I've been looking at the teasers for the Fantastic Four event and while I don't know exactly what is going to happen in them, speculation ensues, I was wondering what peoples opinions on them are.

Are they thinking of bringing back Human Torch and if so, is it too soon?

My personal opinion is yes it is too soon, I know characters die and come back regularly, but for such an iconic character to go the way they did and for them to have been away only a year, if they did bring him back I feel it would cheapen the death.

Opinions?

Sales must be down.

That's why they killed him in the first place. In terms of sales, F4 has been dead for years and has relied purely on stunts to occasionally boost sales. They've "killed" Reed Richards before, split up Sue and Reed, most of the members have left the team at some point, etc, etc.

FF hasn't worked since Kirby left. No-one else has did it right since, ok Bryne had a good run in the 80's but thats it.

Unless its a new Human torch maybe.

I think some of the problems with them are they are old. Let's face it, we have a bunch of your parents with sort of dull powers (no offence, other FF fans). There's nothing really to attract new readers, I know I've never really found the FF very interesting beyond maybe Ben.

Maybe it's time for cancellation, or a DC style kick in the unstable molecule pants.

Reed might be, but as is the case with most female superheroes, Sue is usually drawn like a mid-20s sex kitten with curves like a Kardashian. The Thing and Johnny are essentially written like frat boys.


But they're really not all that different from The Incredibles, which made for a terrific movie, due to great characterization and storytelling.


I think FF can still work. As you said, the Byrne run was pretty good, but it's like subsequent writers just haven't really known what to do with them.

Unless I missed something the reader never actually saw Johnny Storm die so I always expected he'd come back sooner or later... possibly as the ruler of the Negative Zone or something...

Straczynski did alright on his brief stint with FF a few years back but it was cut short, then Mark Millar just started going daft with them. I didn't read any of the Hickman stuff.

Resurrections are nothing new, but this is pretty quick.

They're even talking about resurrecting Cable, which I think is madness given that he gave his life to complete his seemingly never-ending mission; I can't think what they'd do with him now.

Although Hickman has had some very good ideas his pacing is way off. Also, replacing the Torch with Spiderman has just been completely pointless.

I quite like the Valeria Richards plot-line. A kid trying to cover up something she did wrong on a cosmic scale.

I knew this would happen. As soon as FF was announced, I knew they'd go back to the original numbering for issue 600. Death is cheap in comic books.

I could see this coming a long way off. His return was always inevitable with the big 600 coming up. I expected him to come back at least next year, a year after his 'demise'. And to be honest it would have been next year if the book didn't double ship all the time. Personally I haven't found the Fantastic Four to be a great read since Waid's stint, it was fun refreshing and new and breathed some new air into old characters. I think because the Fantastic Four as a group are so dated that they are very difficult to approach for a writer, but with the right person great stories can still be told. What the team really need is a proper long term shake up that's explored as much as it can be, it might sound insane of me but Fantastic Four need a Grant Morrison!

Since the Waid years, JMS's run was alright, Millar was very Millar post-Civil War (ideas are cool just not executed all that greatly) and Hickman...Hickman's FF I actually like, his ideas are all very clever and fun but the pacing is nightmare-ish. You can have really slow issues then high action-octane "Where has this issue been all this time" issues (*points at Three*). The pacing really undermines Hickman's run, just look at the recent FF issues #6-7, those were...not good.

They haven't said anything about it being Johnny Storm. The latest picture, it looks very retro - could it be the original 'robot' Human Torch?

Well it looks as though FF will continue in some way or another but that the main story of the family will be piled back into the Original comic.Now I actually am intrigued.

That actually means that FF #11 is also Fantastic Four #599, but FF #12 isn't Fantastic Four #600. That's weird. If the first 11 issues of FF count as part of Fantastic Four, but issue 12 onwards is just a spin-off, then FF should've been renumbered with a new issue 1. Having issues count towards two volumes is ridiculous.