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Today, we look at your picks for #12-10 of the greatest Fantastic Four stories ever told!
As always, you voted, I counted the votes and now we count them down, four at a time. If I don’t add a date for the series, it means it is the original volume of whatever series I’m talking about.
12. Fantastic Four #347-349
As I noted in the write-up on Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan’s run on Fantastic Four, when the big speculator boom of the early 1990s hit, the Fantastic Four were really left behind a bit. DeFalco did his best to bring Fantastic Four up to those levels, sales-wise, while Walter Simonson had a clever response in his Fantastic Four run, he brought on his friend, superstar artist Arthur Adams, and they did a storyline leaning into the speculator craze in an amusing way by having a villain seemingly kill off the Fantastic Four and thus force the creation of a NEW Fantastic Four…made up of four of the hottest Marvel superheroes of the time, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk and Ghost Rider!
The whole thing was a delightful sort of parody of the excesses of modern comic books (Punisher even makes a cameo, just for the sake of saying that he made a cameo), while, of course, enjoying those excesses, as well!
11. Fantastic Four #600-604 “Forever”
As I noted in the write-up for “Solve Everything,” what makes our Reed Richards special out of the whole Council of Reeds (including multiple dudes who wield Infinity Gauntlets) is that he has something that these other Reeds doesn’t have. He still has a conscience.
It was a brilliant observation by Hickman that what makes Reed so special is not his great intelligence, but rather the fact that he is surrounded by a family that grounds him and prevents him from ever becoming the mad scientist he very easily could become.
One of the fascinating aspects of Hickman’s Fantastic Four run was how calculated the whole thing was. Hickman is a complex thinker and his run was carefully planned out. In his early issues, the Fantastic Four slowly encounter a growing group of brilliant young minds. After the Human Torch was seemingly killed off, Reed Richards decides to form the Future Foundation, a group where he can help mold these young minds into helping the world. A Council of his very own, but one guided by good intentions and not ego.
And it all basically led to “Forever,” where the heroes of Earth must protect the planet from a Kree attack meant to wipe out the Inhumans, but at the same time, the Fantastic Four have to take on the Celestials, who were drawn in by the Council of Reeds.
First off, we learn that Johnny Storm survived his seeming death earlier in “Three”…
Here’s the thing, though, the Council of Reeds always felt that they had to break from their families to protect the Multiverse, but in this story, we see that the fact that OUR Reed did NOT do that led to the eventual deaths of Reed, just like the other Council of Reed members, but because he had made such an impression on his son, Franklin (while the others, naturally, did not), then Franklin eventually became so powerful that he traveled through time and space to save his father, something that was only possible because of the love Reed had for his family…
See what I mean about how beautifully calculated it all was?
10. Fantastic Four #350-351, 353 “The Return of the REAL Doctor Doom”
In Fantastic Four #350, Walter Simonson, writer/artist of the series at the time, had Doctor Doom show up…the REAL Doom. As it turned out, the REAL Doom had entered into the timestream somewhere after the famous “Battle for the Baxter Building” story arc (which was earlier enough that Joe Sinnott wasn’t even the regular inker on the series yet!). It was likely around the last Fantastic Four issue by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to feature him, but at LEAST after the Baxter Building Battle arc (so around Fantastic Four #41) and thus, many of the Dooms that we have seen over the years were not actually Doctor Doom, but Doom-bots that he had to fill in while he was away that believed that they were the actual Doctor Doom.
Part of this decision was to make Doom seem more of a threatening villain, since Doom definitely showed up a lot more once Marvel really expanded their line of comics so that it was a bit less of a thrill when Doom was the villain in an issue.
Doom checks in on what the Fantastic Four are up to and learning that Sharon Ventura is trapped as the She-Thing at this point in time, and knowing that she is irked at Reed for being unable to cure her, Doctor Doom essentially seduces her into allowing him to cure her.
The Thing was having a hard time dealing with Sharon’s depression over being stuck as the She-Thing while Ben had recently been turned human again, so he exposed himself to cosmic radiation and turned into the Thing again. Then the Fantastic Four get an alert from Doom telling them that Doom has Sharon. Doom DOES cure her, but again, it was all just to show off how much better than Reed Richards he is and, of course, to draw the FF to Latveria.
Doom captures the other members of the team, but, in an excellent homage to the aforementioned Battle for the Baxter Building, Doom is unprepared for how ferocious of a fighter than Ben Grimm is and Ben overpowers him once again. Sharon, though, betrays Ben and attacks him from behind. Reed then shows up. He has escaped from his trap and he is ready to take Doom on one-to-one. Doom challenges him to a contest through time and Reed accepts. There is a fill-in issue and then Simonson returns for an insanely awesome comic book tale. The cover of the comic is even part of the story!!
Okay, so here’s how the comic book worked. Reed and Doom are traveling through time as they fight each other, so because of this, their adventure takes part in a completely separate timeline WITHIN THE COMIC. That takes place on the right side of the comic while Ben and the rest of the Fantastic Four have a normal, linear comic book story on the left side of the comic book.
It sounds more confusing than it is.
Here is an example…
See how Ben’s time remains consistent, while Reed and Doom’s time changed from 1:04 to 1:08? Well, to see what happened between those two times, you would have to go to page #10, where we see what happened at 1:06 in Reed and Doom’s time period, while time has passed normally for the rest of the team…
Isn’t that just the most fascinating idea?
It continues until both times eventually sync up with each other. The whole thing leads into another adventure with some characters introduced during their earlier time travel adventure, the Time Variance Authority (basically time cops) who are mad at all this unlawful time travel (the TVA famously became notable figures in the Loki TV series and the conclusion to this story is the introduction of Mobius Mobius, the TVA executive based on Mark Gruenwald).
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