Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard had picked up the reins less than a year earlier, after Len Wein and George Pérez's well-received stint on the book. The book also sported a cover by Jack Kirby himself, which turned out to be the last time the man who created the characters worked on the book.
The story opens with Doom cradling his dead clone, whom he was forced to kill in the previous issue. The story starts racing by and readers are treated to seeing the FF tackle death traps, heat-seeking missiles, a mind-controlled mob, a tornado, killer robots... On top of which, we see a recap of Doom's origin, Alicia Masters getting rescued, Zorba successfully leading the coup, plus an epic man-to-man fight between Doom and Reed.
Wow.
The focus of the issue, and the story leading up to this issue, is Dr. Doom. Not that the FF are bit-players, by any means, but there's a lot of Doom in this story. Plenty of room to really delve into the character to see what makes him tick. Which Wolfman does. But the brilliance is that, with so much going on, he's able to tell the reader everything you really need to know about Dr. Doom in a single panel. He's got Doom's character down so well that, with an impressive visual assist from Pollard, you can effectively replace any description of of Dr. Doom with this one piece of art and people won't have any questions...
THAT is professional comic storytelling, people.
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