Ultimate Fantastic Four is a comic book published by Marvel Comics, part of the Ultimate Marvel line featuring classic Marvel Universe characters re-imagined for a modern audience. It is currently written by Warren Ellis with art by Stuart Immonen . The first story arc (consisting of issues 1-6) was written by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar with art by Adam Kubert . The series debuted in late 2003, and has a monthly publishing schedule.

The Team

Ultimate Fantastic Four (or FF) is the Ultimate Marvel version of the superhero family, the Fantastic Four. While the characters may bear resemblance to their normal Marvel Universe counterparts, they differ in aspects, such as the team being younger (as the Ultimate line is aimed at a younger audience).

The team consists of:

• Mister Fantastic aka Reed Richards - Reed is a child genius who displayed his curiosity from the day he was born. At the age of 11, following a demonstration of his research on the field of teleportation at a school science fair, he was recruited for a government program which sponsers young geniuses' research. He continued his research at the government research facility located in Manhattan's Baxter Building. At the age of 21 his research was realized as he and several others attempted to teleport organic material through an alternate plane of existence called the N-Zone. The experiment went awry giving Reed and several others super powers. His powers enable him to stretch his body parts to incredible lengths.

• Invisible Woman aka Susan Storm - Susan was another child recruited for the kid genius program. Her specialty is biotechnology. She is the daughter of Dr. Storm, who is the overseer of the program. Since their meeting, Sue has developed romantic feelings for Reed and they are now romantically involved. Her powers allow her to become invisible and project invisible force fields.

• The Human Torch aka Johnny Storm - Susan Storm's younger brother is a short-tempered teen, who is merely enamored to fast cars and good-looking girls. This adolescent's powers engulf him in flame which enables him to fly and shoot flaming projectiles.

• The Thing aka Benjamin Grimm - Ben is Reed's childhood friend. When they were in school together, Ben would protect Reed from bullies and Reed would help Ben with his homework. Ben moved on to college and was invited to watch Reed's teleportation experiment. The experiment gave Ben a rocky hide which boosts his strength and makes him nigh-invulnerable.

The Villains

Victor Van Damme AKA Doctor Doom - Victor Van Damme was likewise a member of the youth research project that recruited Reed and Susan. Unlike them, Victor saw the project as a means of achieving personal power. Van Damme is a descendant of Vlad Tepes, better known as Dracula, ruler of Wallachia, now a region in Romania, during the fifteenth century. As such, Van Damme is a member of European aristocracy, as well as a secret society bent on achieving covert world domination. Victor has been indoctrinated by the society since his youth.

Victor worked with Reed Richards on his device to teleport organic matter to the N-Zone. Van Damme reprogrammed the coordinates of the device which led to the accident where the Fantastic Four got their powers. Like the Fantastic Four, Van Damme was affected by the experiment with most of his body transformed into metal, and his legs assuming the form of cloven hooves. Van Damme established a micronation named The Keep, located in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he proceeded to turn the other inhabitants into mind-controlled slaves.

The Mole Man AKA Dr. Arthur Molekevic - Dr. Molekevic was expelled from the Baxter Building for performing forbidden experiments. Molekevic disappeared into an underground realm where he established himself as the ruler, under the guise of the Mole Man.

Themes

Ultimate Fantastic Four has set up several dichotomies and contrasts, some of which haven't played themselves out yet.

Richards and Damme are both brilliant and determined scientists who grew up with harsh fathers, but Damme has grown to see the art and instinct behind science, whereas Reed considers science to be cold and purely rational. Regardless, Richards and Damme are both extremely similar young men.

Reed Richards also has, in essence, two fathers: his biological father, who is never shown to actually care for or appreciate him, and his mentor Dr. Storm, who has pushed Reed foward while trying to protect him from dangerous situations. Richards is ambivalent about being forcibly separated from his parents after the accident, and assumes his parents feel the same. Compare this to Grimm, who is constantly worried how is mother is coping with his relatively unexplained absence.

A major point of separation between the Ultimate Fantastic Four and the original Fantastic Four is the background existence of other mutants. The original Fantastic Four were among the first major post-humans in the Marvel Universe, groups such as the Avengers and the X-Men didn't appear until later. The world of the Ultimate Fantastic Four already contains these groups, Johnny Storm aspires to be an Ultimate (Avenger)and he admires Spider-man.

Synopsis

Arc 1: The Fantastic (Issues 1-6)

Reed Richards is recruited into a government-sponsored program which helps finance research of exceptional children. There, he meets Susan 'Sue' Storm, her brother, Johnny, and their father, Professor Storm. He also meets a young man named Victor Van Damme. Reed researches teleportaion, specifically through an alternate plane of existence called the N-Zone. Five years later, Reed catches Victor in his room, reading his notes. Victor claims that he can help Reed crack the calculations he is working on. In return, Reed proposes that he helps Victor on his own robotic experiments. At the same time, one of the adults in the facility, Dr. Arthur Molekevic, is expelled from the institute for performing experiments that the government has strictly forbade him to do. Another 5 years later, Reed and Victor have succeeded in their work and are planning to teleport an apple through the N-Zone. Reed, Victor, Sue, Johnny, and Professor Storm attend the experiment, along with Reed's childhood friend, Ben Grimm. The experiment commences, but something goes wrong and the entire construction explodes. Reed awakens to find that his body has transformed into a liquid-like state, and that he is able to stretch it at will. He also discovers that Sue, Johnny, Ben, and Victor are nowhere to be found. Ben is quickly located in the mexican desert, his skin has been replaced by an orange, rocky hide. Johnny is found in a hospital in Paris where he has burst into flame. Sue wakes up in the underground lair of the Mole Man, who is none other than Dr. Molekevic. He went underground and continued his experiments which turn out to be synthetic life-forms. Sue discovers that she can turn invisible at will. She also learns that the Mole Man has tapped into the Baxter Building's security and has been monitoring it all along. The Mole Man unleashes one of his creations on New York City. Ben, Johnny, and Reed fight the monster off and follow it underground. There they find the Mole Man and Sue. The four fight the Mole Man and his creations, defeat him, and return safely to the surface.

Arc 2: Doom (Issues 7-12)

The US government has not found Victor Van Damme, who is currently in hiding in Copenhagen, his skin transformed into metal. He is now leading a small Micronation called "Free State", "Freezone", or "The Keep", a Permanent Autonomous Zone, where citizens live without rent in a shanty town under Squatter's rights and are given free comforts and necessities in exchange for loyalty to Victor. There, a tattoo is given to new settlers, which his made up of microfibres that mate with the brain stem so Van Damme can control his followers. He blames Reed Richards for what happened, sending a swarm of metal insects to the Baxter Building to kill him. The attack fails, and Reed examines one of the insects, learning from his investigation that Victor is still alive, and his location. With Reed's "Fantasticar", the four travel to Denmark to find Victor, who knows the altered superpositioning code that caused the accident. However, Victor was waiting for them and shot down the Fantasticar with a homemade bazooka and quickly takes down Ben, Johnny, and Sue. Victor fights Reed in a physical confrontation, using his mind-controlled slaves, but the US Army pulls the kids to safety and attempts to take Van Damme into custody. However the Danish army also arrives, preventing his arrest on the grounds that Van Damme is a Danish citizen. Reed destroys the mind-controlling device and cuts a scar into Victor Van Damme's face that will never heal.

Arc 3: Negative (Issues 13-18)

Time has passed, and Reed is no closer to reversing the consequences of the accident. He develops new tech-toys:

• A heat tile that absorbs 150 times more heat and stress than conventional tiles.
• A radical new unpacking application.
• A new thruster design for compact unmanned probes.
• The new applications for the Stark lifter engine the the US army shares patents in.

Reed agrees to share his designs with the Baxter Building staff if they transmit the Four into the N-Zone to explore it.

Johnny is allowed to name the decommissioned space shuttle that will take the Four into the N-Zone; he names it Awesome. Reed's instruments determine that the N-Zone is a parallel universe experiencing heat death, and that life exists there. He communicates with mathematics and a diagram of a hydrogen atom, and locates a space station. The four make contact with a creature identifying itself with the title "Nihil" via a compact translator device he embeds in the team's helmets; Reed's portable translator identified him as "Annihil. Us." and "I annihilate." During the conversation with Nihil, Johnny passes out; his epidermis is burning out, and Sue wants to leave the N-Zone. Reed takes Ben back to meet with Nihil, and Ben notices the N-Zone's refugees huddling together. Nihil says that he wishes to leave his universe before it collapses, and destroys the translator devices, exposing them to the toxic atmosphere of the refugee station. Reed covers the breach with his pliable skin, and Ben is apparently unaffected, so he starts beating on Nihil, uttering his mainstream trademark phrase, "Clobberin' time" as he smashes the overlord with a gigantic pillar and tears one of his wings off. Ben clears the way for him and Reed to get back to the Awesome and head back to the portal, with Nihil's forces on their tail.