Another Fantastic Four Relaunch? In The Middle of An Already Popular Run? I Guess Marvel Knows What It's Doing

Scattered through time by Doctor Doom, Marvel's First Family have one chance to reunite in new Fantastic Four #1 comic

It's no secret that I love the Fantastic Four - it's one of the two books (the other being the Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans) - that made me a comic book collector for life.

However, I'm increasingly frustrated by Marvel's current trend for frequent relaunches of their titles... usually just to mark a change of creative team.

In July (just ahead of the the eagerly-awaited Fantastic Four: First Steps movie), the current run of Ryan North-penned Fantastic Four is getting a new number one... seemingly just because the book is changing artist (to Humberto Ramos).

Why, oh why, must they keep doing this?

For one thing, it makes it increasingly difficult to track down back issues when a title has half-a-dozen (or more) issue ones, issue twos, issue threes etc

I know the old argument is that "first issues sell really well", but isn't this just a slippery slope to the apocalyptic scenario where comics no longer have issue numbers or, perversely, are all "first issues"?

Not only does this "relaunch" come in the middle - after issue 33 - of Ryan North's popular run on this book, but also in the middle of the universe-wide One World Under Doom "event" storyline.

Isn't the point of a "new number one" meant to be it's a good jumping on point for those new to the adventures of the book's protagonists? Yet this issue drops any new readers it attracts right in the middle of North's ongoing story as well as the supplementary shenanigans of Doctor Doom in his own event.

Surely it would have been easier just to continue as it was?

The plot of initial story arc in the "new" Fantastic Four is a time travel tale involving Doctor Doom, dinosaurs, and a quest for something called The Forever Stone.

Why this couldn't have been issue 34 instead, god only knows. To be honest, I'd love to see all Marvel's long-running, prestige titles simply reverting to their "legacy numbering" (as DC has done with its premier Batman and Superman books).