Marvel Comics #1 Preview: The Unexpected Combination of Planet of the Apes Vs. Fantastic Four

Of all the potential crossovers that probably weren’t on your bingo card this year or any other, “Planet of the Apes vs. Fantastic Four #1” has to go to the top of the list. But Marvel’s parent company is Disney, which has owned 20th Century Fox since 2019, and Marvel Comics got hold of the license to “Planet of the Apes” in 2022 (having originally produced “Planet of the Apes” comics all the way back in the 1970s). In the past few days, this publisher has previewed an upcoming comic that will introduce one of its most time-honored teams of superheroes to a world of talking apes and oppressed men.

The Fantastic Four Travel to the 40th Century

If there’s one thing this comic (the preview for which appeared on the Comic Book Club website on January 30) will have in common with those Marvel released in the ’70s, it’s that it won’t take place in the universe of the much-acclaimed 2010s reboot trilogy. Instead of finding themselves pitted against the ravages of the Simian Flu and the human-hating simian rebel Koba, the Fantastic Four will have to survive in the world of 1968’s “Planet of the Apes”: a post-nuclear-holocaust hellscape in which the only oasis is home to a civilized simian theocracy that views man (now a witless wild beast) as a vile species to be treated like vermin.

The rulers of the Planet of the Apes are, of course, the cadre of reactionary, creationist orangutans who insist that God gave souls to apes alone and that any talking human must be a laboratory monster created by one of those radical, anti-establishment chimp scientists in an attempt to prove otherwise. Chief among these ape-supremacist fanatics is the duplicitous Minister of Science, Dr. Zaius, whom this comic’s preview depicts as uncharacteristically devoted to giving the captured Fantastic Four “a fair trial” against the clamoring of the vicious, jingoistic gorillas led by General Ursus. He even gives these humans leave to speak at their trial, so long as they “do so quickly.”

The Four’s presence in the ape-dominated year 3978 (or 3955, per the sequels’ dating) is apparently the result of yet another time-traveling escapade. They may not have a speed-of-light spacecraft, but this won’t be their first adventure of this sort. This is not to say that they don’t still marvel at the future in which they find themselves. Human Torch (a.ka. Johnny Storm) remarks that “Only yesterday we were home in New York City, where things are much different,” though he adds that “the apes were trying to kill us there too!” (This is probably a reference to one of the Fantastic Four’s nemeses, Red Ghost, a supervillain who keeps a trio of superpowered apes as his minions).

Synopsis, Release, and Other Info

“Planet of the Apes vs. Fantastic Four #1” will be published Feb. 4 by Marvel Comics as the very first crossover between these two universes. It will be a four-issue series, authored by Josh Trujillo and illustrated by Andrea di Vito. The series’s official synopsis, which Marvel Comics released way back in November, explains that the Fantastic Four won’t be the only characters from their universe to travel to the simian future: “Familiar foes from the Marvel Universe have set their sights on Ape City, setting the stage for a battle royale that fans won’t soon forget!”

How Will the Four Fare, and Who Will Join Them?

Like any good preview, Marvel’s pre-publication promotion of “Planet of the Apes vs. Fantastic Four #1” leaves plenty of questions unanswered. How will the quartet’s various superpowers – invisibility, pyrokinesis, elasticity, the ability to transform into a stone-skinned monster with King-Kong-like clobbering abilities – aid them in a world ruled by apes who don’t really have anything in the way of technologically developed equipment and weaponry? How will the religiously zealous orangutan establishment (or the scientifically-minded chimp radicals, for that matter) react to seeing humans with such powers?

Moreover, it’s anyone’s guess which of their enemies the Fantastic Four will be battling (the aforementioned Red Ghost is an obvious choice; is he too obvious?) and what these antagonists’ intentions will be regarding the Planet of the Apes. However, it is apparent that this first-time crossover is going to be a pretty grandiose one.