With Reed's announcement that the Fantastic Four are going to split up, Ben has become morose. When his girlfriend Alicia Masters tries to cheer him up, he pulls out an old diary that he has kept over the years and goes over it with Alicia.
He recounts the day that the Fantastic Four took their fateful rocket flight into space and were bombarded with the cosmic rays that gave them their powers. He then recounts how the team was on shaky ground from the start, with constant bickering between himself and the Human Torch. The first time the team suffered a break up, Ben recalls, was after their battle with the Miracle Man which ended with Johnny leaving the team. This led the young hero to the Bowery where he found and restored the memories of the Sub-Mariner. Ben recalls how this worked against them as Namor planned to wage war against humanity, but it was his sudden romantic interest in Sue that stopped him that time. When recalling that episode, Ben expresses his mixed feelings about Namor as they have since worked with and against him since then.

Ben then goes on to say that there is not such ambiguity between the FF and their mortal foe Doctor Doom, recalling the first time they battled him. Ben then talks about how the team suffered financial problems and almost broke up again when the made the plunge into a Hollywood movie that turned out to be another trap by the Sub-Mariner. Ultimately it was Sue who convinced Namor to honor the movie deal so the FF could make enough money to resume operations. Ben then recounts how months later he was almost responsible for the team breaking up again, when Reed was forced to restore their recently lost powers so that they could stop Doctor Doom. Angry that he was once more cursed to be the Thing, Ben went within an inch of killing Doctor Doom had Reed not stopped him. But having had enough, Ben quit the group. Ben recalls how this led to him being brainwashed into a pawn of the Frightful Four and how he nearly killed his teammates as a result. Grimm then recounts the night that he was tricked into giving over his powers to a man who was bent on killing Reed and how that mad scientist sacrificed his life to save Reed from the Negative Zone, restoring Ben's powers back to him.

He then talks about how he was brainwashed against his friends once again, this time by the Mad Thinker. That time they stopped the Thinker and his android creation, but in the aftermath of the battle Reed decided that he and his pregnant wife were going to leave the Fantastic Four as a result of the constant danger. But Ben remembers how that no sooner did Reed leave that the Watcher convinced him to return to the fold when the Silver Surfer foolishly attempted to unit the world by waging a war against it. Glossing over more recent events, Ben remembers how when Johnny was still in love with Crystal and quit the team to try and join her in Attilan, and how Sue forced him and Reed to let the youth go. This late led to a battle against the Frightful Four again, and ended with Reed and Sue separating over an argument about Sue's role as a teammate, wife and mother. He then remembers how Reed was later forced to shut down his son Franklin's mind, which led to another break up of the team. With the end of the recounting, Alicia points out that every time the Fantastic Four broke up they got back together. Ben agrees, but points out that this is the first time that Reed has decided to quit on the team and that he was the glue that held the Fantastic Four together. Without Reed Richards, the team has no future moving forward. Ben then states that there is no more time to glorify the past, and to symbolize this he crushes his diary into scraps and dumps it in the garbage. Having had enough with the memories, Ben then decides to take Alicia out for a hamburger.

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