The Fantastic Three, Two, or One...

All the hype over the Fantastic Four "death" and recent chatting on Facebook has got me thinking about what my buddy Tim said.

"I was expecting more than a "break" in the family, which is usually where writers go when they aren't using Galactus or Doom as the basis of stories."

I will take this time to note that I have not read the latest issue. I know the "who" but not the "how" or "why."

Having read more than half of the almost 600 issues of Fantastic Four, the lineup has changed often (but temporarily) in the time I've been reading the book.

I've only read the first Essential with the Stan and Jack run which had no changes but I know that they come with Sue's pregnancy with Franklin.

After #24 (the last issue in the first Essential), my next issue is #232 which is John Byrne's first. Somewhere in that gap Medusa, Crystal, and Luke Cage were members.

During Byrne's run, Frankie Raye briefly joined the team before becoming Nova (not Rich Rider), a herald of Galactus. FYI, Frankie is/was the stepdaughter of Phineas Horton, the creator of the original Human Torch. Later on, She-Hulk replaced The Thing after the events of Secret Wars.

In Steve Englehart's run (one of my personal favorites), Reed and Sue leave the team to devote more time to caring for Franklin. This was during one of the times when Franklin's powers were "on." Ben was made team leader and replaced Reed and Sue with Sharon Ventura/Ms. Marvel II/She-Thing and Crystal (again). Crystal stayed around for only a few issues before returning to the Inhumans. Sharon stayed, even after Reed and Sue came back. When they returned, the FF was fighting the Frightful Four and Ben ended up losing his powers. Ben wore a really crappy outfit sometimes to still help out and kind of made it a five-some with Sharon still in the picture.

That kind of goes into Walt Simonson's run (another favorite of mine) where the team "died" and was replaced by Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, Hulk, and Wolverine for a 3 issue arc drawn by Art Adams.

The very next issue had Doom transfer Sharon's power into Ben, restoring the status quo.

Tom DeFalco's run had a bunch of weird crap in it. In his first issue, it was revealed that Johnny's wife Alicia was actually a Skrull. The switch occurred way back when Reed, Ben, and Johnny were transported to Battleworld for the Secret Wars. The Skrull, Lyja, was an occasional ally and also occasional enemy to the team.

Not long after, the Human Torch was in a serious fight and went "nova" which is his last-resort maneuver. He set the college he was attending on fire and went on the run. To try to bring him in, Dr. Strange reassembled the foursome of Spider-man, Ghost Rider, Hulk, and Wolverine to track him down. During the fight, Wolverine clawed Thing's face, scarring him. Thing wore an ugly metal helmet after that, until he was healed a few years later.

Controversial at the time, Reed and Doom both "died" when Doom sent them into the past. Things got even weirder after that. Franklin (now aged to his teenage years thanks to Reed's dad Nathaniel) had a team called Fantastic Force (probably the least awesome thing Tom Brevoort's ever been associated with) which Johnny joined. Scott Lang, the 2nd Ant-Man (and father to Cassie Lang/Stature) and Doom's "heir" Kristoff Vernard started hanging around though I don't think they were ever official members.

Eventually Scott and Kristoff left, they found Reed, Ben's face got healed, Franklin got de-aged back to a child, yadda yadda, more-status-quo-pleasing-stuff which led into the entire team "dying" while fighting Onslaught.

The FF and Avengers were actually shunted to an alternate Earth (later called Counter Earth) that Franklin subconsciously created to save everyone. They got better.

Back in the good old 616, not much changed until the end of Claremont's expository run where Doom and Reed switched bodies or something. That was the only arc he did that I enjoyed.

During Carlos Pacheco's run (tied for 3rd on my all-time favorite FF runs, even with Loeb involved), Namorita joined temporarily to help save Reed, Sue, and Ben from the Negative Zone. Also part of this run was the birth of Val, the Richards' 2nd child who was miscarried during Byrne's run. Hooray for altering reality.

Mark Waid's run had Ben die during a thing in Latveria and then brought back mere issues later in a jump-the-shark-groan-inducing arc where the team GOES TO HEAVEN to bring him back. Yeah...I do wonder what would have happened had Waid/'Ringo stayed fired from the book, but that's a whole other topic. Anyway, at some point Johnny became a herald of Galactus but ended up ditching him. Or some shit. Seriously, if you have the team GO TO HEAVEN and meet JACK KIRBY, it's time to end the book.

JMS' run I mostly skipped because I wasn't in need of a sleep aid. There didn't seem to be much change except for the Civil War crap which split up Reed and Sue for a time which led to...

Dwayne McDuffie's run, which had Black Panther and Storm replace Reed and Sue on the team for a time. I skipped this run also. Not only did it feel like a "transistional" run, but it felt like a poor reason to have a black writer put black characters into the book (see also: McDuffie's JLA run).

Mark Millar's run had more of a back-to-basics approach (never thought I'd ever type that sentence) but added an important aspect to Val, which was her super-genius stuff.

And that should bring us about up to speed for Hickman's run, already in progress.