I just thumbed through the putatively last issue of the Fantastic Four, in which …
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the remaining members of the team mourn the death of Johnny Storm. (Yeah, like that was a surprise.) The first half of the book is without dialogue; it shows the family mounring both separately & together. In one seem, Don Blake & Bruce Banner visit with Ben Grimm in the desert; Banner offers Ben a hologram of Johnny, prompting some super-muscle-man acting out.
Since when are these three terribly close friends? It seemed…odd.
I liked the bit at the end when Spider-Man told Franklin about his uncle Ben dying, though. That was totally in character. Also Reed considering using the Ultimate Nullfier on Annihilus, especially as he clearly didn’t tell anyone.
They’re all very strong. And the Thing and the Hulk are always beating each other up, for some reason. And Thor and the Hulk were both founding members of the Avengers (although the Hulk didn’t stay).
If you want to see how seriously this death is regarded check out Wikipedia. It barely gets mentioned in the Human Torch article. It’s clear nobody believes this death is going to last.
It’s also stupid for the characters to consider it a death. It was one of those trops - the escape portal’s closing- hero gets dog piled allowing his friends to escape- portal closes while friend screams NOOOOOOOOO!
There’s not even a body.
But yeah- It’s not weird at all for Thor, Hulk and the Thing to hang out.
If you had said Ghost Rider, Reed Richards and Rocket Raccoon… yeah… a little weird.
Oh well, you haven’t missed much of any importance, then. Reed and Sue’s son Franklin now has a little sister called Valeria, who’s super-intelligent, and there’s a gang of other weird and gifted kids and other assorted hangers-on living at the Baxter Building with them. I think that’s about it.
Anyway, to cut a long story short:
[spoiler]Reed’s off in space with Galactus, and Sue’s away taking care of business in Atlantis, leaving Ben and Johnny to mind the kids – who’ve temporarily turned Ben human. And it’s just then that an army of monster things breaks through the portal to the Negative Zone that Reed still has hanging around the place (because that was never going to be dangerous at all).
They manage to beat them all, but find that the Reed “smartest man alive” Richards has arranged it so the only way to seal the portal again is from the other side. And there’s a vast and unstoppable army of Annihilus’s creatures due to arrive within minutes.
I won’t tell you who chooses to heroically sacrifice himself to protect his family and everyone on Earth, because that would spoil it.
