Fantastic Four: 1234 (a review)

As I have stated before, Grant Morrison adores silver-age heroes and all the wacky nonsense that came from that era. They worked on several titles from that time and retooled them to fit the modern age with their own special brand of crazy. Some of them you’ve heard of before like The Doom Patrol and Animal Man but some aren’t as widely talked about. Today’s comic resides in the latter category which honestly perplexes me because the story is centered around Marvel’s first family.

Fantastic Four: 1234 is a mini-series that was published back in 2002 by Marvel Comics under their Marvel Knights imprint. Of course, we have our pal Morrison as the writer and artist Jae Lee as the illustrator, who is mostly known for his cover art but has worked on several projects such as The Sentry. I’ve heard that this comic was supposed to be a sort of love letter to the Fantastic Four’s legacy. Is this true?

Well, yes but actually no (kinda). More on that later.

Our story opens on a gloomy, rainy day and the Fantastic Four are in the Baxter Building having one of their usual arguments. Ben (The Thing) is going through another self-loathing episode, Johnny (Human Torch) is being particularly snarky, and Sue (Invisible Woman) is upset because Reed (Mr. Fantastic) has locked himself away in his “deep thought” room. While this seems standard on the surface…