Following in the footsteps of Spider-Man: Life Story, Marvel has recruited Mark Russell and Sean Izaakse for Fantastic Four: Life Story. Each issue of the six-issue miniseries will be set in a subsequent decade, starting with the 1960s, and tell the story of the life of the Fantastic Four against the historical backdrop of each decade.
“What I’ve always loved about the Fantastic Four is how it reduces the cosmic struggle of human survival to the scale of a family squabble while treating personal relationships as a matter of truly galactic importance,” Russell said. “Weaving their story and their world into our story and what’s happened in our world over the last sixty years was an important reminder to me of how smart it is to approach life like that.”
Here’s how Marvel describes the first issue:
FANTASTIC FOUR: LIFE STORY #1 will take place in the Swinging Sixties when Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and Johnny Storm took that fateful journey to space that changed the face of comic book storytelling forever. Against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Space Race, a terrible accident occurs that gives them great powers and a terrible secret, entangling them in Earth’s history forever as they transform into the world’s premiere Super Hero team.
“Working on a story about Marvel’s First Family is not only an honor in itself, but what makes it even more so is being part of the team that gets to tell such a moving and heartfelt story about these iconic characters, their struggles and triumphs in a new way that draws on what has come before,” Izaakse said. “If I do my job right, this story will be one that Fantastic Four fans will remember for a long, long time.”
The first issue arrives in May. Check out a few preview pages below:
