A review by jonwesleyhuff
Fantastic Four by Jonathan Hickman Omnibus, Vol. 1 by John Rauch, Rick Magyar, Scott Hanna, Paul Mounts, Jonathan Hickman, Paul Neary

3.0

I've been waiting a long time to read Hickman's run. He certainly captures the idea of the FF as explorers, and I really enjoyed that. The expansion of the main cast is great. "Killing off" one of the main cast is kind of boring as you know he or she will be back (because that's how comics work) but at least he's able to mine some drama out of it. But there are lots of fun, big concepts at here. The one problem I have... in some ways, character-wise, it feels like beats we've seen before. Delving into Reed's character a bit more is interesting, and I enjoyed Sue's new position with the citizens of old Atlantis, but having read FF growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was weird to have an older Franklin traveling back in time, and to have Nathaniel Richards back, too. And parallel Reed Richards! All things Tom DeFalco played with back then. It's done in a different way, of course, but it did feel a bit familiar. The art is pretty uniformly great, especially in the main book. I did think once they took it off in the direction of the Future Foundation, it was a bold and interesting take. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts.