The Fantastic Four isn’t Marvel’s most popular team, although they once were, but they’re more important to the history of the comic medium than any of the others. They belong right up there with Superman when it comes to importance. They birthed the modern Marvel Universe in 1961, showing readers through the door of the House of Ideas. They were the future of the comic industry and their success led to the Marvel method of creating superhero stories becoming the dominant paradigm in comics. While they would slowly but surely lose popularity as the years went on, you can’t really deny the integral role they’ve played in the history of superheroes.
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DC Comics has tried numerous times over the years to take the concept of the Fantastic Four and make it work for them; in fact, the Fantastic Four wouldn’t exist without the Challengers of the Unknown, a team of daredevil scientists exploring the world (although they never get superpowers) co-created by Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby. The publisher has created numerous homages and pastiches to Marvel’s First Family and they ended up accidentally creating the greatest version of the Fantastic Four. They’re the perfect subversion of the concept and the best part is that DC Studios could bring them to the greater pop culture. They are the Four, the main villains of Planetary.
The Four Make the Fantastic Four Looks Like School Children
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
The Fantastic Four are a simple concept – they’re a family of adventurers exploring the universe. Led by super-genius Reed Richards, the group consisted of his then-girlfriend, now-wife Susan Richards, her younger brother Johnny Storm, and Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm. Reed wanted to get to space (the reason why has changed because of the Marvel sliding time scale) and he recruited them to help, leading them to an accident that gave them superpowers. They became the symbols of a new age, superpowered superstars that birthed the modern superhero community.
The Four take this concept and set it on its ear. They aren’t heroes, instead being the ultimate villains of Planetary, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. Planetary follows the titular organization, a group of people who call themselves “archeologists of the weird”. Led by Elijah Snow, the group was set up to fight against the Four, with Jakita Wagner and the Drummer serving as field members of the group when the book begins. Over the length of its 27-issue run, we learn the secrets of both Elijah Snow and Randal Dowling, revealing a multi-decade war.
Dowling was an American scientist who was brought in on all of the black ops weirdness involving aliens, superhumans, magic, and the like after World War II. He was put in charge of keeping the secrets of the world, recruiting Greene, a former US black ops pilot, Leather, a former daredevil, and Suskind, a Nazi scientist, to help him find and catalog the strangest parts of the world, using the technology to tighten the status quo’s group over the people of the world. The Fantastic Four often worked with the government and the municipal authorities, and so do the Four; it’s just their government and the Fantastic Four’s are quite different.
Planetary is a comic whose entire point is to serve as a travelogue through 20th century. We get superheroes, with numerous Marvel and DC pastiches, the adventures serials of the early 20th century, kung fu movies, Asian ghost stories, legendary monsters, nuclear age sci-fi weirdness, the British Invasion comics of the ’80s, and basically everything else you can think of. The Four are interesting because they play off the realities of the Cold War, whereas the Fantastic Four play off the fantasies of the Cold War.
So, in Marvel Comics of the Silver Age, the US government were the good guys, out to stop the evil communists from taking over the world. In reality, the US was working behind the scenes and committing numerous ghastly acts, against both its own citizens and the rest of the world in their shadow battle against the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Silver Age Marvel was all about the fantasies of the Cold War, but if the Marvel Universe was anything like our real world, the Four would be what we were more likely to get than the fantastic version we’ve had since 1961.
Much like Marvel’s version, the Four also gained the same powers, with some interesting subversions in the case of Dowling and Suskind. Dowling’s stretching powers allowed him to stretch his mind, enabling him to control the minds of those around him. Suskind’s invisibility worked by twisting the light away from her body; this meant that she couldn’t see, so Randall created special goggles for her. It was yet another way to show how different the Four were from their predecessors, while still being the same.
Planetary is a fantastic comic and the story of the Four is one of the best parts. Ellis understood that most of the audience would know who the Fantastic Four was, so he used that knowledge to play with readers’ expectations of the group. He held back the secrets of the team as long as possible, building them up into the perfect threat over the course of the series. The Four aren’t the first evil version of the Fantastic Four, but they worked so well because they took the concept and played it straight, as if they were villains created in the modern day.
The Four Could Make PlanetaryCould Be the Next Superhero Smash
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
Planetary is one of those books that superhero fans have wanted to see adapted since it began. The series is one of the greatest moments in comic history, an exploration of the various directions that popular culture has gone in the 20th century. It’s a treasure, using pastiches like the Four to pay homage to the books, comics, movies, and ideas that have enthralled humanity from 1900 to 2000. It has the potential to make The Boys and Invincible look tame.
The Four are a key part to what makes it work so well. The opening story arc ends with their introduction, showing us the hidden machinery they created to keep the world mundane and keepall the magic for themselves. They are the ultimate opposites of the Fantastic Four, their evil showing up just how great the Fantastic Four are to be the way they are. The Four show us a different road that Marvel’s First Family could have taken and it’s terrifying.
What do you think about the Four? Do you want to see Planetary adapted? Sound off in the comments below.
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