In the buildup to the Fantastic Four’s 60th anniversary this year, the classic team’s actually been alive, well, and prominently featured throughout some of Marvel’s notable comics. Though Marvel could have closed the year out by simply doubling down on boosting the team’s profiles within its core comics universe, the publisher’s upping the ante with an unexpected partnership.
Though Alex Ross is no stranger to comics and creating breathtaking paintings of superheroes in his decades-long career working in the industry, he’s yet to write and illustrate a book of his own, something many of his fans have wanted to see. In 2022, that’s set to change with Fantastic Four: Full Circle, a large-format graphic novel produced by MarvelArts, a new partnership between Marvel and Abrams ComicsArts.
In a press release about Full Circle, Abrams described the comic as the Fantastic Four story Ross has “been wanting to tell for years, and visually it is one of the greatest artistic experiments [he’s] attempted,” which is saying something given his body of work.
Fantastic Four: Full Circle uses a classic comic from the team’s Stan Lee/Jack Kirby era as a jumping off point for a story that pulls Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm into the Negative Zone on a mission to save the universe. Though the general gist of Full Circle sounds very on-brand for the Fantastic Four, what’s interesting about the comic is what it portends for Marvel’s future of collaborating with other publishers. Only time will tell whether Fantastic Four: Full Circle is a hit, but it feels very much like it’s only going to be the first of many more books like this from the House of Ideas and friends.
Fantastic Four: Full Circle hits stores on August 2, 2022.