Popverse's top stories

• Magic: The Gathering just realized Edge of Eternities has a broken card, and wants you to change the rules on it yourself
• The hottest character to draw in superhero comics is Absolute Batman - because he’s huge! Just ask Nick Dragotta and Daniel Warren Johnson
• Deadpool was created because Marvel's Spider-Man wasn't funny anymore thanks to Todd McFarlane, says Rob Liefeld

It’s one thing for fans to pick up a comic like Marvel’s recent The Fantastic Four: First Steps special issue, which tells the origin of the team ahead of the events of the movie of the same name — while the chance to get an extra portion of the movie is exciting for fans, it provides an additional headache for the creators responsible, who have to make sure that the actors involved are happy with how they look on the comic book page.

Talking during the Marvel Fanfare panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, Marvel editor-in-chief CB Cebulski asked artist Mark Buckingham — who was brought onto the project by editor Tom Brevoort in part because of his ability conjure a feeling of FF co-creator Jack Kirby onto the page — if it was “nerve-wracking” knowing that Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Garner, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach would be looking at his art.

It is “always a little bit terrifying” to work with likenesses of actors, Buckingham admitted… but more than that, it was also a little time-consuming, as it turned out. “It was probably the longest part of the process,” he explained. “By the time we were happy with the likenesses, we’d spent as much time as we did on the rest of the comic.”

That didn’t dull the experience for the artist, though.

“It was glorious to be able to take moments that you just see as glimpses in the film, where they’re a tiny little moment in the beginning of the film where it’s part of a newsreel-y thing, and it was nice to be able to take those moments and turn them into big, epic moments in this comic. The whole thing expands, and tries to give you as readers an experience that expands, and adds to, and prepares you for seeing the film.”

The Fantastic Four: First Steps comic book is available now, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in theaters now, letting fans compare and contrast the first meeting between the heroes and the Mole Man.