Damn you Hickman! You got me again!

There are times when a writer really hits his stride with his work. You can tell this because when reading the book you can really feel the hard work put into each page and even panels of that page. This my friends is one of those issues. This is an issue where Hickman had to have put a lot of sweat and tears (mostly sweat) to make a great farewell to Johnny Storm. He does this though with the bravest thing to do: Make it a silent issue.

Other then the final page, which I won’t spoil but will say something about it in a second, all of this is a silent issue. Hickman though, puts so many ideas here for the benefit of the story and for future storylines it’s mindboggling how good it is. You first have the stages of grief with the family and I especially loved the moment with Reed almost dealing with Annihilus with the Ultimate Nullifier. Then you have the kids dealing with the grief and again, there’s a moment with Annihilus and it also gives us a great tease for the future. Then you have the Thing just going out of his mind for losing Johnny and a moment with Doom and it wall meshed so well. Finally you have a backup story with Spider-Man trying to help Franklin cope with Johnny’s death. A lot of it is touching but it also has a few sprinkles of humor to not make it so sad to read.

I will admit that I’m shocked Marvel let Hickman write Peter Parker with such emotion and having an ‘adult’ attitude. We all know that can never happen now a days with Spider-Man. So I certainly hoped an editor got fired for that mix up. (Okay enough with the sarcasm)

Interesting enough we don’t have Steve Epting drawing this ‘final’ issue of the series. Instead we have Nick Dragotta and Mark Brooks doing each story respectively. It took a while to get used to for each but at the end of the day I really loved their work in this. Dragotta has a little hint of Marcos Martin in his pencils and he handles the story beats perfectly. The Thing fighting with others during his greiving stage or a small section of Doctor Doom in the shadows are handled real well. With the backup by Brooks he also handles the emotions by Franklin and I liked his compositions for each setting. Even though it would have been nice to see Epting finish the run; Dragotta and Brooks handles this perfectly without the need of a big name artist.

So yes, everything about this ‘final’ issue of Fantastic Four was really well done. (I put final in quotes because come on, you really think this is the FINAL issue?) Jonathan Hickman handled the emotions perfectly for each character and sets up storylines for the new FF series. Plus the art by Nick Dragotta and Mark Brooks really made the script stand out perfectly. Finally, and again without spoilers, the ending of the main story really makes me excited for the future. I guess SHIELD is going to be bigger then I thought…