows. But I will say, Reed and Ben’s backstory as grade school friends is very compelling. The introduction of the Baxter Building as a think tank for super genius teenagers is also a cool feature. I hope that future stories have more action and better group dynamics.
Recap – The Fantastic Rise
Reed Richards is a genius. His siblings detest him. His father looks down on him. Only his mother supports and loves him. He is the constant target of bullies at school, but gets occasionally defended by his friend Ben Grimm. At age 11, Reed is recruited into a government-sponsored think tank at the Baxter Building. He is one of many teenage geniuses who are working to develop new technologies and advance science for the good of humanity.
Ten years later, Reed attends a test for his alternate dimension teleportation machine. He is accompanied by his Baxter Building classmates Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Victor van Damme. His friend Ben Grimm also stops by for a visit. The test goes wrong and Reed and his four friends disappear. This is when things start to get weird…
Reed wakes up just a few yards from the machine. His body stretches like some sort of liquid. Ben wakes up in Mexico, having been transformed into a rock-like monster. Johnny wakes up in France, where he spontaneously combusts, and generates fire from his body. Sue wakes up and finds herself in a tunnel deep below New York, having been kidnapped by Dr. Molekevic, a disgruntled former Baxter Building employee. Victor is nowhere to be found.
Reed reunites with Johnny and Ben. In the sewers, Dr. Molekevic plans to reunite Sue with her friends, in order to study the effects of what has happened to them. Sue realizes that Molekevic has spent the past few years underneath the Baxter Building, and has hacked into their mainframe to keep tabs on Reed and the other students. To bring Reed and the others into the underground tunnels, Molekevic unleashes a giant monster on the surface world.
Reed, Ben, and Johnny use their newfound abilities to fight off the monster and follow it down a hole to the tunnels. They find and rescue Sue, and in the commotion, cause a cave in that destroys Molekevic’s base of operations and apparently kill him. The others learn of Sue’s abilities: she can turn invisible and generate force fields.
Back home, Reed begins working to find a cure to bring them back to normal, especially Ben. He also determined to find Victor, wherever he may be.
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