Given the grim subject matter, it's probably best if we do a brief visual recap of where we left things last time. And what a visual:
Having witnessed the death of Reed Richards at (literally) the hand of Doctor Doom, as well as having heard the reading of Reed's last will and testament, it seemed certain that the leader of the Fantastic Four had met his end--to say nothing of the equally shocking news that Doom had perished in the same stroke. What wasn't certain was, how would the FF go on without Reed? How would the book?
We would see that for ourselves in the following months, as writer Tom DeFalco and artist Paul Ryan did their level best to assure readers that Reed was gone for good, and that the Fantastic Four would have to continue without him. The only member of the team who didn't fully accept Reed's death was his wife, Sue, though she stepped up to lead the FF and grew into the role--while membership in the FF fluctuated, with Johnny Storm leaving to oversee the new Fantastic Force, leaving Sue and the Thing to go into battle with characters like Ant-Man, the Sub-Mariner, Doom's young protégé Kristoff Vernard, and the Torch's ex-wife, the Skrull named Lyja.
Yet still readers waited, drumming our collective fingers until Reed would surely reappear from wherever he'd been. Because with apologies to Ben Franklin et al., in comic books only taxes are truly certain, while death can be overridden with the klackety-klack of a typewriter. And though we would see twenty-five issues and two years go by before learning the truth, eventually we would be greeted with back-to-back issues which revealed all--emphasis on the word "back."
Continued »»»