Synopsis / Summary / Plot
One year ago, Earth’s greatest heroes, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers vanished in battle with the villain Onslaught. Their world believes them dead but the truth is stranger: to save them, Franklin Richards created a pocket universe for them to exist inside a blue ball which he guards. While inside the ball life goes on normally for the heroes, who retain no memories of their previous lives, the world outside is in turmoil, giving rise to new heroes to fill the void. The Hulk, separated from Bruce Banner, is now dying, and Banner, inside the pocket universe, has developed a new Hulk persona.
Meanwhile, the group of cosmic beings known as the Celestials has dispatched one of their own, Ashema the Listener to contact Franklin about his godlike powers. She drives off Franklin’s guardian, Man-Thing, and transports the boy and herself into the pocket universe to explain the choice before him: he must decide which world is to be wiped out of existence: the original Earth or the new one he’s created. To make the choice clearer she transports Franklin into his startled parents’ bedroom…