Hey, Marvel's got a CoverVerse as well... And an Ultimate CoverVerse where everything is narrower.

Just think of all the Alternate Future CoverVerses Marvel could create, to say nothing of the Variant CoverVerses and Blank Artist's Edition CoverVerses just waited to be filled in at convention tables across the world... Embossed, Chromium, and Holofoil CoverVerses a go-go! DC by no means has a lock on such fare.

If Kip is right that this Thing/Doom idea is, so far at least, only a story suggested and not yet confirmed by events to date; one enhanced by the hero's own inability to remember whether or not he is capable of such a betrayal, the whole thing becomes a copy of Claremont's FF/X-Men mini-series in which the partially amnesiac Reed is shown a diary he supposedly wrote, confirming that he knew the cosmic rays would transform him and his colleagues, which is why he didn't install better shields and took along Sue and Johnny who were both shown to have high susceptibility to cosmic rays.

Being a Claremont story, of course, Reed ineffectually sucks his thumb throughout the story and endlessly questions in own morality as to whether or not he was capable of such a thing.

I certainly hope Ben puts in a better showing for this rewrite.

There's a parallel in Superman. When the character first appeared, he came from a "race of supermen" in the planet Krypton. Everybody could do what Superman did, because the whole human species on Krypton was evolved far beyond where we were on Earth. But, as Superman's adventures continued to unfold, the writers kept upping his power level, until he was able to easily fly thru space and time -- and this raised an important question: if everybody back on Krypton already had all of Superman's powers, why didn't they all just fly away before the planet exploded? Heck, why even fly away? The explosion would not have hurt them! So, unconsciously, as Superman became MORE powerful, Kryptonians on Krypton became LESS powerful, until they were "just folks" and it was only their technology that was advanced centuries beyond ours.

When Stan and Jack introduced us to Reed Richards, he was a Really Smart Guy -- but he was not a Super-Genius. He built a rocket, but there was not much to suggest he was anything MORE than a "rocket scientist". Unlike most comicbook scientists he was not, at first, good at EVERYTHING. (What Roger Stern refers to as "having a degree in SCIENCE!") But, just as Superman got more and more powerful, Reed got smarter and smarter. So why WAS he so dumb as to launch the rocket into the cosmic ray storm?

The best answer of course is DON'T ASK!!!

You know, I long ago learned that no story I would ever do would be completely bulletproof. Somebody would come along a change it, sooner or later. But the undoing of the loss of Reed and Sue's second child was just so BADLY DONE. Clumsy. Ham-fisted. Right down to the daughter's NAME.