I have to confess a bias in my evaluation of various Fantastic Four entries: my principal litmus test is how well a writer deploys and characterizes my favourite superhero of all time, Reed Richards. Lee and Kirby's Mr. Fantastic was a willful and arrogant perfectionist, constantly railing and chafing against scientific and personal limitations, even as he reflexively self-sacrificed and endangered his family for the good of mankind. The better writers over the years successfully captured that fire and personality upon which his eccentric brilliance rests (e.g. Byrne, Lobdell, McDuffie), while lesser writers have ignored or apologized for it.

Jonathan Hickman nails it. Unlike the half-assed, manga-robot weilding, empty-suit Richards in Millar's main book, this Mr. Fantastic speaks and thinks like an actual world-class innovator. His lines almost seem cribbed from Ray Kurzweil or Richard Feynman.

That said, the other main players don't fare so well in this second issue. As the plot mucks about surveying alternate realities, the rest of the team doesn't have the chance to flex their respective characterizations at all. Instead we see a slightly less grating version of Civil War: 1602.

As for the children who open the issue and have a respectable amount to do, Hickman does a competent job with them, although my personal distate for the new super-smart Valeria we've had for the last few months makes an objective assessment of those sequences a chore.

Ultimately, more than enough to drive me to issue three, and Hickman's FF run beyond that.