Fantastic Four relaunches with a new creative team in November

Following a teaser released during Comic-Con International: San Diego (seen below), Marvel Comics has revealed the new creative team of Fantastic Four following writer Dan Slott’s upcoming departure from the title: writer Ryan North and artist Iban Coello.

Fantastic Four #1

Fantastic Four #1 cover (Image credit: Marvel Comics)

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That partially lines up with the teaser, which showed a compass rose pointing North and South with the words “Writer” and “Artist” accompanying each, respectively. ‘North’ obviously lines up with Ryan North as writer, but it’s unclear how or if the teaser was meant to indicate Iban Coello as his collaborator with the ‘South’ designator.

Either way, North and Coello will kick off their FF run by trapping Ben Grimm and his wife Alicia Masters in a Groundhog Day-style time loop in a small town. And from there, the new creative team looking to bring some classic Star Trek adventure of the week type storytelling.

Fantastic Four #1 cover

Fantastic Four #1 (Image credit: Marvel Comics)

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“I want to do these smaller, self-contained stories in the vein of ’60s Star Trek, where they go down to a planet, find a weird thing, fix the weird thing, and move on,” North tells Entertainment Weekly (opens in new tab), who first announced the new FF creative team. 

“Having these four weirdos roll into town where there’s a mystery or a problem or some sci-fi thing, solve the problem, and then move on struck me as a very interesting way to position the Fantastic Four and tell stories that would feel fresh and not like a retread of what we’ve seen before.”

The new Fantastic Four #1 from North and Coello goes on sale in November.

And here’s a newly-released variant cover to the debut issue by Frank Miller.

Fantastic Four #1 Frank Miller variant cover

Fantastic Four #1 Frank Miller variant cover (Image credit: Marvel Comics)

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Original story follows…

Marvel’s First Family will be under the guidance of a new creative team this November. At Marvel’s Next Big Thing panel on Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con, Jonathan Hickman teased an all-new run of Fantastic Four following writer Dan Slott’s departure from the title.

Marvel also released a teaser image showing a compass, with arrows pointing to east and west. Above the ‘N’ for north is the word ‘writer,’ and below the ‘S’ for south is the word ‘artist.’ These are seemingly our only clues for who could be working on the title this fall.

Fantastic Four teaser

(Image credit: Marvel Comics)

Marvel shared the same image on Twitter (opens in new tab), and fans were quick to comment their choices for the next Fantastic Four series. Writer Al Ewing was mentioned multiple times, and at least one person questioned if Nick Spencer will take up the reins. 

Another commenter assumed the writer will be Ryan North, who wrote The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl from 2015-2019. This seems likely, given the very blatant compass imagery on the teaser.

And if North is potentially writing Fantastic Four, it’s possible he’ll be teaming up with artist Matthew Southworth – as in the ‘south’ portion of the compass rose teaser – who’s worked on Spider-Man, Daredevil, and other titles in the Marvel Universe.

Meanwhile, readers are wondering if the compass and its directional arrows imply a west coast Fantastic Four story, which would certainly shake things up.

Marvel has promised more info to come, so stay tuned as Newsarama continues to cover this developing story.

In the meantime, don’t miss the best Fantastic Four stories of all time.

Stay up on all the Marvel Comics news coming out of Comic-Con International: San Diego with Newsarama’s ongoing coverage:

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