With the fabulous Fantastic Four having gone through their share of breakups, it can be difficult to sift through them and find one story that stands out from the others, a task usually complicated by the fact that any story featuring the FF breaking up is always hard to swallow. But a Len Wein story from early 1978 takes a little more care with the concept, and genuinely attempts to give the impression that this time the FF have every intention of parting company for good.
It's an issue that differs from others where, for instance, a team member has left in anger or frustration, or special circumstances have forced the decision. This time, the decision has been mutually accepted, if grudgingly, following the discovery that the team's leader, Mr. Fantastic, had lost his stretching power and that he couldn't continue to function in the field without being a liability to the others. And with Reed's departure, his wife, Sue, has also made the decision to leave with her husband, so that would seem to be that. Yet it all feels a bit rushed. Why take the extreme step of disbanding the FF? Sue is only leaving because Reed is--but does Reed have to leave the Baxter Building? He's not going to cease being an inventor, is he? Why leave the state-of-the-art R&D facility he's already built for himself? And while Reed is irreplaceable in the eyes of the others, no one even takes five or ten minutes to give any serious thought to a new team member.
We've already seen the Thing giving us his own account of the FF's tumultuous history, as a prelude to this issue--and now, with everyone on this former team resolved to going their separate ways, there's only the matter of packing up and saying goodbye.
So perhaps this really is
(Well, by now it's turned into the shocker we never thought we'd see so often.)
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