UPDATE: Marvel makes it official -- the Fantastic Four is returning with an all-new series! Check out the full announcement here.


Brace yourselves -- the Fantastic Four may make their Marvel Comics return this summer.

Yesterday, Marvel tweeted a cryptic image promising a big announcement for noon today. This morning, the publisher began tweeting a series of images, the first of which actually appeared to be teasing a 'Fresh Start' Uncanny X-Men reboot.

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However, an hour later a second image was tweeted out by Marvel, this time with a Spider-Man theme that prominently features the number 2. It's obvious, now, that the publisher is touting up to the noon announcement rather than counting down, which means that when the noon tweet arrives, we should probably expect it to include the FF's iconic "4."

There's more to this theory than the aforementioned tweets. Marvel's latest batch of announcements and teasers have been for July-releasing projects. New Comics Day is always Wednesday. This year, July 4 falls on a Wednesday, making it the perfect day to launch an all-new Fantastic Four #1.

Of course, Marvel has been planting seeds for the FF's return for months. Last year's massive Marvel Legacy one-shot featured the return of Franklin and Valeria Richards in a short post-credits scene that all but guaranteed the team's reunion in 2018. And the very first issues of Chip Zdarsky and Jim Cheung's Marvel 2-In-One series basically began paving the way for the Thing and Human Torch to bring Reed and Sue Richards back to the Marvel Universe-proper. The latest issue of the series, illustrated by new artist Valeria Schiti, even featured the debut of new uniforms for the team.

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Marvel has been without a Fantastic Four series since the team's final issue was released ahead of 2015's Secret Wars, which blew up and then rebuilt the Marvel Universe. in the aftermath of the event, Reed, Sue, Franklin, Val and the rest of the Future Foundation took advantage of Reed having absorbed the massive reality-manipulating power of the Beyonders and began to reconstruct the entire multiverse. Thus, only Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm have been part of Marvel's Earth Prime adventures.

Another indication that Marvel will announce a new Fantastic Four series later today is the fact that in recent months, the publisher has been soliciting a suspiciously high number of Fantastic Four related collections. In May alone, Marvel will release a pair of FF omnibuses, while June sees a new Epic Collection featuring the team.