Future Foundation

Origin

After becoming discouraged by how Earth's scientists viewed science and its applications, Mr. Fantastic formed a new group to create a better future for all of humanity. Gathering some young, great minds, Mr. Fantastic planned to mold them into a team that would come up with solutions to the world's problems. Among these brilliant minds were Alex Power (the oldest member of the family superhero team known as Power Pack), the young mutants Artie and Leech, the Subterranean Moloids known as Tong, Mik, Korr, and Turg, a now intelligent Dragon Man, the young clone of supervillain the Wizard named Twenty-Three and Reed Richards' own daughter Valeria.

Creation

The Future Foundation first appeared in Fantastic Four #579 in July 2010 and were created by Jonathan Hickman.

Major Story Arcs

Future Foundation

This band of adventurers have been solving a few complicated problems since their founding, including a serum that would change the Thing back into Ben Grimm one week out of the year. However, the group could not stop the events that led to a member of the Fantastic Four apparently dying in battle. While the group was in the Negative Zone trying to close a gate through which an army of insectoids called the Annihilation Wave were planning to enter Earth through the dimensional gate in the Baxter Building, Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch sacrificed himself to close the gate manually on the wrong side of the portal. It was the only way to do it, according to Valeria and Thirty-Two.

The seeming demise of the Human Torch left the Fantastic Four devastated and incomplete. The group disbanded soon afterward. All the other members of the old Fantastic Four team joined the Future Foundation, including new member Spider-Man.

War of the Four Cities

After learning of Valeria's alliance with Doom, Reed agrees to assist in restoring his intelligence. He journeys to Latveria with Spider-Man, Valeria, Nathaniel and Doom. They successfully restore Doom's mind by copying Kristoff's brainwave patterns. With his intelligence restored, Valeria reveals the reason behind it. Doom will help her defeat her father (or more specifically, his alternate reality doubles).

Doom summons Diablo, the Mad Thinker, the High Evolutionary, and the Wizard to the Baxter Building to assist the FF and himself. The Watcher also arrives to witness the event that is occurring. They've all been gathered together to defeat the alternate universe Reeds that have been trapped in the 616 reality.

The Council of Reeds had taken over The Forever City to use the High Evolutionary's equipment to power their portal home. Reed led the FF to the city to confront The Council, but they found the Inhumans and their floating city of Attilan already attacking them. The Inhumans were able to capture all but one of the Reeds, who captured Doom. The Inhumans gave the FF their leave through Eldrac. Eldrac sent Reed home, Spider-Man to Thing to convince him to come home, and Nathaniel to the Reed who got away.

In addition to Ben Grimm, Spidey showed up with the Avengers as well. As a group, they intended to make a second attempt on the Forever City and Attilan, however, they were interrupted by Annihilus' armada. This forces Valeria to use her new science project to translocate the Baxter Building to Latveria to protect the FF students.

The Mad Celestials

Val had chosen Latveria under Nathaniel’s directions. Ever since Eldrac transported him to Latveria, Nathaniel had been using Doom’s resources to help the free alt-Reed get home. Now that the top three floors of the Baxter Building were stuck in the mountain next to Doom’s castle, the FF were able to offer 616-Reed’s teleporter to The Council’s former headquarters. That means confronting the Mad Celestials that chased The Council away in the first place. To prepare, Val retrieves the Ultimate Nullifier and convinces alt-Reed to release Doom from his obedience collar.

As soon as they got there, the Celestials lashed out at Franklin. One of the Celestials was able to jam the portal back to 616-Earth open. Alt-Reed sends the FF back through the portal to work on closing it while he takes the Nullifier to hold back the Celestials. He admits he only wanted to do what was best for everyone and now has to clean up the mess he and The Council caused.

Using the Nullifier against the Celestials killed the alt-Reed, and thanks to a pep talk from Valeria, Doom was prepared to sacrifice himself so the FF could close the door. Doom seemingly perishes as the FF were able to remove the last obstacle prying the portal open, but they were unable to close it before the Celestials forced their way through, thus destroying Doom’s castle.

Valeria needed Sol’s Anvil to stop the Celestials, but they were stuck in Latveria. They called the rest of the Power Pack for help, who showed up in a vehicle big enough to bring everyone to it. She also called her father and filled him in on her plan because she needed his access to the Negative Zone. Everyone was able to regroup and activate Sol’s Anvil, and after conscripting the help of Galactus, Franklin was able to combine his and Galactus’s powers through the Anvil defeating the Celestials.

New Staff

The Richards have decided to take their family to space for some quality time. While they are gone they need someone to stand in as the school faculty to the Future Foundation kids, even though Reed engineered it so their trip would only take 4 minutes on Earth.

• Reed choses Scott Lang, the Ant Man
• Sue chooses Medusa, Queen of the Inhumans
• Ben chooses She-Hulk
• And Johnny blows off his choice to the last second and chooses his most recent sexual partner, Darla Deering, who was given The Thing’s old power suit from when he was powerless so she could be useful in a fight.

They wanted to assemble this new team just in case anything went wrong, and they didn’t return in 4 minutes. Something went wrong. Instead of the Fantastic Four, an older, scarred version of Johnny Storm exited the portal. He destroyed it so nothing could follow him through, and he reported to the FF that the Fantastic Four were dead at the hands of Doom the Annihilating Conqueror, a being composed of Dr. Doom, Annihilus, and Kang the Conqueror.

Ant-Man decided it was their duty to rid the world of Dr. Doom before he could become part of Doom the Annihilating Conqueror. However, Alex Power disagreed, believing Scott was letting the death of his daughter at Doom’s hand cloud his judgment. Alex ultimately left the team over it.

The Wizard Returns

Medusa started acting strangely. She was luring Bentley-23 to sleep, and her niece, Luna, could sense something wrong with her powers. It turned out she was being controlled by The Wizard, who was using Medusa to get close to Bentley. Then, with his partner, Blastaar, he teleported the Baxter Building to The Negative Zone, and the FF with it.

Wizard and his new Frightful Four try to bring the fight to the FF, and, for the first time, Lang lets the kids go into battle with them. Bentley-23 immediately rejected his new family and started scheming how to get rid of them. Using a teleporting vest, he took Blastaar off the battlefield. Meanwhile, the kids dogpile Medusa hoping she would snap out of Wizard’s hypnosis, with Leech’s powers playing a significant role. It gave She-Hulk the opportunity to knock out The Wizard.

With the Inhumans help, the FF are able to return the Baxter Building to New York. For his crimes against Medusa, the Inhumans took responsibility for The Wizard’s punishment. However, Medusa needed to be put on trial as well. The Inhumans and most of the FF were ready to forgive her since he was under hypnosis, but She-Hulk was less interested in letting her off the hook.

The Stink of Doom

During his time away from the FF, Alex Power travels to Latveria to warn Doom of the FF’s plan to end him. Doom takes Alex in but quickly loses his patience with him. Doom isn’t getting the answers he wants out of Alex, so in order to motivate him, Doom kidnaps Alex’s parents and forces Alex to return to the FF as his own personal spy.

Doom also starts working with Annihilus and a young version of Kang, calling himself Kid Immortus, based on Alex's warnings seemingly fulfilling the prophecy that Doom the Annihilating Conqueror will be created.

Rescuing the Fantastic Four

When the Future Foundation gets a mysterious invitation to a pool party at Julian Industries, they meet Charles Cotta, a space alien who travelled through spacetime and posed as Julius Caesar in Ancient Rome. He had teamed up with a timelost Fantastic Four and hearing about their current situation wanted to share his spacetime ship with the FF so they could save the F4.

However, as soon as the FF staff left the timestream, they were kidnapped by the Impossible Man. He heard they were running a school and he desperately wanted to get his own son, Adolf, into the class. The FF staff found him in a library, but when Adolf found out he would need to go to dangerous NYC, he declined the offer.

Adolf, unable to process his emotions, lashed out with his reality altering abilities, but Medusa was able to talk him down and convince him to accept the offer. For their help, Impossible Man informed Ant-Man that the Fantastic Four were drawn into a parallel reality and can’t be found on the current timeline.

When they returned, the kids had freed Maximus the Mad and brought him to the Baxter Building. Alex Power, working under orders from Doom, needed Maximus to kill Old John Storm for him. Before he could, Maximus struck up a deal with Caesar, and they started working on a portal to help the F4, even though most of the FF worried about Maximus’ involvement. When the portal was activated, the entire FF went missing, with Doom and his cohorts watching over them in utter bafflement.

An End of Doom

Scott caught on to everyone’s scheme. Using a blinding light to hide from the peering Doom, Scott shrunk his team down and teleported them into the skin of the Impossible Man. There, he apprehended Alex and Maximus for the role they would’ve played in Old John’s assassination. Impossible Man delivered them to the Watcher’s citadel on the moon, where Scott finally realized that he needs to find a better way of ending Doom than killing him.

His new plan required lots of robots, which they started collecting from anywhere they could get their hands on some. They also needed a magician, so they plucked Dakor from the timestream since they knew he went missing in the 1940s. With their new resources, the adult FF staff, including Alex Power and Ahura, travelled to Latveria to make their stand.

The first wave were the robots to face the first defenses head on. Ahura and Alex Power rescue Alex’s parents, robbing Doom of his leverage. Dakor cast a spell that blocked Doom’s ability to spellcast. The Inhumans attacked Latevrian Embassies across the world to give Doom nowhere to escape to. She-Hulk, Darla, and Medusa take away Doom’s ability to merge with the other two supervillains. Thus, Doom is vulnerable for a final confrontation with Ant-Man.

Using information he learned from the Watcher’s records, Scott was able to unlock the true power of the pym particles. He realized that there is not only a size component, but a strength and a durability component as well, allowing him to combine the powers of Giant-Man, Vision, and Wonder Man all at once. This gave him the edge he needed to defeat Doom, still very powerful even though he was without his castle defenses, magic, or allies.

To add insult to injury, Ravonna, betrayed by Doom, implanted a psychic vision of him accidentally killing Valeria, who Doom loves dearly. Thus, Doom experiences the same pain he put Scott through when Doom killed Scott’s daughter. Scott was satisfied with this victory but vowed to end Doom permanently if Doom ever tried to cross him again.

Soon after, the F4 returned and the substitutes were off the hook.

SHIELD Protective Services

Jim Hammond was assigned to be guardian of the Future Foundation kids after SHIELD had taken custody of them. The Fantastic Four lost their guardianship of the kids after they were sued by New York when creatures from Franklin's world escaped through the Baxter Building. As guardian, the kids came to him about their friend Dragon Man, who was set up for decommissioning. An agent told the kids that it wasn't really killing Dragon Man because Dragon Man is synthetic thus not alive. Jim did not care for that excuse.

Jim promises to save Dragon Man and allows The Future Foundation kids to use their computer savvy to locate him. Once located, Jim leads the Foundation after him, and they bring him to Camp Hammond. Camp Hammond is unfortunately attacked by The Quiet Man, who was the mastermind behind all of the F4's recent misfortune. He had been experimenting with Franklin's dreamscape, manifesting monsters and alternate reality Avengers.

Jim called in favors from Namor and Sam Wilson to investigate, which led them to reteaming with the F4. With Sleepwalker's help, Jim Hammond entered the dreamscape with Namor, Sue, and Franklin to stop The Quiet Man. In the dreamscape, Jim and the others had to protect Franklin, while he concentrates and negates this imaginary world. Franklin succeeds, and the team outrun the erasure back to their home world, where The Quiet Man changed his appearance and disappeared.

Secret Wars

When an incursion destroys the Earth, Doctor Doom is able to create Battleworld, from pieces of many Earths using power from the Beyonders. When Reed steals that power, he uses it resurrect his family and the FF students. Together, they travel the multiverse, with Molecule Man's help to re-create all the variant Earths that were destroyed.

Space Mission

When the Fantastic Four are called back to Earth to defend it, they leave the think-tank in space with a new mission to help piece together Molecule Man, who decimated himself helping rebuild worlds after the events of Battleword. They kids are left in the trusty hands of Alex Power, the oldest member of the FF, and Dragon Man. Onome was able to create a device to track Molecule Man, however, it picks up anything that has been displaced from their own reality.

Julie, Alex’s sister who joined after a bad breakup, volunteers to go undercover in a space jail, which they pull off with the help of alien bounty hunter, Yondu (although it was Lyja in disguise). She is tracking a signal to a specific cell which was holding Rikki Barnes from Franklin’s pocket universe. However, the mission gets sidetracked when Alex thinks he sees Reed in the live security footage. It turns out to be Maker, the Reed Richards of the Ultimate Universe.

There is hostility immediately when Onome’s device outs Maker as an alternate reality refugee, but they briefly band together to fight off the prison security drones so they can escape the atmosphere. As soon as they were free, Maker’s team dropped the truce and attacked the team for whatever pieces of the Molecule Man they had. Rikki was able to successfully beat the Maker and secure the Molecule Man piece.

However, another Maker showed up, shooting their ship with a missile and recovering the piece for himself. That Maker was able to escape, but the Future Foundation successfully came together to create a black hole portal to the next planet with a Molecule Man piece. Luckily, it also had a beach to enjoy.

Return to Earth

Sometime later, the Fantastic Four completed The Forever Gate, which uses Zero Force to connect to every point in the galaxy. They use this gate to bring the Future Foundation back to Earth after Alex's parents and Onome’s father complain about their absence.

Except for Bentley and Dragon Man, the rest of the students are returned to their guardians.

Alternate Earths

Ultimate Universe

The Future Foundation in the Ultimate Universe was founded by Tony Stark inspired by The Fantastic Four. Members included: Machine Man, Phil Coulson, Falcon, and former Fantastic Four member, Invisible Woman. They were brought together specifically when a rip in the space and time continuum allowed people from alternate realities to travel to theirs.

In Other Media

Video Games

• Spider-Man's Future Foundation costume is unlockable in Spider-Man: Edge of Time.
• A color-inverted version of the Future Foundation costume is unlockable in the video game adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man.
• The Future Foundation costumes for Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing and Spider-Man appear in Lego Marvel Super Heroes.
• The Future Foundation costumes for Spider-Man, Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing, and Doctor Doom appear in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.
• The Future Foundation costumes for Spider-Man, Thing, Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and Doctor Doom appear in Marvel Heroes.
• Spider-Man's Future Foundation costume is available in Spider-Man Unlimited.
• The Thing, Invisible Woman, Mister Fantastic and Spider-Man's Future Foundation costumes are obtainable in the Facebook Marvel: Avengers Alliance game. All costumes have a unique set of special features.
• Spider-Man's Future Foundation uniform was added as a DLC costume in the PS4 Spider-Man game from Insomniac Games.

Merchandise

• A variant of Spider-Man in his Future Foundation costume was featured in the Marvel Legends Arnim Zola Build-a-Figure wave from Hasbro.
• A variant of Doctor Doom in his Future Foundation uniform was released for the Marvel Legends Epic Heroes wave. The variant is incredibly rare, and only saw a proper release in the United Kingdom.
• A toy of Spider-Man in his Future Foundation uniform was featured in Hasbro's Marvel Universe line.
• A figure of Doctor Doom in his Future Foundation uniform was released as part of a Greatest Battles Comic Pack with Symbiote Spider-Man. The set was produced by Hasbro.
• A Future Foundation box set featuring Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing and Spider-Man was released in Diamond Select's Minimates line as a San Diego Comic-Con exclusive.