All in all, I feel comfortable in recommending the book to new fans looking for a good place to start, though it wouldn't be my first choice. Jonathan Hickman's run is probably the best modern place to start, if you aren't looking to go back to the incomparable Lee/Kirby days. For longtime Fantastic Four fans, however, Fantastic Four #1 by Dan Slott and Sara Pichelli is an absolute must.

Fantastic Four #2 by Dan Slott and Sara Pichelli is a phenomenal read, and significantly picks up the pace from what we saw in issue #1. Between these two issues, it seems that Slott has nailed the tone of the Fantastic Four in a way we haven't seen in awhile. Two issues aren't enough to tell how what Slott promises to be a lengthy run will go, but it's a promising start, and enough to get me in a comic shop at least one Wednesday every month.

This is a disappointing issue, which is a big blow to Slott's tenure very early in the game. This was one of the big ones. The next big one will be #5 (Legacy #650), featuring the wedding of Ben and Alicia, which has recently been expanded to a whopping 72 pages with an equally whopping $7.99 USD price tag. But a fumble this bad hardly makes me excited to pay double the price or carve out the time to read 72 pages. I'm still in it, though. I'll be back here in a few weeks, keeping the faith. Slott has put together a lot of fun comics over the years, and he plans on writing Fantastic Four for many years. Here's hoping for the best.

Dan Slott has not come out the gate running. In his first four issues, he has proudly proclaimed that he can do muddled and directionless Fantastic Four comics with the best of them. They're not awful. They're what any regular reader of the book would expect on average. It's just a bit of a letdown that three years of waiting culminate in a book as unremarkable as this one.

Ultimately, Fantastic Four #5 is a must-read for Fantastic Four fans and offers little for a broader audience. It's charming and heartfelt, and it gives me hope for the future of Dan Slott's run, but it isn't bound to be a classic.

Slott hasn't hit the ground running with this series. Half a year in and he hasn't made much of a mark. However, he seems to be steadily engineering a direction for the book that could end up being a noteworthy addition to the FF canon. Only time will tell how his body of work stacks up.

If you're a Fantastic Four fan, you're probably already reading this. If not, this run isn't going to change that at all.

All of that said, #8 is a wonderful issue that made me happy to be reading this run. I have my ups and downs with it, and routinely question what Slott thinks he's doing here, but if he can routinely strike this kind of tone month after month going forward, this might just end up being must-read comics.

I have been incredibly up and down with this run, but I feel like every time Slott hits on an idea that might be somewhat interesting, he veers back into familiar, mediocre territory. This issue didn't have to end with a bad call back to a forgettable John Byrne story, but it did, because that's who Dan Slott is, apparently. It didn't have to neatly put all the toys back in the box as if under some odd early-70's Stan Lee editorial dictate, but it did all the same. It's incredibly frustrating to watch, month after month, as he almost gets it and almost understands how to write a good Fantastic Four book, only to shoot himself in the foot the next month, if not pages later.

It's always difficult to recommend a book like this based on its first issue. I've read great first issues from books I've gone on to dislike, and I've disliked #1s of books that I've gone on to enjoy very much. It's difficult to projects its future, but Hardcore is in capable hands and it's off to a good start.

This is the kind of book that if you'd have handed it to me without the context of the previous issues, I'd have probably thrown it away before finishing it. I'm very busy, please don't bother me with this nonsense. As serialized as modern comics are, most comics readers wouldn't see a problem here. Personally, I think that in a world where I can go grab a Blu-ray copy of Vanilla Sky out of the bargain bin for $5, $4 should buy me something I can enjoy on its own merits, even if it is just part of a larger story. In context, this is yet another phenomenal installment in Zdarsky's ongoing saga of Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm.

As mentioned, issue #12, this book's finale, will seemingly pair the Human Torch and the Invisible Woman. Fitting enough. It's unfortunate to see a book that started with so much promise fizzle out under the weight of editorial mandates. But that's comics, and it's certainly modern Marvel Comics. Zdarsky is moving on to a new Invaders series, which he promises to bring the same kind of heart that initially won this title plenty of acclaim. And though Dan Slott has promised a Fantastic Four run lasting many years, I can only hope that when he's ready to release the reins, they land in the capable hands of Chip Zdarsky.