Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman v1 TPB

I find it fascinating that so many of the writers for the Fantastic Four focus on Reed Richards. The thing is, he's kind of a cold fish. He can be a jerk to his own family and let's face it, stretching powers just aren't cool. So it's Reed's brain that makes him such a nice driver for stories. Jonathan Hickman uses Reed to set off his run on the FF with the Council of Reed Richards.

It was pretty fun seeing all of Dale Eaglesham's designs for multiple universe Reeds. The cosmic-looking guy, the Star-Hawk-y one, is particularly neat. (I like that he actually survives a blast from a celestial too, perhaps we'll see some of these guys again). The powers and looks for all those Reeds are so varied that I found myself really interested in the team. While they had the same goal ("Solve Everything"), they approach everything so differently, it's an interesting team.

I love the little details that Hickman uses to make this feel like the FF. The Wizard's batch of clones are a wonderful idea, but having one clone move in with the FF? Brilliant. He also picks up Val's intelligence just where Mark Millar left off, she's a three-year-old schemer. Giving Franklin and his buds a great fan-moment with Spidey is a great touch too. Hickman isn't neglecting the other members to make all this time for Reed.

As I said, Eaglesham is rocking this book. Neil Edwards isn't bad, but he can't compete with Eaglesham's inspired pencils. The FF looks absolutely brilliant in the first half of this book. In fact, while the entire first story is quite inspired, my interest did drop a bit with the Nu World stuff.

Fair