Popular Fantastic Four plots: Sue gets mad and leaves, Ben gets mad and rampages, Reed is believed dead and the rest of the team struggles through the mess they are in, Reed and Sue leave for another honeymoon, the Mole Man does something and no one cares...

You get the idea. Eventually recycling plots becomes insulting to your readers. Especially the "Oops, Reed is dead" plot. Reed is the Fantastic Four. Kill him and you cancel the book. At least, if the resulting stories from Tom DeFalco are any indication, the book would have been better off cancelled. In this particular story, Doom destroys himself and Reed after sustaining severe wounds from an unidentified alien invader, who was incapable of harming the Torch, much less Doom. "Although I am evil beyond words, this blast merely stuns you! The next will leave you in little bloody pieces all over the landscape! Curses, your teammates prevented that next blast of mine, but the day is coming! No, really! I'm an ugly alien invader! Take me seriously! I'll stun you! I'll stun yooooooooouuuuuu!"

Ahem. Anyway, everyone knew Reed and Doom weren't dead so DeFalco (the writer) was forced to pull some plot out of thin air that involved Reed's grandson from an alternate future swiping Reed and Doom from the past at that moment in order to mess with everyone's minds. The brat called himself Hyperstorm and he really needed a haircut. While we're waiting for him to come along, we're treated to about twenty issues of Ant Man pining for Sue and Namor thinking this is his big chance to make an ass of himself and woo Sue away from it all. Grife. Ant Man. That's about as interesting as the FF gets without Reed.

I really wanted to nominate Tom DeFalco, but I did that joke with the writer once already.

I had thought this goofy creature was never even given a name, but an astute Adventure Trail reader informed me that it called itself The Hunger. (...but it was far, far less attractive than Susan Sarandon, or David Bowie for that matter. Two points to you if you get the reference.) I think it was supposed to be scary, but it was just pathetic. Doom, of course, beat it by teleporting it into deep space. Before that, he went hands on with it by using power he stole from Aron the Rogue Watcher. (The Power Cosmic is an all purpose plug and play module. Get a little bit of it in a container and you're ready to go.) Upon teleporting into Latveria, the creature assumes a shape it feels will frighten the populace, then turns on its mission to fry everyone with its eyebeams. *YAWN* Someone wake me when it's over.