While the characters remain relatively faithful to their original Marvel Universe conception, they differ in a number of notable aspects. The origin story of the team is modified and modernized and the team is much younger, being in their late teens to mid-20s. The series revolves around the adventures of teen genius: Reed Richards, his childhood friend: Ben Grimm, and siblings: Susan and Johnny Storm, who get engulfed in a malfunctioned teleporter experiment and begin to develop super-powers: Reed can stretch his body to impossible lengths, Susan can project force fields and turn invisible, Johnny develops pyrokinetic super-powers and Ben is transformed into a stone giant with super-human strength and durability. The series takes place in contemporary New York City and was met with mostly favorable responses from readers and critics, with the fresh, unique and modernized re-imagining of the classic Fantastic Four mythos, the art-work and the writing runs of Millar, Bendis and Ellis, being points of praise, while criticism was aimed at the perceived decline in quality of the writing, as the series progressed.
