It's Official: Marvel Announces A Classic Supervillain Team Is Joining MCU Lore

Published Sep 15, 2026, 7:30 PM EDT

Robert Wood is a writer and editor based out of Cheshire, England. He is the author of 'The False Elephant: and 99 Other Unreasonably Short Stories' - 100 stories, each told in exactly 100 words.

Rob got into comics via Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man and the UK anthology 'The Mighty World of Marvel,' which was running Frank Miller's Daredevil, Classic Hulk and Contest of Champions II.

Prior to journalism, he worked in copywriting and copyedited for Oxford University Press. He is on X as @PinchTwigs and Instagram as roobwoodjourno.

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Marvel just revealed the MCU design for a classic villain, sharing the first look at the live-action iteration of a character who has been menacing the Fantastic Four since 1962. Not only that, but Marvel has confirmed his iconic villain team is coming with him.

The foe in question is the Wizard, aka Bentley Wittman, a villainous scientist who is arguably the first 'evil Reed Richards' in Marvel lore, and the founder and leader of the villainous Frightful Four.

The Wizard became MCU canon in 2025's The Fantastic Four: First Steps, as one of the supervillains rounded up by Reed Richards ahead of the birth of his son Franklin. However, the foe wasn't seen apart from a grainy, cut-off image from the end-credits scene depicting the team's in-world spin-off cartoon.

Fantastic Four Tie-In Debuts The Frightful Four

The reveal comes as part of the latest issue of The Fantastic Four: First Foes, which previously depicted the team's past with the Mad Thinker and the Silver Surfer. Coming from Fabian Nicieza and Mark Buckingham, the 100% canon comic will depict the MCU origin of the Wizard, with Phil Noto's cover art showing his official design.

The Wizard's MCU design includes his bright pink and blue armor, as well as his oversized helmet, which grants him mind control powers. A genius who is almost Reed Richards' equal, the Wizard has no natural powers, deriving enhanced strength, energy blasts and flight from his armor (hence the nickname 'the Wingless Wizard.') However, the Wizard won't be attacking alone. The issue's summary reads:

Bentley Wittman is too great a genius to be ignored! He deserves all the accolades given to the Fantastic Four, and he will prove his intellectual superiority by embarrassing them and stealing the globally renowned monument to science - the Baxter Building! And to accomplish that amazing feat, the Wingless Wizard will create... the Frightful Four!

It seems that this comic will introduce not just the Wizard, but his Frightful Four. In classic comics, the first roster included the Wizard, Sandman, Paste-Pot Pete (later renamed the Trapster) and Medusa of the Inhumans. Given two of these characters already exist elsewhere in the MCU, it's possible the MCU Frightful Four will be robots, as was the case with the Wizard's recent 'Frightful Four Hundred' robot army.

While the Wizard is a longtime enemy of the Fantastic Four, he became a more intense threat in 2009, when the Fantastic Four adopted his clone son Bentley-23, giving him an even more personal reason to despise them.

Marvel's Fantastic Four Tie-In Comics Have Been a Mixed Success

Hopes are high for Fantastic Four: First Foes - The Wizard, as so little is known about the villain in MCU lore. The previous comic focusing on the Mad Thinker ambitiously expanded the team's lore by characterizing the villain as a former ally consumed by jealousy. In contrast, The Fantastic Four: First Foes - Shall-Bal added little in the way of new information or lore.

There's a reason Marvel hasn't published many official tie-in comics with the MCU. Any comic spin-offs are necessarily secondary to both present and future movies, limiting what creators can introduce. Being set in Earth-828 (and presumably using some of the villain plotlines fans already know were cut from the movie) means that First Foes can be more ambitious, albeit still with hard limits.

Experience suggests that this works best when dealing with the villains most tangential to First Steps, where creators have to hold back less to accommodate past and future choices (after all, Shall-Bal is likely to return one day, and the comics can't set up anything that might clash with her next storyline.)

For that reason, The Fantastic Four: First Foes - The Wizard is set to be an interesting addition to MCU canon, not least because fans will see the movie version of the Frightful Four for the first time.

The Fantastic Four: First Foes - The Wizard #1 is coming from Marvel Comics December 9.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a long-running multimedia franchise drawn from the heroes, villains, and narratives of Marvel Comics. The MCU formally began with 2008's Iron Man, with other successes forming the basis for the contemporary path from comic page to screen, including over 30 films and 20 TV shows.