I think it's time I stop numbering these since A) I'm falling down a comics rabbit hole and B) I hate math. What have I been reading lately?
I've been reading the fuck out of Jon Hickman's Fantastic Four. And it's all been pretty damn fantastic indeed.
I've always loved the Fantastic Four because while they're a superhero team (originally they were Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League), they're a family first. The drama between Johnny and Ben is like that between brothers, the drama between Johnny and Sue is between brother and sister, the drama between Reed and Sue is between husband and wife and so forth - it's a tone you're just not gonna see in a lot of other books, so I've always appreciated the team-up nature that also brings in the natural, relatable interactions in a way books like Justice League, Avengers, Wildcats etc. simply can't.
But Jon Hickman's run. Ho. Lee. Fuuuuuuu.
I think the most impressive thing about the dude is his ability to balance big and simple. The opening story has Reed feeling guilty about what happened both at the end of Civil War and Mark Millar/Bryan Hitch's previous run, where Reed decides only he can save the world, so he dedicates his bandwidth to one thing: solve everything.
This leads him to create a machine that connects him with Reed Richards from other universes, who have met up and formed - wait for it - the Council of Reeds. These Reeds have basically forsaken everything to save the universe, which is awesome, but terrifying when you see what they've given up. They perform surgeries on suns and create worlds that are just farms to feed the universe... but they also lobotomize every single Dr. Doom they come across and leave them in a basement, not entirely unlike the second season of Desperate Housewives. That known, Reed still wants to join them and solicit their help in trying to save his, and every, Earth.
That is, until he finds out that every single other Reed has given up their family. So consumed by their work, they've lost their wife Sue, their friends Ben and Johnny, and their kids Franklin and Valeria. Just as our Reed decides the cost is too high and he can't lose his family, a group of Celestials, these crazy ass cosmic giants whose power is measured on a "We can destroy the universe" scale from a rogue universe where they went evil crash the Council of Reeds and just start killing everyone - it's an absolute bloodbath. We get to see a bunch of Reeds from different Universes show off their powers and it's pretty fun seeing the different ways Reeds could pan out. A bunch scatter and go to their respective universes to get weapons to fight the Celestials, but our Reed, the 616 Reed, is the only one that comes back and they manage to fend off these crazed space Gods. Reed decides he's had enough of these Reeds and returns home to his family.
Hickman quickly goes from this onto another arc that pays respects to previous Fantastic Four stories and you think you just got a cool, crazy, random Reed story about parallel universes. But what sets Hickman's run apart from others is the subtlety of each story in relation to the other. After a few of these arcs come out though - you start seeing the bigger picture and realizing how they all connect to tell a greater story.
After the subtlety, and the art of telling big stories simply, Hickman is just so damn good at making his story fit into A) the bigger marvel picture and B) into his own bigger picture.
A) his overall story found ways to tie into other Marvel stories like Mark Millar's previous run on the F4, his stint on Old Man Logan, Realm of Kings, and so many other stories, that it's sort of amazing how respectful he is about cutting the trim on his story so it neatly fits in with others. He doesn't step on any other writer/artist's toes to tell, what's frankly, his opus.
B) Another cool thing about Hickman is that this wasn't the only book the dude was writing. And while all of his stories tie into a greater Marvel Universe, when you read all the dude's books, there's definitely a throughline that connects everything with his name on it into its own mini-saga. It's like the guy hijacked the Marvel universe for a few years and everything from Secret Warriors to Fantastic Four to his later titles like Avengers and the final event he did, Secret Wars, is its own condensed manifesto on what makes comics great and characters interesting.
All things told, I don't think it was the cleanest told story. There were some moments that I wasn't quite sure what exactly was happening and when the impact of certain actions were revealed, some were either underwhelming or unclear, but you could tell tonally that it was an "oh shit" moment so that excitement carries you even if the execution falls a bit short.
That said, there were some of the craziest fucking revelations made in his tenure on the book that I just cannot forget. I will not forget. The way Franklin and Valeria were propped up was nothing short of beautiful and epic to a degree that you don't always see in comics, especially Superhero comics. The ambition of what the dude did in an ongoing was insane: and then when the companion book FF comes out - the scope of what he did with two normal monthly books - completely eschewing what could have/probably should have been an event comic - is just ridiculous and borderline unprecedented. The closest comparison I can think of is DC's Sinestro Corps. War or Marvel's own Death of Captain America story.
This kinda shit just doesn't happen often in comics, and when it does you need to stand up, take a step back, and enjoy the fuck out of it.
It's like a comet. It happens every couple years and you need to let the world around you slow down and appreciate just how weird everything can be.
I read Fantastic Four 554-588: FF 1-23; Fantastic Four 600-611 and it was goddamn brilliant. I can't recommend enough that you get Marvel Unlimited and do the same.