Fantastic Four #700 Cover Features 700 Marvel Characters

By Cameron Bonomolo

The world's greatest comic magazine marks its milestone 700th issue with an oversized spectacular — and over 700 of Marvel's heroes and villains. In May, Marvel Comics celebrates Fantastic Four #700 with a giant-sized anniversary issue pitting Marvel's first family — Mister Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing — against the team's legendary arch-nemesis, Doctor Doom. On sale May 17th from the title's current creative team of writer Ryan North and artist Iban Coello, Fantastic Four #700 hits stands with a wraparound connecting variant cover by Scott Koblish (Marvel Comics #1000) featuring more than 700 characters who have appeared in the book since its first issue in 1961.

The two-piece wraparound connecting cover will adorn May's Fantastic Four #7/#700 and June's Fantastic Four #8. The variant, which has revealed its first half below, spans more than 60 years of Fantastic Four comics with friends and foes alike, including enemies Mole Man, the Super-Skrull, Blastaar, Overmind, Annihilus, Ronan the Accuser, the Frightful Four, and Galactus.

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(Photo: Marvel Comics)

"I've been a big fan of the Fantastic Four since I was a little kid, so not only was it an honor to draw this cover, but it was a dream come true to scroll through every issue of Fantastic Four ever," Koblish said in a statement. "I hope I was able to convey all of the sheer joy, wonder, and boundless creativity that the Fantastic Four have embodied for six decades and I hope it continues to be a shining beacon for decades to come."

February's Fantastic Four #4 finally explained the mysterious event that fractured the Four and destroyed their home, the Baxter Building. Spoilers: When inhabitants of the Negative Zone invaded New York five months earlier, Reed Richards used a heliocentric temporal gateway to transport the invaders — and the Fantastic Four's home, plus an entire city block — through time to a point in the Earth's rotation that would neutralize the threat. 

But to save lives, Reed did the unthinkable: effectively disappear people one astronomical year into the future, at which point they'd return without ever knowing they'd been gone. But their families — including Alicia and Ben Grimm, the adoptive parents of Kree and Skrull kids Jo'Venn and N'Kalla — would have to wait those 365 days for their vanished loved ones to reappear safe and sound. 

With the team reunited, the Fantastic Four will once again face off with Victor Von Doom in issue #700. According to the solicit: "The iconic villain will embark on an epic journey across space and time to reverse the damage that his most bitter foes have unleashed on the Marvel Universe. Will he be able to succeed where Reed Richards failed? Or will his meddling make matters far, far worse?"

Fantastic Four #700 with Koblish's wraparound connecting 700-character variant cover is on sale May 17th from Marvel Comics.

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