I haven’t talked much about Marvel NOW!, Marvel’s upcoming reboot that isn’t a reboot, but here’s the gist of it. In September, several titles are ending: Captain America, Deadpool, Fantastic Four, FF, Invincible Iron Man, New Mutants, The Mighty Thor, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men Legacy. Then, over the next few months, new titles are going to be relaunched.
We already know that Deadpool is getting a relaunch with with Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn and Tony Moore in charge. Up until now, that was the most exciting news of the reboot. The rest have been fairly expected. Reboots of Invincible Iron Man, The Indestructible Hulk and Thor: The God of Thunder have stellar creative teams on them, but it’s not necessaril anything we haven’t seen before.
But then today, we found out the biggest surprise. The reveal of Marvel’s “Extended” and “Family” teasers hit today, and while we all knew they were Fantastic Four and FF, we didn’t get quite what we expected.
Fantastic Four reboots as normal, with Matt Fraction taking over writing chores and Mark Bagley handling the art. But over in FF, Matt Fraction will be writing while Mike Allred takes over art on an entirely new team consisting of Ant-Man II/Scott Lang, She-Hulk, Medusa and Miss Thing.
The book, which is heavily tied in to Fantastic Four story wise, features the new team handpicked by the originals after a time travel incident. To my knowledge, this will be the debut of the character Miss Thing (it’s indicated that she’s chosen for the team by Johnny to antagonize Ben), and the first mainstream appearance of Scott Lang since his accidental resurrection in last year’s Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. Further details are unclear, just that this book is going to be amazing.
This is the most elaborate April Fool’s hoax ever perpetrated on comicbook kind.