This one isn't my favorite: I was predisposed to not like Tom DeFalco's stint as writer on Fantastic Four since he took over from Walt Simonson. Even with Paul Ryan on art (I liked him on D.P.7 and Quasar) I didn't care for the issues I read, which included the Invisible Woman's worst costume ever, Alicia Masters as a Skrull, and the surprisingly long alleged deaths of Reed Richards and Dr. Doom. So, at the time, I don't think I had a big problem with the notion of Jim Lee relaunching Fantastic Four #1 in Heroes Reborn. (Even though my memories of Heroes Reborn are vague, at best; I don't think Lee's FF was memorable, or terrible, or memorably terrible.)
DeFalco does get the chance to go out with a bang, with Carlos Pacheco on pencils, in the middle of the Onslaught crossover. The FF, various hangers-on like Ant-Man and replacement Doom Kristoff, and most of the Avengers and X-Men; have gotten their collective ass kicked sideways by Onslaught, who has kidnapped Franklin Richards for good measure. As Franklin tries to use his powers to project images of himself to show them that he's ok; Onslaught twists it into an assault, and psychic copies of the FF's villains begin appearing at Four Freedoms Plaza.
Luckily for the Four, their friends have started to show up during the crisis; so Pacheco gets to draw everyone from Alicia Masters and the Puppet Master to the Inhumans to Namor to the man, Doctor Doom. In the end, Reed creates a machine to block the psionic attack, but has to cannibalize the alien machine Ben was using to turn back to human form. True, it's with Ben's blessing, but as usual Ben is stuck a Thing once more. At least DeFalco gets to do that much; usually shafting Ben is the next writer's job.
In the end, with that victory, the Fantastic Four begin to rally and ready to face Onslaught. The art carries this one quite a ways, although Pacheco is on occasion forced to draw some characters in their unfortunate 90's looks. I'm not going to scan it, but I keep forgetting that Hawkeye's had some costumes that make that Ronin outfit a lot more understandable.
Scans from Fantastic Four #416, "Unfinished Business" Written by Tom DeFalco, pencils by Carlos Pacheco, inks by Bob Wiacek.
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I haven't read this, so I don't have any idea of what is going on, but that first scan looks as though everyone is really REALLY hung over from a party and nobody wants to help clean up.
Yeah, and in the first scan, I think the Beast is trying Spock's "Remember" bit on Ant-Man...
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