Jonathan Hickman on making ‘FANTASTIC FOUR’ relevant again. Feels, man.

Johnny Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four is one of my favorite collections of consecutive creator awesomeness ever. So when I stumbled across a quote where he is explaining his aims for the title, I figured I’d save it for posterity. It perfectly captures what I love about the entire run. Oh and yeah, if you have any idea what it is from, let me know.

“I was giving an interview about the book sometime after we’d gone from critical darling to critical success and I was asked, “What did we do to make Fantastic Four relevant again?” I remember consciously lying and giving a generic answer about effort and storytelling meeting hard work and dedication or some other garbage because I had promised myself that never during the run would I walk about, or reveal, any of my ‘rules’ for the book (and I still won’t), but I do now want to at least answer the question honestly. So here goes…

The world sucks. I’m not saying this an an anachronist or idealist, but one of the reasons for this condition is the expectation of family as a thing of permanence is dying. Which is actually what makes the Fantastic Four so interesting, they exist in opposition to that — they are a perfect family in an imperfect world…and they represent the hope of what COULD BE. The franchise became relevant again because we tapped into this in a way that resonated, and, even more importantly, the driving force behind it was something we could all understand. Wasn’t it?

After all, what was it that made Reed choose his family when he should have chosen utopia? What made Johnny sacrifice himself and what brought him back? What broke an unbreakable Ben Grimm and then found a way to make him whole again? What made Susan strong enough to stand when the others fell? What made Nathaniel always come home, and what was it that made Val and Franklin sacrifice everything to save their father?

It was Love. Boundless, unconditional, to the end of time and back, lift you up from death itself, LOVE.

And what’s not fantastic about that?”