Forget Reed & Sue - Marvel Already Has a New Fantastic Four (Sort Of)

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Moon Girl #29 by Brandon Montclare, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain and Travis Lanham, on sale now.

The Fantastic Four are coming back to the Marvel Universe in August, and that’s great news! Earlier in the week, Marvel’s editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski confirmed that after years without a Fantastic Four title, or the FF even existing in the Marvel Universe, the classic line-up of the team would be reuniting in a new series by Dan Slott and Sara Pichelli.

That’s really great news, and it promises to be really great series... but Marvel already has a Fantastic Four as of this week’s issue of Moon Girl. With the threat of Omnipotentis looming and the machinations of the Super Skrull in the background, the Fantastic Three of Moon Girl, Human Torch and The Thing aren’t going to cut it; they’re going to need a fourth member, and Lunella Lafayette knows exactly where (and when) to look.

The End of Everything

Moon Girl and the Fantastic Three are facing one of the biggest threats to ever emerge on Earth, or anywhere else in the Marvel Universe: the all powerful Omnipotentis. A cosmic being similar to Galactus, Omnipotentis operates on a much bigger scale and while the former sustains themselves on planets, the latter sustains themselves on entire realities. Summoned by the Super Skrull to exactly that, not even Galactus and the Silver Surfer have the power to stop her, but luckily the smartest person on Earth has a plan.

Since learning she was the smartest person on Earth, Lunella Lafayette has let the title go to her head a little bit. This arc has been mostly about bringing her back down to Earth and reminding her that it’s possible to be wrong, it’s important to admit when you are, and when you need help, you should ask for it. Faced with the destruction of the entire Marvel Universe, Lunella admits that she needs to find a fourth member of their team, and sets about tracking the perfect candidate down.

Fantastic Roar

The Thing and Johnny Storm gifted Lunella with a number of the presumed deceased Reed Richards’ gadgets and among them was a H.E.R.B.I.E. robot. While most people see H.E.R.B.I.E. as a helper robot who buzzes around here and there, Lunella remembers what those letters stand for: Highly Engineered Robot Built for Interdimensional Exploration and given enough time, H.E.R.B.I.E. can track down anyone and anything in the known multiverse. As Galactus and the Silver Surfer stall Omnipotntis, Lunella rushes through one of the cosmic entities portals keyed to coordinates found by H.E.R.B.I.E. and returns with the fourth member of the new Fantastic Four… Devil Dinosaur.

After their adventure in space with Ego The Living Planet’s daughter, Girl Moon, Lunella realised that Devil would probably be happier in his own time and used the Omniwave Projector to cast him back to where he came from. However, the threat of Omnipotentis is too great to tackle alone and Lunella can’t do it without her best friend, prompting the return of the bright red beast — in a fetching bright blue Fantastic Four costume no less — and an all-new Fantastic Four line-up for the Marvel Universe. There have been line-ups other than Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny before but none quite as unique as Moon Girl’s FF and when Reed Richards returns home, I imagine he’s going to want to meet the little girl who usurped him as smartest person in the world.