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The Future Foundation Authorize a Comic Book Dramatization of the Fantastic Four's First Adventure

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The Future Foundation Authorize a Comic Book Dramatization of the Fantastic Four's First Adventure

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Members

Franklin Richards

Franklin Richards

Franklin Benjamin Richards

Valeria Richards

Valeria Richards

Valeria Meghan Richards

Leech

Leech

Artie Maddicks

Artie Maddicks

Arthur "Artie" Maddicks

Luna Maximoff

Luna Maximoff

Luna Amaquelin

Dragon Man

Dragon Man

Lightspeed

Lightspeed

Julia "Julie" Power

Mister Fantastic

Mister Fantastic

Reed Richards

Invisible Woman

Invisible Woman

Susan Storm Richards

The Thing

The Thing

Benjamin "Ben" Grimm

Human Torch

Human Torch

Jonathan "Johnny" Storm

Human Torch

Human Torch

Jim Hammond

Nathaniel Richards

Nathaniel Richards

Nathaniel Richards

Spider-Man

Spider-Man

Peter Parker

Lyja

Lyja

Lyja The Lazerfist

Medusa

Medusa

Medusalith Amaquelin Boltagon

Ant-Man

Ant-Man

Scott Lang

She-Hulk

She-Hulk

Jennifer Walters

Biography

Biography

The Future Foundation is a Special Class of students, featuring the greatest young minds of the next generation. Led by the Fantastic Four’s own genius Reed Richards, AKA Mister Fantastic, this super think tank is out to save the future!

Fostering the Future Arguably Earth’s greatest natural intelligence, the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards, AKA Mister Fantastic, founded the Singularity Conference, an organization of thinkers, to examine the problems confronting humanity and envision the direction it should be steered.
Upon its 10th anniversary, a frustrated Richards resigns from Singularity, feeling it had ceased forward thinking. Richards turns his focus to gathering the greatest minds of the next generation and helping them work together toward a better future with him serving as their Headmaster. This grouping, named the Future Foundation “Special Class,” moves into the Fantastic Four’s Manhattan Baxter Building headquarters and acts as not only a think tank, but also a school.

School Spirit While Richards leads the Future Foundation as its headmaster, the student body includes his and Sue’s genius-level daughter, Valeria “Val” Richards; Richards’ ward 32 (later Bentley) an uncorrupted pre-teen clone of Fantastic Four foe super-genius criminal Wizard; extraterrestrial Kymellian-empowered gravity manipulating college student Alex Power and mute technological problem-solving depowered mutant Artie Maddicks (both friends of Richards’ son, Franklin); Korr, Mik and Tong, members of the subterranean Moloid slave-race that had been rejected by their brethren due to superhuman intelligence and ability to speak gained through artificial evolution by Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary’s Ascension Engine, and their adult Moloid guardian, the severed head Turg; Vil and Wu, wards of Susan Richards, AKA Invisible Woman, and co-heirs of to the Ul-Uhari throne of Old Atlantis, a sub-aquatic kingdom that secretly survived the great fall of Atlantis in sub-Antarctic waters; and child prodigy from Wakanda, Onome; and former Fantastic Four foe Dragon Man, an android upgraded by Valeria and reprogrammed for pacifism, who often acts as their teacher and would die for them.
Richards also recruits the former Morlock power-dampener Leech, friend of Maddicks and Franklin, secretly intending for Leech to further negate Franklin’s latent omega-level mutant powers; being of normal intelligence, Leech and Franklin do not regularly participate in the Special Class activities in the beginning, but they have more prominent roles as the school takes its classroom into the cosmos.
When the Human Torch is presumed dead, Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, joins the Future Foundation as one of their primary members. The Future Foundation continues to add more students and visiting professors to their roster.

Classroom Bullies The Future Foundation faces many threats, including long-time Fantastic Four enemy Dr. Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom. However, he occasionally acts as an ally to the school when it suits him and where Valeria is concerned since he had a hand in bringing about her second birth and named her.
The children at the Foundation also face graver Super Villains, such as the Negative Zone’s world-conquering Annihilus, particularly his insectoid soldiers, the Frightful Four, and the Griever at the End of All Things.
The Foundation also engages the Mad Celestials from another universe, who are similar to Earth-616’s Celestials, though their wanton judgement and destruction extends to the entire Multiverse. When they attempt to achieve such destruction, the Future Foundation stops them in their tracks.

Team Spirit
Considering the Fantastic Four and the Future Foundation are closely tied, many of their allies overlap. With Mister Fantastic as the school’s headmaster, the students look up to him and lean on the other members of the Fantastic Four for guidance and protection. The Fantastic Four also adopt the Future Foundation’s nomenclature for a time when they dedicate themselves to shepherding tomorrow.
Other allies include the time-traveling Nathaniel Richards, who is also grandfather to students Valeria and Franklin. The Power Pack family’s younger member, Alex Power, attends the Future Foundation and he and his sister and Julie Power, AKA Lightspeed, eventually become professors. As such their family is a reliable ally to the school. Same goes for Medusalith Amaquelin, AKA Medusa, and the Inhumans. Medusa even takes up Fantastic Four’s mantle when they’re unavailable, while her son Ahura and her niece Luna Maximoff are also members of the student body, so she’s even more invested in the school and its well-being. Other heroes who watch over the school and its students include Scott Lang, AKA Ant-Man, Jennifer Walters, AKA She-Hulk, and Darla Deering, AKA Ms. Thing.
Additional allies to the school’s growing roster include former foe Galactus, the X-Men, Jim Hammond, AKA Human Torch, and the Fantastic Four’s long-time friend Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man.

Base of Operations
- Baxter Building and the Multiverse
Current Members
- Franklin Richards
- Valeria Richards
- Leech
- Artie Maddicks
- Luna Maximoff
- Dragon Man
- Lightspeed
- Mister Fantastic (Reed Richards)
- Invisible Woman (Susan Storm Richards)
- The Thing (Benjamin Grimm)
- Human Torch (Johnny Storm)
- Human Torch (Jim Hammond)
- Nathaniel Richards
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
- Lyja
- Medusa
- Ant-Man (Scott Lang)
- She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters)

Yearbook Across Time and Space
Sometime after Turg was housed within a small levitation chamber and Maddicks was given a device that allowed him to mimic his lost mutant power to project his thoughts as holographic images, the Special Class began convening in the Room lecture hall to discuss issues they could address; ultimately, they chose curing Ben Grimm, AKA the Thing’s monstrous mutation as their first project, something Richards had failed at for years. The Class deduces a temporary cure, allowing the Thing to resume his human form one week annually. During the week Grimm was human, and while Reed and Susan were away from the Baxter Building, the Negative Zone’s would-be conqueror Annihilus and his Annihilation Wave attempted an invasion of Earth through the Baxter Building’s Negative Zone portal. The portal’s controls damaged during a battle, Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch, was forced to seal the portal from the Negative Zone, then apparently sacrificed himself to save Grimm and the Special Class as the portal closed.
Afterward, the remaining members of the Fantastic Four (the “First Family”) retired the Fantastic Four and abandoned their traditional uniforms out of respect for Storm. The family claimed the Future Foundation (FF) nomenclature and adopted a black and white uniform with a hexagonal emblem. Per Storm’s pre-recorded will, the family offered Storm’s position to their ally Spider-Man (Parker), whose teaching experience and scientific intelligence perfectly aligned with the Future Foundation’s purpose to improve the world and educate and enable the Special Class; apparently without the family’s knowledge, the Class decided killing Annihilus should be a priority for the group. The Foundation was soon joined by Reed Richards’ time-traveling father, Nathaniel Richards, and the First Family battled Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), then both the Family and Special Class battled Spider-Man’s Sinister Six foes.
When four members of the Interdimensional Council of Reeds (a cabal of Reed Richards variants from across the multiverse without scruples and dedicated to improving reality at any cost) were unintentionally loosed on the FF’s Earth-616 by Valeria, they began manipulating events to provoke a war between four lost civilizations. The civilizations included the Moloids’ native Forever City, Wu and Vil’s Old Atlantis (ruled by Susan Richards), and a former superhuman prison-turned city within the Negative Zone. The Four Reeds wanted to implement their plan to destroy Earth-616, which would further their goal of directing reality’s fate. Warned by her future counterpart, Valeria, aided by Nathaniel, convinced Reed Richards to let the Special Class restore perennial Fantastic Four enemy Doctor Doom’s damaged mind, as Valeria and Nathaniel believed his genius was vital to defeating the Council Reeds, though they kept their true intentions to themselves; Doom subsequently joined the FF, an uncomfortable prospect for much of the First Family and Special Class. The FF then gathered a number of Reed Richards’ intellectual enemies to strategize the Council Reeds’ defeat and the prevention of the impending War of Four Cities they were fostering to return to their home dimensions.
Meanwhile, at the Baxter Building, Val was leading the Future Foundation to create a translocator to relocate the top three floors of the building just in case people needed to escape. On Attilan, home of the Inhumans, two of the interdimensional Reeds were captured by the Inhumans. Though Inhuman royal Crystal Amaquelin Maximoff, AKA Crystal, didn’t see her husband Ronan’s plan forming. He let loose the remnants of the Supreme Intelligence upon the two Reeds and through their great minds, resurrected their leader, the Supreme Intelligence, to restore glory to the Kree Empire.
More threats reigned down on Earth as the Anti-Priest of the Cult of the Negative Zone created obelisks that would allow Annihilus and his deadly annihilation wave to access Earth-616. However, one of Annihilus’ slaves, the resurrected Johnny Storm, defeated Annihilus with the help of allies he made in the Zone, and returned home to help defeat another threat: the Supreme Intelligence and its Kree Armada, who intended to burn the Earth and eradicate all Inumans. During the attack, Richards and his superpowered allies fought the Kree. With threats all around them, the Future Foundation children then faced an invasion of Annihilus’ insectoid soldiers in the Baxter Building, and used the panic function to translocate the top three floors of the building to Latveria to get the class to safety.
In Latveria, the kids teamed up with Doctor Doom, his ward Kristoff, Nathaniel Richards and another interdimensional Reed to return to the Council through a portal known as the Bridge. At the Bridge, they confronted the Mad Celestials, who destroyed the Council. The Mad Celestials intended to approach Earth next, so Valeria and Nathaniel convinced Doom and the alternate Reed’s help to forestall them, who both sacrificed themselves, with Reed using the deadly Ultimate Nullifier, but not before Valeria whispered encouragement to Doom to stay alive. The kids used the extra time to retreat back to Earth through the Bridge. But the Celestials followed through the portal, intent on destroying Earth-616 and its Reed Richards.
The kids and Nathaniel had some help from the Power Pack, but left Kristoff behind who was forced to take up Doom’s seat as Latveria’s ruler. The Future Foundation then followed advice from one of the interdimensional Reeds and traveled to the Hub where they could stop the Mad Celestials. There, they met up with their Headmaster Richards, the Thing, Invisible Woman, Spider-Man, and the returned Johnny Storm. They attempted to use a superweapon, Sol’s Anvil, with the aid of the world-devouring Galactus, to defeat the Mad Celestials, but it failed.
Nathaniel, having traveled through time, planned for the grown-up future versions of Franklin and Valeria to arrive in the present at this moment, and they joined the fight. The future Franklin combined his reality-altering powers with Galactus and finally defeated the Celestials. Richards had the Baxter Building rebuilt and created the Foundation, an orbital space station/education facility above the Baxter Building, and the kids received new uniforms with numbers on them to make them more personal. The First Family came to understand Nathan and Valeria’s need for deception—convincing Richards to allow Doom to help and then sacrificing him—though they grounded her for the deception and she promised to never keep secrets again.
The Future Foundation joined Richards on a field trip to Wakanda, Africa and they were given a guided tour by child prodigy Onome. She showed them the Wakandan Reservoir but they soon discovered a dead body from the Hyena Clan, who were known to booby trap their dead. The body exploded and the device they were carrying teleported members of the Hyena Clan to their location. The kids all hid but Dragon Man stood out, so the Hyena clan attacked him. Alex Power stepped in to stop them as the others grabbed the Hyena Clan’s teleportation amplifiers and its controller. Onome reprogramed the controller’s coordinates and sent the Hyena Clan to Shuri, AKA Black Panther, to answer to them. Onome soon joined the Future Foundation as a student.
When the Fantastic Four were called away on a cosmic adventure, Richards tapped four of their trusted allies, Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Medusa, She-Hulk, and Ms. Thing (Darla Deering), to watch over the Foundation in their absence. Though the First Family did not return as planned. Instead, an older, scarred Johnny Storm came back claiming the team had died and the only way to stop it was to destroy Doctor Doom. Scott was happy to lead the fight against Doom, having lost his daughter to the Super Villain, but it led to student Alex Power leaving in protest of the new direction of the Future Foundation. Scott struggled to balance his daughter’s death while caring for the Foundation children, and the Yancy Street Gang came after Darla. Meanwhile, old Johnny had a breakdown and burned parts of Manhattan, landing himself in a coma.
Medusa brought her troubled son, Ahura, into the Foundation, and was soon hypnotized by the Wizard into kidnapping his clone, Bentley-23. Along with his partner Blastaar, the Wizard transported the Future Foundation into the Negative Zone. The Future Foundation came to the rescue and defeated the Wizard, breaking his mind control over Medusa.
Meanwhile, Doom held Alex Power’s parents hostage, and ordered him to kill Old John Storm. Alex and some of the kids went to Ahura and Luna’s uncle Maximus Boltagon, AKA Maximus the Mad, to get advice on killing but accidentally set him free. When everything seemed lost, help arrived in the form of cosmic alien Julius Caesar, who told them the missing Fantastic Four were unmoored in time and space, and they could use his space-time ship to save them. In their first attempt, they were intercepted by Impossible Man, who asked them to take his son Adolf the Impossible Boy into their school, which they did with open arms. Caesar soon met the freed Maximus and asked him to build a multilinear chronostellar manifold to retrieve the Fantastic Four. Though Doom found out about the manifold plans and ordered Alex to steal them so he could build one himself.
When the portal activated, the entire Future Foundation disappeared to a place where Doom and his cabal couldn’t go: the Blue Area of the Moon where they met up with Uatu the Watcher. Though they also encountered Ivan Kragoff, AKA Red Ghost, and a few of his time-traveling selves in the mists of endless time loops on the moon. From this secret location, Scott launched an attack on Doom, planned for Alex and Ahura to liberate Alex’s parents, and successfully destroyed Doom’s defenses. When Scott faced Doom, he defeated him using Pym Particles to enhance and control his strength. When Richards and the others finally returned from their cosmic adventure, Richards questioned and reprimanded Scott for putting the kids in danger, but got over it quickly when Scott told him new information about the Pym Particles that could be researched.
When creatures from Franklin’s world broke free from the Baxter Building and caused destruction across Manhattan, the Fantastic Four were sued. The courts ruled in favor of the prosecution, which left the children of the Future Foundation in the care of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch. But when the kids learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. had imprisoned their teacher—the android Dragon Man—with plans to deactivate him, Jim teamed up with the FF kids to save him. They infiltrated a S.H.I.E.L.D. Base where Dragon Man was being held and during their infiltration, Bentley joked about being a Super Villain. They worked together to defeat S.H.I.E.L.D. agents guarding Dragon Man, and liberated him. Afterward, S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria Hill directed Hammond to keep Dragon Man out of the public eye to make it look like the deactivation went as planned and commended him for questioning orders.
The kids and Richards were soon taken to New Eden and held hostage by the Wizard, who allied with the vindictive Quiet Man and corrupted heroes from Counter-Earth. As the Wizard’s allies attempted to extract information from Franklin’s brain through torture, Bentley—as the clone and son to the Wizard—helped them do it, becoming the villain he said he would, causing fellow student Onome to cry out that she believed in him. Or so everyone thought. Bentley suddenly leapt at the chance to take out the team of “heroes” with a changeable device. Meanwhile, Richards had planted disruptors everywhere in Eden’s office, which started exploding and one of them let the kids out of their cell. The Wizard protected Bentley from the explosion, and in the ruins Bentley told him to leave and how he couldn’t stand by as his friend Franklin was tortured, showing the Wizard what kind of person he would have been had he had a loving family.
While the Fantastic Four faced the hordes of monsters that the Quiet Man unleashed from Franklin’s world and the corrupted heroes, Richards told the kids to stay in the Baxter Building where it was safe. But Bentley had other ideas. He and the kids entered the fray despite young Onome’s words of warning. The Frightful Four soon joined the Fantastic Four and their leader, the Wizard, said it was to help protect his son, which Bentley and the other Future Foundation kids witnessed from the sidelines. The Fantastic Four and the Frightful Four were soon joined by other heroes like Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, and the Salem Seven. Their enemies were soundly defeated though the Baxter Building was destroyed yet again.
When the realities of Earth-616 and Earth-1610 collided, the Future Foundation was slain in the incursion. Doom was able to create Battleworld from the fragments that were left behind, while Richards created a life raft for survivors. Richards and his allies, such as Owen Reece, AKA Molecule Man and Miles Morales, AKA Spider-Man, restored the Multiverse, but at a cost: Richards, Sue and the Future Foundation were gone.
Ben and Johnny grieved their lost loved ones, but meanwhile, they had all survived and were traveling the cosmos, rebuilding the universes with Owen’s molecules and Franklin’s reality-creating powers. When a new world would be made, Franklin would take requests from the other kids, who were also growing up and becoming teenagers in the time they were gone from Earth. On one of the worlds, Valeria developed a crush on a humanoid named Arboro, who nicknamed her “Brainstorm” and Franklin “Powerhouse.”
Franklin’s ability to create worlds suddenly ceased and their actions caught the eye of the Griever at the End of All Things, who promised to destroy every world they had created as it crossed the boundaries of their purpose, and killed Molecule Man. Richards, Sue and the Future Foundation ran and made their stand on Franklin tried to take on the Griever alone but to no avail. The Griever seemed disappointed in the great Fantastic Four, but Richards pointed out that they were not at full capacity. So she summoned one of her transmaterializers (or telepod, a universal teleportation device) to bring the Fantastic Four back together, but Richards instead called in the whole family, from Ben and Johnny to Medusa and the X-Men, and even more allies. Richards directed his allies to destroy the transmaterializer and Griever’s ship, save one telepod, and they got to work. Meanwhile, Richards and Sue reunited with Ben and Johnny. Sue explained that even though they had only been missing for a year on Earth, they had been jumping around in time, so for them it had been over half a decade since they saw them last. Ben and Johnny hugged the now teenaged Franklin and Valeria, and together they faced the Griever as a family. They defeated the Griever by outsmarting her. Richards realized that the ship the Griever traveled on couldn’t be hers since she only had the power to destroy and not create, so he gave her a way out with one telepod left. She departed, but not before she promised to see him and his Fantastic Four again. Meanwhile, the Foundation and allies started fixing the remaining telepod to get back home.
However, Dragon Man and the Future Foundation teens wanted to explore the cosmos for a way to bring back their friend Owen the Molecule Man, whose atoms were scattered about the Multiverse. Impressed with Alex Power during their time across the cosmos, Richards and Sue awarded him a degree as a professor. He accepted, and with a promise from Dragon Man that he’d look after the students, the Future Foundation headed off to collect pieces of Owen. Franklin and Valeria returned home to Earth with their Fantastic Four family.
While the Future Foundation continued to look for Molecule Man to reassemble him, the group ran into trouble and Alex Power had doubts about being in charge. So they used Dragon Man’s android technology to teleport to the person most likely able to help them, and Dragon Man led them straight to Alex’s sister and former Power Pack member, Julie. Though the teens of the Future Foundation doubted Julie up until she swept them to safety using her lightspeed abilities. She soon asked her brother if she could help him run the Future Foundation, despite flunking out of college where she was studying education, and he agreed to let her join.
When the Foundation tracked an otherworldly signature to an alien prison planet, Julie tapped Dragon Man to use his algorithm to find a visiting professor who could help them get in and out of the prison, which led them straight to the space pirate Yondu Udonta, AKA Yondu, and in exchange for his help, the Foundation would help him solve any one problem. It was soon revealed that Yondu was actually the Skrull warrior Lyja the Lazerfist, and former wife to Johnny Storm! Lyja explained her complicated past with the Fantastic Four, and how sometimes she was a villain, but that she ultimately wanted to help the First Family. When she heard the FF had gone missing, she set off to find them as Yondu, who could travel around a galaxy that distrusted Skrulls.
Julie also discovered that the signal was coming from Rebecca “Rikki” Barnes, a former ally of Captain America from another world. While in the prison world, they also rescued Reed Richards, AKA the Maker, from Earth-1610, mistaking him for Mister Fantastic. The two groups made a truce to escape the prison, but that ended when the Maker spotted a piece of the Molecule man that the FF managed to save. Rikki shot and killed the Maker, but a second Maker appeared and stole the Molecule Man fragment just before sending a missile into the FF’s ship. The students, Alex, Julie, Rikki, and Lyja corralled into Bentley’s secret lair, a pocket dimension, protecting themselves from the destruction of their ship.
By putting their heads together, and using stolen teleportation tech in Bentley’s lair, they figured out how to escape the pocket dimension safely, but it required Franklin and Owen’s powers. Using her Skrull shape-shifting ability, Lyja posed as Franklin, while Rikki mimicked Owen’s molecules—since she was from a universe created by Franklin and Owen—and Julie borrowed her brother’s gravity powers, adding them to her own lightspeed, and they were able to trick the technology into teleporting them to safety.
The Foundation decided to take a well-deserved break on a beach and Lyja asked Alex if she could stay on with the Foundation, despite her past villainous mistakes. Alex agreed and she joined the Future Foundation. Where will they go next? The future will surely tell.