Iron Man has had some wild sets of armor during the character’s long history, but wild is about to be taken to another level in the upcoming Fantastic Four (2022) #12, which will explore a new chapter of Marvel’s prehistory, and is set to include a confrontation between the Fantastic Fourand dinosaur versions of the Avengers.
Fantastic Four (2022) #12, from writer Ryan North and artist Iban Coello, will explore a world unlike any other in Marvel Comics. Discovering a corner of the multiverse where dinosaurs not only still roam the Earth, but developed sentience and built a complex industrial civilization. This includes their own saurian counterparts to Marvel’s heroes, including both The Fantastic Four and the Avengers. See the stunning cover art from Alex Ross below.
As emphasized in writer Ryan North’s solicit synopsis, these are not anthropomorphized dinosaurs, but actual, full-scale dinosaurs. This reality’s Avengers squad is said to include: Spinosaurs Captain America, Parasaurolophus Thor, Quetzalcoatlus (technically a pterosaur) Black Widow, Lambeosaurus Captain Marvel, and perhaps most intriguing of all, Brachiosaurus Iron-Man. Brachiosaurus, an animal that stood an imposing sixty feet tall and weighed over forty tons, fully encapsulated in a suit of Iron Man armor. With how much power Tony Stark can pack into a human-sized Iron Man suit, it’s difficult to comprehend the staggering might that could be encapsulated in armor designed for a creature as massive as a Brachiosaurus.
A Rematch 66 Million Years in the Making?
This isn’t the first time The Fantastic Four have tangled with dinosaurs. In Walt Simonson’s 1990 Fantastic Four #345-346, the team stumbled across an island overrun by the ancient creatures thanks to a disruption in the time-stream. Unlike the upcoming Fantastic Four #12, these were just animals, not Avengers-powered dinos. It will be interesting to see if this upcoming issue references to the team’s previous dinosaur-related adventure. While the dinosaur Avengers bear strong resemblances to their Earth-616 counterparts, they are not quite identical. Spinosaurus was from North Africa, not America, and possessed shorter legs than this Captain America’s. Parasaurolophus’s hooved hands would be ill-suited from grasping, yet “Para-Thor-olophus” grasps Mjolnir easily.
The assembling of these dino-Avengers is especially notable considering the fact that these dinosaurs hail from a wide period of time –
humanity is closer in time to Quetzalcoatlus than Quetzalcoatlus is to Brachiosaurus. It’s a unique take on dinosaurs in Marvel. While the animals have appeared with regular frequency over the years, even serving as superheroes, but they have never been depicted with fully human intelligence and technological acumen. Since the discovery of dinosaurs in the mid-1800s, the “terrible lizards” have been a cultural cornerstone – Fantastic Four (2022) #12 is set to bring them into the Marvel universe in an exciting new way. Readers can look forward to seeing how the Fantastic Four meets the challenge of Brachiosaurus Iron Man and the dinosaur Avengers.
Fantastic Four (2022) #12 will be available from Marvel Comics on October 4, 2023.
Source: Ryan North Twitter
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