In editor Tom Brevoort’s blog today, he announced a new look for the Fantastic Four book. As you can see above, it’s more of a magazine-type cover than a comic cover and it fits well with the Four being the public superstars of the Marvel Universe.

This change will coincide with Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch taking over the book in February.  The one concern with this is that Hitch isn’t known for speedy artistry (see: Ultimates 2) and the running jokes are that it will end up being the Fantastic Four-Issues-A-Year. Brevoort did address that concern as well.

I know everybody’s making all the typical jokes and predictions about us not being able to put two issues of this series out in a year’s time–and history could still prove you all right. However, Bryan’s completely penciled six full issues at this point, he’s got most of the next two almost completely penciled, and even has a handful of pages completed on the two after that. (Because Mark has been writing so far ahead, Bryan’s had the luxury of being able to work over entire story arcs at one time, bouncing backwards and forwards as the inspiration strikes him.) And either way, this is going to be a book worth waiting on.

I can only hope that Brevoort is right; Marvel hasn’t had a good track record with being totally upfront about how close the creative teams are to finishing issues. The recent Spider-Man opus, One More Day was said to be close to completion a few months ago, but delays have held it up recently. (and this is with Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada doing the artistry.)