SDCC Coverage sponsored by Mad Cave
By Sean Manning
To celebrate the theatrical release of this week’s Fantastic Four: First Step, Editor-in-Chief CB Severski dedicated a Marvel Fanfare report panel for San Diego Comics to spotlight creators and create comic book adventures for Read, Sue, Johnny and Ben. On hand were executive editor Tom Brevort, artist Mark Buckingham, and writer Ryan North and artist Hambel Ramos.
Cebulski kicked off the panel by asking the creators specifically about the “story of origin” and the Fantastic Four as a comic reader. Brevoort, who has worked for Ideas of Ideas for 36 years and has been the editor of Fantastic Four since 2002, spoke about picking up his first comic, Superman #268, on a 7-11 spinner rack while his father was buying cigarettes in the 1970s.
“My first Marvel was Spider-Man and Captain Marvel and Marvel Team Up #16,” he said. “I didn’t like it.” In fact, he has been adamantly refusing to read Marvel comics over the years. Eventually he began to read Fantastic for Adventure, which was reprinted in Jules Fafer’s comic history volume, “The Great Comic Book Hero.” “From that point on, I was a reader of DC Comics and the Fantastic Four.” Finally, the further reprint collection introduced future editors to Daredevil and the X-Men, from which the world of Marvel opened to him.
North’s story was simpler. After growing up and learning to drive in a small Canadian village without a comic shop, he went out to the nearest store and picked up three comics at random. “Two of them were amazing,” he said. It didn’t take long to make North Love comics. “There’s something about the medium itself, what words and photography interact with,” he says, adding that, like in the field of video games, creators are still exploring the boundaries of what is possible.
Ramos first realised that he was attracted to Spider-Man, but he discovered Fantastic Four, ranging from the 1960s to the 1960s cartoons called Spanish. He pointed out that in Latin American Spanish, he is known as ramore (pronounced moreeye). Ramos also said his Batman’s secret identity was Bruno Diaz, not Bruce Wayne.
“I was sick for a few months,” the artist said during Buckingham’s childhood. He was given art supplies and cartoons to spend time. “I wanted to tell the story right away,” Buckingham said.
The panel is then written by the recently released Fantastic Four: First Step Comic, Matt Fraction, drawn by Buckingham and features a cover of Firnot. Brevoort explained that he had to “talk about what that universe’s Marvel comics would look like” on fully realized streets and shops, as he roamed the film set in London. They came to the idea of talking about the first mission of the MCU Fantastic Four, and producer Matt Shakman “hoped to be able to capture some of Jack Kirby’s style,” Breboat said. This allowed him to reach out to Buckingham. Buckingham reimagined the panels through the lens of the cinema universe from the original Fantastic Four #1. “It gave me the opportunity to pay homage to the original comic by Stan (Lee) and Jack,” the artist said.
Regarding the appearance of the actors’ appearances that suit the comic, Buckingham said this was “not my first trip on a caricature bus,” but he still spent much longer getting them right “than the rest of the comic.”
Matching with the release of the film, the regular Fantastic Four series also has a new #1 issue, keeping North as a writer and bringing Ramos as a regular artist. North, whose previous runs continued to have 33 issues, said a fresh start gave him the opportunity to change the pace of the series. Instead of focusing primarily on a single book of vignettes, the new series will consist of a long arc.
“I like the atmosphere where you can explore these wild ideas and move on to the next thing,” he said of the series that recently united, but he “walks the line to do a bigger story that requires five issues to actually explore.” However, he added that he is trying to make sure that individual issues can be read on their own.
Ramos is a favourite artist of skilled fans, but I wasn’t sure if he was the perfect fit for the Fantastic Four. “Science fiction isn’t mine,” he said, explaining how he struggles with portraying technology. Adding pressure, Ramos described the Fantastic Four as “the most important book in the Marvel universe.” However, Breboat sent him a previous Fantastic Four comic of North, and Ramos loved it. And now he’s in it, and “I wasn’t excited to draw cartoons for a few years,” he said.
Reading North’s script is “incredibly fun,” Ramos said. “You have to think about a lot to draw a page. What you draw on a page affects 18 pages, so you have to either not forget what I did or try again.”
Brevoort also praised colorist Edgar Delgado, who “does an incredible job of enhancing everything.”
The panelists then debuted a cover of Fantastic Four #4-5. We will discuss the cover of the fifth issue in particular.
In part of the viewer’s Q&A, North discussed how his preferences in sci-fi have changed over time. As a child, North loved science fiction, but said, “I just cared about science, I didn’t care about the characters.”
“As I got older, I started to care about other people,” he added. Now he appreciates the way the genre makes two comment on each other.
When asked about writing Doom, North seemed to enjoy it. “Dr. Doctor Doom is the guy he never said ‘Ugh’ in his life,” he said. “You can bring in a game of A to write a speech when Doom opens his mouth.”
Regarding other characters and corner topics in the FF universe he wants to explore, North said “Wyatt Wingfoot will be in No. 6,” and said he was surprised at how much he’s going to explore with these characters.
“There’s a lot of things we haven’t done here.”
Keep an eye out for more coverage from SDCC ’25.
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SDCC Coverage sponsored by Mad Cave
