Marvel Studios has announced a new one-shot comic book prequel for the MCU’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The prequel story will feature the Fantastic Four facing off against the villainous Mad Thinker.
The comic is titled Fantastic Four: First Foes and serves as a prequel to 2025’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The project is a collaboration between Marvel Studios and Marvel Comics. First Foes features the Fantastic Four battling the Mad Thinker.
Here’s the official logline for Fantastic Four: First Foes:
“As the Fantastic Four rise to become the heroes we know today, the Mad Thinker becomes determined to get his proper due by turning the city of tomorrow against its heroic patrons!”
The one-shot is written by Marvel veteran Dan Slott, with artwork by Fantastic Four interior artist Mark Buckingham, and cover art by longtime Fantastic Four artist Phil Noto.
Fantastic Four: First Foes features the Mad Thinker, who briefly appeared in The Fantastic Four: First Steps movie, and includes a two-page Fantastic Science strip by Ryan North. It is the first of four quarterly in-universe comics in 2026, each expanding on characters and events from the film.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directed by Matt Shakman, The Fantastic Four: First Steps officially welcomed Marvel’s First Family into the MCU.
Set in a highly advanced parallel universe in the 1960s, the film followed Reed (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) on their mission to stop the space god Galactus (Ralph Ineson) from devouring their world and kidnapping Reed and Sue’s cosmically powered newborn, Franklin.
The Fantastic Four: First Foes comic will be released on March 4, 2026.
The Fantastic Four will make their MCU return in Avengers: Doomsday on December 18, 2026, with The Fantastic Four: First Steps currently streaming on Disney+.
Source: The Direct
