Fantastic Four’s New Superweapon Might Be Marvel’s Coolest Of All Time

Published Jul 13, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Jared is a writer, editor, and Communications Studies graduate who loves popular nerd culture (almost anything to do with Marvel, DC, Star Wars, or The Lord of the Rings) and the interactive storytelling medium. Jared’s first console was the PS1, wherein he fell for Spider-Man, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot.

Ryan North’s ongoing Fantastic Four run is beloved for how scientifically rich and family-oriented it is. Thus far in the Fantastic Four series relaunch, there have been plenty of single-issue stories that give the run a fun, episodic feel, and the next issue is no different.

A brand-new peril threatens humanity in Fantastic Four #14. And, with the issue being released this week, we don’t have long to wait to see if Johnny’s horseshoe mustache will survive.

Fantastic Four #14 is a “mind-bending single-issue epic” that essentially behaves like a side-quest story starring Jo-Venn (“Jo”) and N’Kalla (“Nicki”). Preview pages for the issue set the table as such: one by one, the family begins getting up from their seats after gathering for dinner at 6 PM, first to check on Reed, then one another thereafter when nobody who has left returns.

Eventually, weirded out by the situation, the children—Jo, Nicki, Franklin, and Valeria—go to check on everyone else, only to find them “enraptured” by what Jo describes as “random numbers on a screen—or, in Mother’s case, a tactile display.” They’re able to talk and respond, evidenced by Sue politely declining Jo’s request to go back and have dinner, but they are wholly absorbed and may be unable to will themselves free.

What’s compelling is the fact that this enrapturing code can affect Fantastic Four’s Alicia, suggesting that the digital numerical code does not enrapture humans based on sight, but perhaps merely by physical proximity to a monitor that it’s being displayed on.

Interestingly, Fantastic Four’s Jo and Nicki are the only ones unaffected and unenraptured, and it’s unknown if they’ll run into any other non-humans who can aid them in thwarting whatever’s beginning to enslave all humans on Earth. The solicitation for Fantastic Four #14 reads as follows:

OUR GUARANTEE TO YOU: ABSOLUTELY THE MOST UNEXPECTED STORY YOU’LL READ ALL YEAR! Something has gone terribly wrong on Earth, and it’s spreading from human to human - quickly, unstoppably. The Baxter Building is not immune - and before they can even realize there is a problem, everyone on the Fantastic Four is compromised! …Everyone, that is, save for Jo and Nicki - the young adopted children of Ben and Alicia, whose alien Kree and Skrull physiology leaves them immune. But what can two children do to save an entire world all by themselves? And what if what’s needed for a cure is physically impossible? Jo and Nicki take center stage in this mind-bending single-issue epic! PLUS: A SPECIAL BACKUP STORY CELEBRATING DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH!

Fantastic Four #14 (LGY #740) is scheduled to be released on July 15, 2026.

Fantastic Four (2022)

Ivan Fiorelli, Carlos Gómez, Iban Coello

Publisher(s)

“WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE FANTASTIC FOUR?” It’s the start of a new era for the Fantastic Four…and they’re already in a ton of trouble. Something has gone terribly wrong in New York, and the Thing and Alicia are traveling across America to escape it! But when they stop in a small town for the night and wake up the morning before they arrived, they find themselves caught in a time loop that’s been going on since before they were born… That’s been going on since before they were born…