But the old geek in me raised a red flag right away. There were only four members of the team and, from my recollection, there was never an instance when there were fewer than five people ever riding the time sled. Sharon Ventura, in her Thing form, was a more-or-less permanent member of the team for the entirety of the time sled's existence. (It was destroyed before Simonson left the book.) Also to my recollection, that entire run where they were using Rosebud II was basically one extended adventure, with no real gaps for the four core members to have an additional adventure. So I reverted to my teenage self and dug out my old issues to check.
Simonson started working on Fantastic Four with issue #334. He continued working on the book -- always as writer, sometimes as writer/artist -- until #354. He introduced Rosebud II with #337 and it was destroyed in a crash in #345. Once the team left their headquarters with it in that first appearance, they remained in alternate timelines and realities only returning to their real home after the sled was wrecked. And, indeed, as I recalled, at no point do we see the time sled being used with fewer than five occupants. It is always at least the original four team members plus Sharon, with Thor and Iron Man also joining for the earliest part of the journey. So it would initially seem that there's no place Kang could have pulled that specific configuration of the team from: just the original four team members aboard the Rosebud II.
Let's check some other details. Ben Grimm had been turned into his human form some time before the story begins. He does have a Thing exo-skeleton suit that mimics his more iconic appearance, but he does not take it with him on the initial journey. He is exclusively only in human form until he utilizes a Thing suit from a different timeline in #344. Which means that the only two places the original team can even be pulled from in the first place are either before #334 or between #344 and #345, and in the latter case, Sharon is definitely with them, so they must be pulled from some previously unseen test run of the time sled that takes place to #334, right? After all, the first appearance of the sled does not seem to be new to the FF; they are already busy loading it with equipment as Reed explains it to Iron Man...
However, it does seem a bit odd that they'd leave Sharon out of such an adventure. She had been part of the team since FF #306 so it would be strange to leave her out like that. But is there another option?
WHen the Fantastic Four first land in #341, they don't realize immediately that they've landed in an alternate timeline. Their home and equipment all seem to be there because there is, in fact, another Fantastic Four from that time period and they just happen to be away on their own mission. In fact, they also happen to be a time-related mission according to that timeline's Alicia Masters. What's more, that timeline's team makeup is different than the current primary cast. The alternate timeline team has never met Sharon and the Ben Grimm of that world is still in his Thing form. In fact, it's shown in #337 that hundreds of versions of the Fantastic Four are indeed on the same mission; they're visible as the main team fly towards the time bubble. So the team from the alternate timeline the main FF land in were likely trying to do the exact same thing.
I would then posit that in Venom War: Fantastic Four, it's that alternate timeline version of the team that Kang deals with. We know the general set of issues that the Venom War team is supposed to come from and their particular makeup does not match the primary team from that period at any point. You could conceive of some situation where Sharon is left behind for a Rosebud II trial run before #334 and Ben chose to wear his Thing exoskeleton for that, and no one mentioned it's an exoskeleton in Venom War. But Occam's Razor suggests that since we already have a version of the team that does match what we see in Venom War, it's probably them in the comic and not the "main" universe ones that readers might expect.
Which means that if your goal is to collect every comic issue in which the Fantastic Four from the main continuity appear, you can skip Venom War: Fantastic Four. They're just an alternate timeline version of the team.
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