Tom DeFalco’s Fantastic Four run–pretty much the definitive one for the early ’90s–was terrible and notably what contribute to how bad it was was the constant alternate reality/time travel themes. Recognizing this, Marvel hired Chris Claremont who never writes about time travel and alternate futures.
Kidding of course. Claremont was pretty much the creator and driver of those kinds of stories back in his X-Men days.
This story parallels the FF’s origin against a story about Reed Richards being kidnapped by a faction of the government of Genosha. Claremont just brought old Excalibur stuff into this series. Now he’s crowbarring Genosha in.
It ends up that Crucible is trying to literally steal Reed’s brain, and the brains of the rest of the team…something like that. We’re back in DeFalco territory, with hopelessly complicated stories that are based on gimmicks and lack anything truly interesting.
Fortunately, this appears to be the end of the whole Crucible story, and Ayesha disappears after this story. The cover to #11 (above), which recasts Ayesha as “Her,” is a tribute to the first appearance of Adam Warlock…
