Fantastic Four: Full Circle Extended Edition Announced by Marvel

Alex Ross’s Fantastic Four: Full Circle will get an oversized, hardcover “extended edition” from Marvel and Abrams Books in the fall. With almost 300 pages of bonus material including sketches and behind-the-scenes material, it’s more than just a “bonus scene at the end,” and more like DC’s Annotated Watchmen, which saw artist Dave Gibbons work with the publisher to create a scholarly work that was published alongside the original comic. In the case of Full Circle, you could draw comparisons back to the early collected editions of Kingdom Come, in which Ross provided concept art, sketches, and unique insights into his creative process.

Fantastic Four: Full Circle Expanded Edition will be available from Abrams Books on October 1, 2024. In addition to the original story and plenty of extras from Ross, the book will reprint a classic Fantastic Four issue that served as the inspiration for the story — Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Fantastic Four #51.

“This is the Fantastic Four story I have been wanting to tell for years, and visually it is one of the greatest artistic experiments I have attempted,” Alex Ross said when the project was announced. “I’m excited to share this work with everyone, as it unites the two great publishing forces of Marvel and Abrams ComicArts in a bold new collaboration.”

“Alex and I have been working together for close to 30 years, when I was an editor at DC Comics and hired him to paint his very first book cover back in 1993, before Marvels was published,” added Ross’s longtime editor Charles Kochman. “In Fantastic Four: Full Circle, Alex revisits a classic Stan Lee-Jack Kirby comic from the 1960s and introduces the storyline for a new generation of readers.”

Per an announcement from Marvel, the expanded book will include “288 additional pages of jaw–dropping bonus material from Ross” — a massive jump from the original comic’s 64 pages. In the book, “Ross walks readers through his process and vision for the making of the book which School Library Journal called a ‘pop art masterpiece.’ Showcasing early visual concepts through final art, Ross takes readers behind–the–scenes, revealing for the first time his proposal, thumbnails, sketches, inks, and color guides, models and never-before-seen preliminary artwork, alongside all-new commentary.”

While collected editions of Ross’s comics are among some of Marvel and DC’s most evergreen, celebrated titles, Fantastic Four: Full Circle was pitched as the first fully original graphic novel Ross had done for the publishers. While projects like Kingdom Come and Marvels helped to reshape superhero comics, Full Circle falls a little more in line with Ross’s series of oversized coffee table one-shots like Superman: Peace on Earth and Batman: War on Crime, which told stand-alone stories featuring classic versions of the characters.