10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About The Fantastic Four
...why is Sue still married to Reed again?
By far the most important Marvel characters of all time are the Fantastic Four. We call them the first family of comics for good reason, since without them, the Marvel universe would literally not exist and Stan Lee would have kept making tacky romance comics until he hit burnout and left. And frankly, that's not a world I wish to inhabit.
However, having such enormous shoes to fill have driven the many writers and artists that took over from Lee and Jack Kirby to make some... bold choices. Some, like the creation of the Future Foundation, are amazing and change everything about the FF for the better.
This list is not about those choices. No, this will look at the stuff that Marvel has gone out of their way to make you forget ever happened.
Whether it be because they're flat out awful or because writers just don't know what to do with the material they're continuing off from and so choose to ignore it altogether, these are the things Marvel would very much prefer you forget that the Fantastic Four were ever associated with.
10. They've Actually Been To Heaven
There is a LOT to love about Mark Waid's 2002 run on Fantastic Four, from its focus on simple, character driven narratives, to the beautiful cartoony artwork of the late great Mike Wieringo, and of course, its willingness to go where no Fantastic Four run before or since has been willing to go.
Case in point, the one adventure that the FF have been on that later books have tried to ignore. Not because it's bad, but because - well - what do you DO after "the Fantastic Four go to Heaven and meet GOD"?
After their last battle with Doctor Doom led to the death of Ben Grimm, Reed decides "ya know what? No. I'm not dealing with this! I'm gonna get my best buddy back!" and so rebuilds the machine Doom built to save his mother from Hell, but calibrates it to instead get them to the other place.
The story, particularly the scene where they meet God, who has of course taken the form of Jack Kirby, is excellent like the rest of Waid's run. But it's no surprise that future writers mostly ignore this. After all "I went to heaven and met God" is probably something you wanna keep to yourself, even if it actually happened to you.