Marvel is celebrating the return of the Fantastic Four with well over a dozen variant covers for the all-new #1 issue by Dan Slott and Sara Pichelli, due out this August, and in their latest batch of variant cover reveals they appear to be teasing the introduction of the first all-new villain that the team will face in the new series.
The variant cover by Dan Slott’s longtime Amazing Spider-Man collaborator Humberto Ramos appears to feature the mysterious new villain for the Fantastic Four, Eradikus.
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We first saw Eradikus in Sara Pichelli’s design sheet (courtesy of Bleeding Cool) for the new Fantastic Four series. Pichelli’s design for the villain makes her look like a sort of monstrously gorgeous runway model.
In Pichelli’s design sheet, Eradikus is drawn with a creature labeled as “minion,” but it is unclear if that is the creature’s actual name or if it is just a generic term for Eradikus’ minion. Since there are a whole pile of these creatures on the Ramos variant cover, it is likely that they are just nameless minions under Eradikus’ control.
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The other variant cover is a powerful shot of the Fantastic Four running into action by Nick Bradshaw.
Reed Richards, Sue Richards, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm return to comic books as the Fantastic Four on August 8, 2018. Esad Ribic will be drawing the regular cover for the issue.