The Naive World of 2002

Ah, the modern super-hero universe, where the defenders of good and right are resented, hated, and feared...

Wait--the city is throwing them a celebration? Don't you mean a protest, and picketing, and evicting them, and throwing fruit and stuff?

People want to thank heroes?!? Are we sure this is a modern super-hero comic?

A parade?!? A parade?!? (And you have to love the Reed Richards balloon!)

Multiple parades?!? Monthly parades? People love heroes?

Not a dream, not a hoax, not an alternate reality!!

Clearly, someone never got the memo that modern super-heroes must be tormented, hunted, hated by the very people they protect, viewed as both threats and menaces. Someone hasn't absorbed the lesson that heroes must have loss in their life, with murdered relatives and tragedy, or they can't be heroes.

Who wrote this?

 OMG.

This is like finding a trunk in the attic full of happy love songs that Morrissey wrote as a teenager before he became Morrissey.

Still, in this series, Geoff Johns does have Ben Grimm get depressed and literally run away to join the circus, so there's that.

And we should be very, very grateful that he didn't try to turn F.A.N.T.A.S.T.I.C. F.O.U.R. into an acronym, like he did with Firestorm...

From The Thing: Freakshow #1 (2002)