Grieving, the surviving members of the Fantastic Four dissolve the team - but from its ashes rises the Future Foundation!

But what will all this change and upheaval mean for Mary Jane, the Black Cat, Aunt May - and all of New York City? Hickman has an amazing ability to showcase the essence of these characters in new and interesting ways despite the fact that they have been around for 60 years. I must have done so in an alternate universe, and then the memory from that timeline must have somehow bled into this one. And in the aftermath of an endgame beyond imagination, the FF explore the furthest reaches of the Marvel Universe - from Wakanda to the Negative Zone, from the past to the future!

For someone so good at rattling off science jargon to make Reed and the family seem smart, he still finds time for little moments of levity and heart, that I tend to overlook after my first read through, but loved catching this time. If I reread the book, I might see how it was foreshadowed throughout, but on the first go, it sure felt like it came out of nowhere and didn't hit as hard as it could have.

Hickman plays the long game, so it's neat to see seeds he plants early in the series, knowing that they blossom later on. The Slings and Arrows Graphic Novel Guide doesn't care where you've been, where you're going or where you're located. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. This is a book I'm going to have to read again to better understand and pick up on smaller ideas I might have missed in my first read. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

This is not to say that Hickman's Fantastic Four stories are a total mess because he's only getting to tell part of the larger Marvel story at the time. This series is kind of where it all began, although I believe he was writing Secret Warriors with Brian Michael Bendis before this. This began to change in the '90s and 2000s, at which point the average reader could easily get lost trying to keep up with the hundreds of interconnections and shared plots among the dozens of series published by Marvel Comics. Without getting into spoilers, it's impossible to deny Hickman has a way of world building through mystery and abstract high brow science fiction concepts. Grieving, the surviving members of the Fantastic Four dissolve the team — but from its ashes will rise the Future Foundation!

Hickman’s approach to superheroes is very similar to Morrison’s, very large concept, very cerebral and very all inclusive.This is no exaggeration; opening the box, tearing off the plastic and opening this legendary book for the first time was transformative. There's a major character death in the last quarter of this omni - I'm being vague, but y'all know who I'm talking about - and his death honestly feels a bit unexpected. They both have that great balance of making individual issues stand on their own while also weaving storylines over the course of years. Now it's been a few months since this came out, and I'm eagerly awaiting the second and presumably final volume, but as of right now, I don't have any idea when that might be. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

And as the Fantastic Four fight the War of the Four Cities, Reed Richards assembles a band of genius youngsters. Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Channel Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Greenland, Guam, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Republic of the Congo, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U. Hickman introduces a lot of ideas early on, and at some point you start doubting if all this will eventually have some sort of payoff.The first half of Jonathan Hickman's celebrated run on The Fantastic Four, contained in this omnibus, doesn't quite recapture the magic for me. But the Celestials invade the Reeds' sanctum, which pretty much puts and end to that, until a few of the Reeds crop up to present a problem much later on. Hickman is king here, god knows how he managed to fit so much character development in between a family, friends and enemies and still pull off one of the best reads ever!