Ideally, Fantastic Four could have been said "space opera" book, but they've been doing more domestic heroing for ages now. Since Onslaught I would say. They were in space more often in the 80's and 90's.
Brand did help kick the aliens off the Helicarrier during the Secret Invasion. She wasn't akin to Osborn but she wasn't seen as pooching the invasion as Stark has. It is logical to figure it would have been worse without her and SWORD and that it would happen more often without them. Having Gyrich there makes some sense since he'd have to go SOMEWHERE after being booted from the Initiative during the Stark administration. He has more experience with superheroes than aliens, but government career men often wind up in positions where their experience in that particular field may be a tad "exaggerated".
I do agree that it would seem odd of SWORD and their main staff were filled solely with Americans. If the writers played their cards right they could pluck a few other international heroes from obscurity. BLACKVULCAN's fave hero Jack Of Hearts could probably fit in if they wanted to cash in his INCREDIBLE HERCULES revival chip.
My niggle with giving the series a try is the fair possibility of it being a $4 debut issue (if not $4 an issue period), and it being a team book where I basically only care about one member enough to pay for it. Beast's cool, one of my Top 5 X-Men. I don't care for Brand. I don't care for Gyrich. I've never been able to stand Lockheed; he's so out of place. You have the X-Men spend decades doing dark, depressing, "woe is us, we are fighting Brood/Morlock Massacre/harsh futures" stories for generations and yet you have Kitty with this comic relief dragon. You can't have it both ways. Cosmo he isn't. Rather than be "cool", Lockheed diminishes the threat rating of anyone he defeats. When he beat Ord, my reaction wasn't, "Wow, Lockheed's tough." My reaction was, "Ord is a complete loser, he lost to Lockheed." Lockheed is the animal sidekick, along with Ms. Lions, that helped cause my negative emotions for most of them.
Again, Cosmo and Rocket Raccoon, at least as written by Abnett & Lanning, are the exceptions, not the rules. For every one animal sidekick who is awesome, there are two or three you want to grind into hamburger and force feed to PETA.
I tried CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI-13 despite really only being attached to Black Knight (and vaguely Spitfire), but I had nothing against the other characters. And it was only $3 an issue, start to finish (aside for the annual). For me to give a $4 book a blind stab, it has to be stunningly brilliant from page one. Most Marvel books aren't, which is probably why Marvel does the cynical cash grabs and expects them to be under in 12-16 issues.
It also seems hypocritical that Beast is capable of being in a separate team book as well as 2-3 X-Men books now, but when Slott wanted him for MIGHTY AVENGERS, editorial said no. I imagine MIGHTY AVENGERS will outsell this book; the X-Books have had a problem launching spin off mini's for the last several years.
