The entire history of Marvel‘s main timeline originally looked different, and the Fantastic Four are only dropping this revelation almost nine decades after readers first met the Marvel Universe. Despite the Marvel Universe’s constant evolution, many central concepts remain the same. Spider-Man is still bitten by a radioactive spider before Uncle Ben’s death teaches him responsibility, the Fantastic Four still gain their powers during a cosmic spaceflight, and Bruce Banner still becomes the Hulk after a gamma bomb explosion. Writers may revisit the circumstances surrounding these moments, but the events themselves always feel familiar.
Marvel has also distinguished its main continuity by preserving a single continuous timeline instead of periodically replacing it through line-wide reboots. DC Comics has rebuilt its continuity multiple times through events like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, The New 52, and Rebirth, while Marvel’s Earth-616 universe has pushed forward as an unbroken timeline indefinitely. Reality-altering stories certainly exist in Marvel, including Heroes Reborn and especially 2015’s Secret Wars, but these events typically restore or rebuild the existing universe instead of permanently replacing it with an entirely new continuity. Even Secret Wars, which destroyed and reconstructed the multiverse, ultimately preserved Earth-616.
Marvel’s latest Fantastic Four run has honored the team’s adventurous roots, following Marvel’s First Family as they travel to Ancient Rome, fight extraterrestrial invaders, solve murder misteries, impersonate Ghost Rider, and fight supervillains like Doctor Doom and the Invincible Woman. Fantastic Four #14 takes the main team out of commission, and it’s up to their adopted children Jo-Venn and N’Kalla to save them.
Marvel Humans Have Always Had Six Fingers, Until Jo-Venn and N’Kalla Rewrote History
Fantastic Four #14; Written By Marieke Nijkamp & Ryan North; Art By Andrea Di Vito & Ramón Rosanas
In the self-contained story of Fantastic Four #14, Jo-Venn and N’Kalla are the only two people on Earth who are immune to a strange glitch in reality where any human who reads the three hundred trillionth digit of Pi enters a permanent state of trance. The kids learn about number bases from the Skrull scientist Dr. I’ont, and they decide to travel back in time to change the base in which Pi is expressed. Sixty-six million years before the present day, the kids modify humanity’s earliest common ancestor so it develops five fingers instead of six.
Fantastic Four #14’s twist is brilliantly hidden in plain sight. Every human character’s fingers are barely visible in each panel, but their six-fingered hands can be spotted on a second read. Indeed, humanity originally settled on base twelve for their numbered system in the Marvel Universe, and it’s only until Jo-Venn and N’Kalla genetically alter a single prehistoric animal that human history as we know it exists on Earth-616. The children’s plan is extremely risky, but somehow, every single event in world history remains intact, down to the same dinner where the glitch started.
Lots Of Events Have Been Quietly Erased From Marvel’s History
Marvel’s History Is More Malleable Than It Seems
Marvel’s history has never been completely immutable, as numerous stories have quietly disappeared from canon through retcons and timeline revisions. Multiversal and time-centered storylines like Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars are famous for modifying the history of multiple universes, but there are other ways the publisher has changed events. Marvel’s sliding timescale continuously compresses decades of in-universe history into roughly fifteen years of in-universe time. As a result, many characters’ origin stories take place in increasingly recent eras, such as the wars that turned Iron Man and the Punisher into iconic heroes.
Other changes have come through direct retcons, with the Beyonder’s original status as an omnipotent being from beyond the Multiverse giving way to his later reinterpretation as an Inhuman-mutant hybrid and then a member of the Beyonders. Concepts surrounding the Celestials, symbiotes, Phoenix Force, and even the Hulk’s gamma mutation have expanded so dramatically that many earlier explanations have faded into obscurity. Entire realities like Age of Apocalypse, Days of Future Past, and House of M exist in a hypothetical state. And more shockingly, regular aspects of Earth-616 like Spider-Man’s marriage, Sentry’s early days, and humanity’s six-fingered limbs have been rewritten.
Which wild part of Marvel Comics lore is your favorite?
Fantastic Four #14 is now available from Marvel Comics
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Fantastic Four (1997), Fantastic Four (2005)
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The Fantastic Four
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Fantastic Four
