FANTASTIC FOUR #57-59/486-488 (2002)

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Three issues written by Adam “Empowered” Warren.

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A terrific arc about Thing, Things, and the first time the Congress of Reeds gets together.

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I thought Jonathan Hickman thought of this idea. Turns out, he didn’t.

Reed invents hypercaffeination during some all-night studying and lab work, while Ben falls asleep and accidentally triggers a machine that creates duplicates of him.

The Things are duplicating too quickly to contain, so Reed sends Ben and his clones to a pocket dimension while he tries to figure out how to halt the process.

To help him figure it out, Reed calls upon a bunch of Reeds from other dimensions so that they can work together for a solution. They get to one, but in order to effectuate it, they have to remove Ben Grimm’s ability to transform at will.

It’s a fun story and a good way of re-establishing the “standard” Thing, who is trapped in a rocky body. Now that the status quo is back, Mark Waid can come aboard as series writer for what many consider to be one of the all-time best runs of the FF.

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