I've followed THE FANTASTIC FOUR off and on for about as long as I've been able to read, yet it took Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Steve McNiven's run on the book over at Marvel Knights to put into perspective what it is that I appreciate about Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben.

It's something that probably puts me in the minority, as most disregard the FF as being too cheesy, or perceive it as having been around so long that the concept is now worn thin. Don't tell that to Marvel, though, as they're currently publishing four different FF titles. Yet the series was generally considered to be dead in the water until Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo took over the flagship FF book a few years ago.

Since then, the FF has come to receive the sort of treatment usually reserved for Marvel's biggest selling properties, like Spider-Man or the X-Men; namely the creation of multiple titles aimed at selling the property to as wide a range of readers as possible, even going so far as to bless the title with its own ULTIMATE variation.

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR is perhaps the sexiest title of the bunch, as it's lured in Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, Andy Kubert, Warren Ellis and Stuart Immomen. This is a book that Marvel really wants to see succeed, and they've done quite the job thus far, putting it ahead of the pack. With the other Ultimate books having had plenty of time to ingrain themselves in comic readers' consciousnesses, it was clearly time for fresh blood. Fans had been craving an ULTIMATE FF from the start, and what they've received has been worth the wait.

'The FF were considered dead in the water until Waid and Wieringo took over.' For the purists, Waid and Wieringo have been keeping things steady over at the long-standing FF headquarters, and have proved such crowd-pleasers that, when Marvel tried to take them off the book, the outcry forced the publisher to reinstate them. This is the FF book that pulls together the characters' rich forty-year history into something that not only upholds those traditions and stories, but reshapes it into something fresh for the 21st Century, without having the luxury of starting over with moodier inks and younger characters.

The traditional FF (traditionally billed as the World's Greatest Comics Magazine, remember) isn't supposed to be fresh and sexy. Sure, there's Sue Storm and her boobies, but the standard Marvel line of comics is more there for the tried and true fan who has followed the story for as long as they can remember, and who find comfort in facing the expanding tapestry of continuity surrounding Marvels' first family every month.

Which is fine. But for those who want to read a book that grows with them rather than without them, that's where Marvel's other imprints come into play. In addition to the Ultimate version, there's also an FF title over at Marvel Knights, simply titled 4, and a child-friendly iteration courtesy of the Marvel Age line.

With Marvel Age FANTASTIC FOUR, Marc Sumerak and Udon are providing another back-to-basics look at the characters. Here the FF's origin story is being retold within the constraints of the traditional Marvel Universe, yet there's nothing new to be said there that isn't already being done better and with more excitement in ULTIMATE FF.

MARVEL KNIGHTS 4, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Steve McNiven, takes an approach to the FF that's only really possible thanks to the existence of other FANTASTIC FOUR books offering more traditional perspectives. As it's less successful than the Ultimate and Marvel Universe titles, the naysayers will suggest that it's not going to last very long, and while they're most likely correct in this assumption, that doesn't mean that the book deserves to be overlooked. It's actually one of the finer takes on the FF since Grant Morrison's brief four-issue mini-series from a few years back, FANTASTIC FOUR 1234.

'In addition to ULTIMATE FF, there are versions at Marvel Knights and Marvel Age.' It was Aguirre-Sacasa and McNiven who were meant to take over from Waid and Wieringo when the hubbub erupted over that creative team's dismissal. While Waid and Wieringo were eventually brought back to the title, thus avoiding a problem that needn't have been created in the first place, Aguirre-Sacasa and McNiven were allowed to continue with their title over at Marvel Knights, thus saving them from being sacrificial lambs led to slaughter at the altar of fan indignation.

Hopefully Aguirre-Sacasa and McNiven can now be given their due, though their first story arc, recently collected in a trade, suffered from having to build on the world Waid and Wieringo had constructed when circumstances would later mean that it had no obligation to that continuity.

MARVEL KNIGHTS 4 focuses on stripping the characters to their core in order to see what makes them human, in the manner of a character study rather than an earthbound space adventure story. The series begins with Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben discovering that a former employee has embezzled their fortune and Congress is cutting off their funding, leaving the Richards family penniless and, ultimately, homeless. Thus forced to support themselves, the characters are placed in what is to them an unfamiliar situation, but to the reader is likely all too familiar.

The Fantastic Four have fought Dr Doom countless times, and the fight can never go anywhere because all the characters have copyrights to renew. MARVEL KNIGHTS 4 finally provides a new twist on an old concept, forcing the family to really be a family, and it's almost reassuring to see characters who have faced the Negative Zone having to face the same problems that many of us have had to confront.

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has come to the Marvel Universe after some time as a playwright, and his excellent writing combined with the highly detailed artwork of Steve McNiven redefines characters that have been through countless rethinks and revisions over the decades. And they've done it with something as simple as a story about what makes The Fantastic Four fallible human beings.

Frank Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

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