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Fantastic Four: First Steps director names the comic writers who've had the most influence on the next Marvel Studios movie: Jonathan Hickman and Matt Fraction
The Hickman run on Marvel's First Family has proven to be a primary influence on how the movie approaches Reed and Sue Richards, according to Fantastic Four: First Steps director Matt Shakman
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For a movie so rooted in the '60s era that the characters were first created during, Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps is taking notable influence from a couple of more recent comic book runs featuring the characters, with director Matt Shakman pulling from the work of writers Jonathan Hickman and Matt Fraction in particular.
Shakman acknowledges the debt the upcoming movie owes to Hickman’s fan-favorite run on the Fantastic Four comic in a new introduction to a forthcoming collected edition, Fantastic Four: Solve Everything.
“As we developed the script for the film, I returned again and again to this epic run — thrilled by brain-bending innovations like the Council of Reeds and riveted by heroic standoffs against the likes of Annihilus. But it was Hickman’s deep insight into the specific family dynamics of the Four that affected me the most,” Shakman writes in the introduction, specifically citing Hickman’s take on Reed and Sue Richards as having an impact on the movie.
"His Reed Richards is part Steve Jobs and part Oppenheimer, always on the edge of saving the world or destroying it,” he writes, while Sue “has come a long way from the ‘Invisible Girl’ of the early ’60s. In these pages, she is part United Nations Secretary General and part Field Marshal, backing up diplomacy with force when necessary. Hickman’s Sue may be the most powerful member of the Four — she’s the glue that holds the world together while Reed experiments in the lab with things that could destroy it.”
Other beats from Hickman’s run that inspired elements of The Fantastic Four: First Steps Shakman cutes are as follows: “Johnny’s need to be taken seriously. Ben’s gentle nature, forever at odds with his appearance. The Future Foundation. The Bridge. The mystery of children and the anxiety we have as parents about their future.”
(Time to start hitting those back issues, FF fans — or, perhaps, the digital back issue bin that is Marvel Unlimited.)
It isn’t only Hickman who influenced the movie, however; even back in 2022, Shakman was crediting another Marvel veteran with an assist: Matt Fraction, who worked with Shakman on Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters series. “Yeah, I can absolutely talk to Matt about it,” Shakman said in an interview when asked about early work on First Steps. “Yeah, he’s great. He’s brilliant. And, you know, he’s a big part of the Marvel family over there in terms of Hawkeye, for sure, as well as, you know, he’s worked on several of the films too. I think he worked on Thor. And yeah, he’s a brilliant guy.”
Well, now we all have our background reading to work on before the movie. Better get on it; The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in theaters July 25.
Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:
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