As a kid, I always shifted around on who was my favorite Fantastic Four member.  At times, it was the Human Torch.  Other times, it was the Thing.  Sometimes, I thought the Four stunk and just Doom was the cool part of the mythos.  There was one weekend in the summer of ’94 where I cracked my head open and declared Herbie the greatest superhero ever.  Still, as an adult, I think I realize Reed Richards has to be one of the more interesting protagonists of the Marvel Universe.  When mishandled, he can come off as boring or lame.  However, if one can do the character well, like Hickman has done, it makes for a really intriguing story.

One of my most favored trades is “Wolf at the Door” from the Marvel Knights “4” series by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and a young Steve McNiven.  In it, the stories were less about who the Four punching out this month and more about examining the pathos of Marvel’s First Family.  The stories were more character studies than anything going through such plots as “What does Reed Richards do when his family is hit by an economic depression?” or “When Johnny Storm is faced with his own immaturity, what does he do about it?”  Dark Reign: Fantastic Four has Marvel Knights 4 written all over it.  Similar to the first arc of Sacasa’s 4, Reed is faced with a crisis partially of his own doing and isolates himself from everything to the detriment of himself and others.  Distraught over the ramifications of Civil War and Secret Invasion, Reed has developed a machine that theorizes the various possible scenarios for a better solution, realizing every scenario that resulted in peace involved Reed acting alone without Pym or Stark.  Whether this variable is, indeed, valid remains to be seen, but the idea of Reed examing his past failures and coming to such a conclusion is really interesting.  It’s going to be great times when Hickman takes over the main series.

Plus, there’s dinosaurs and a little girl wielding what appears to be a giant cannon.  Fun for all.