Marvel Media Mania: Fantastic Four (1994)

The unreleased Fantastic Four movie from 1994 is literally a joke. The joke was on the cast and crew who thought they were making a serious movie when, in fact, the studio never intended to release it.

The 1994 Unreleased Fantastic Four Movie

As you might have heard, this movie is anything but fantastic. In fact, dreadful is a more fitting descriptor.

First and foremost, the entire story is horribly boring. The pacing is incredibly slow and there isn't a single genuine character moment in the entire film. The actors seem to want to act but you can actually see them acting which is never good. Not only is the plot a cure for insomnia but it is also needlessly complex. In an attempt to cram in as much stuff from the comics as possible, the story meanders from the character's college years to the rocket launch and finally over half way through the film we finally see the formation of the Fantastic Four. The inclusion of two villains, Dr. Doom and the The Jeweler (a Mole Man rip-off), demands that we spend a lot of time away from our protagonists. While at first this seems like a good thing because the protagonists are all very boring and you don't care about them you quickly learn that the villains are basically generic comic-book villain cardboard stand-ups that are even more boring than the heroes. Somehow, Alicia Masters is shoehorned into the plot as well but I doubt you'll really care or even notice.

Honestly, when I watched this my five year old son watched it as well and he was completely lost. He couldn't tell the difference between Johnny, Reed, Ben, and Victor as well as Sue and Alicia. When the can't tell the difference between Dr. Doom and the Human Torch you know there's a big problem with characterization.

Now, there are a couple of positives to pluck out of this train wreck. First, although the costumes are far worse than those that I've seen at comic book conventions, the looks are directly inspired by the original comic book designs. I've got to give the creators credit for the attempt at least. Close-ups of Dr. Doom's face actually look pretty good when he is totally obscured by shadows. Secondly, the story does attempt to be very true to the comic books. The origin of Dr. Doom, the rocket ship, even the awkward age difference between Sue and Reed all comes directly from the comics. The execution, once again, is clumsy and awkward. But they made the attempt and that counts for something... right?

I can't overstate how awfully, horribly, absolutely bad this film is though. It's like watching a very, very slow and boring car accident that isn't interesting at all. And it's boring. Very, very boring.

1LR REVIEW - 1 out of 20! A Critical Fumble!

Marvel Media Mania: Fred and Barney Meet the Thing

Fred and Barney Meet the Thing aired on NBC in 1979. Each episode was split between the Flintstones and The Thing. The two shows never crossed over with one another and the characters never met except in the show's opening. Each "Thing" episode contained two shorts. There were 13 episodes made.

Fred and Barney Meet the Thing

 I really thought no Marvel property would come close to touching the awfulness of Swamp Thing. I was wrong. 

The trouble starts right with the title of the show. Fred and Barney never meet the Thing, making the name a misnomer. 

The big problem with this show, however, is the very concept itself. It takes The Thing are strips him of everything except the fact that he's a big rocky monster... sometimes. See, he has to slam together two rings and say, "Thing Rings! Do your thing!" Then rocks fly at him in a flash of light and he's transformed into the Thing. Benjamin Grimm isn't an adult, instead he's replaced with teenager Benjy Grimm and his gang of friends that are Scooby-Doo clones. None of the Fantastic Four ever appear in this show. In short, this show has nothing to do with The Thing.

The Shmoo... better than the Thing?

The plots are as awesome as they can be. "A gang of thugs is causing trouble! Oh no! Let's challenge them to a balloon race!" Ugh. Yeah, it's THAT bad! The awful puns littered throughout the series and complete lack of logic make it hard to even laugh at how bad this show is. 

The animation is fair but it comes across as looking very cheap, even for 1979. This is probably the best the Thing has looked on the screen up to this point. That's about the only points this show picks up.

You want to know how bad this show was? Well, the Fred and Barney part of the show were reruns and they survived after this "thing" got cancelled. Fred and Barney then go a new partner to replace the cancelled Thing... Shmoo. Yes, this Shmoo.

1LR REVIEW - 2 out of 20! It's a Total Failure!

Marvel Media Mania: Fantastic Four (1978)

The Fantastic Four's section cartoon show was released in 1978 on NBC. Just 13 episodes were produced.

The Fantastic Four 1978 Cartoon

This show is notorious for one thing: Replacing the Human Torch with the robot H.E.R.B.I.E. This show pretty faithfully adapts some classic FF tales and it just tries to shoehorn H.E.R.B.I.E. into the Human Torch's role. H.E.R.B.I.E. fights with Ben Grimm just like Johnny would. But H.E.R.B.I.E. comes across as oddly antagonistic to even the other team members such as Reed. In fact, even though Reed is called the "leader" the FF regularly turn to H.E.R.B.I.E. and he comfortably barks out orders. H.E.R.B.I.E.'s dialogue is obnoxiously designed to prove how smart he is. The only thing is H.E.R.B.I.E. regularly proves what a dunce he is, even failing to think of looking for a pirate treasure aboard a pirate ship.

Beyond H.E.R.B.I.E., the rest of the show falls pretty flat as well. The animation is shaky. The character designs are slightly more faithful to the comic books than the previous cartoon, particularly the Thing. But the art is simply dreadful. The Thing's appearance ranges from blank orange to a melted lump of orange rock to the more traditional cracked look with an orange beak on the front of it. Eyes seem to be a particular problem for the animators. Additionally, this show uses a lot of stock footage shown again and again.

Like I mentioned, most of the plots come directly from the early FF comics. Now this isn't exactly a good thing, however. Sometimes the plots barely make any sense. At times the story is far too thin to effectively cover a half hour, causing a lot of "filler" material to be added (such as Reed fixing a machine, emergency calls to the military, and crowd reactions). The Invisible Woman is effectively invisible, as she was commonly sidelined and used as a damsel in distress rather than a full member of the team.

All in all, the Fantastic Four cartoon of 1978 is boring and poorly produced. The show from 1967 was much more entertaining.

1LR REVIEW - 8 out of 20! It's a Miss!

Marvel Media Mania: Fantastic Four (1967)

The first Fantastic Four cartoon aired on ABC from 1967 to 1970 for a total of 20 episodes.

Fantastic Four's First Cartoon in 1967

This cartoon was produced the same year as the original Spider-Man cartoon. Everyone knows the first Spider-Man television show but the first Fantastic Four television show is all but forgotten even though it is actually a better show than the Spider-Man from 1967. Why? It comes down the the theme song. Spider-Man had a very memorable theme song while Fantastic Four's is ultimately forgettable.

For its day, the animation on Fantastic Four is great. It reminds me a lot of early Scooby Doo episodes. The use of repeated stock footage is kept to an absolute minimum. Characters are expressive and faithfully adapted from the comics (except for some reason Galactus was all green...). However, some of the character designs look ridiculous in their "simplified" form. The Thing looks ridiculous because his head is a bunch of small rocks while his body is simply orange with a couple of lines drawn on it. Dr. Doom looks like a nutcracker robot with his mouth mechanically moving up and down along two tracks.

The voice acting is all fine... except for The Thing. Everyone imagines The Thing to have a deep, gravely voice but the voice they gave to him just sounds like your best friend in the ninth grade... just too normal to be coming from The Thing's body.

Generally, the show is very faithful to the comics. The villains used are mostly actual villains from the comics along with hordes of identical "henchmen" robots or lizard men or whatever is needed for that episode. Some of the series's stories are directly inspired from the comics. The series features notable characters such as Namor, The Watcher, Klaw, The Red Ghost, Blastaar, The Molecule Man, and Dr. Doom to name a few.

You can really tell that the thin plots had to be stretched to fill the thirty minute time slot. Character development for the Fantastic Four is unheard of in the show, instead you're treated to a lot of action with The Thing and Human Torch taking center stage. Frequently long sequences where the FF are beating up the aforementioned "faceless" henchmen are used as filler for the series. At one point in one episode, the action stops and several minutes is dedicated to The Thing remembering beating up henchmen from all of the previous episodes.

The plots are generally pretty campy, leaning heavily on action and eye candy while being light on logic. The dialogue is mostly exposition and can almost become laughable at times. Each episode is also riddled with bad puns such as, "Now that's what I call a real smash hit!" Still, continuity was kept from episode to episode which I appreciate.

You know, I don't want to make it sound like it's all bad with this show. For its time, the 1967 Fantastic Four show was quite successful in many ways. It is easy to point out the many deficiencies of a show like this when compared to today's big-budget, CGI-polished cartoons. Still, The Fantastic Four is deserving of a lot of credit for what it did right.

1LR REVIEW - 13 out of 20! It's a Glancing Hit!

Marvel Now!...?

Remember on Seinfeld when George's father kept yelling, "Serenity Now!" to calm himself down but he just kept getting angrier and angrier? Well, that's how I feel about Marvel Now!.

What's Marvel Now!? Well, it's the aftermath of Avengers VS X-Men and it is also the restarting of a whole bunch of Marvel titles at #1. Hmmm... that sounds familiar somehow... oh yeah - DC DID IT A YEAR AGO! Does Marvel think it is going to recreate the success DC had? I hope not but I find it to be unlikely.

I'm not opposed to change necessarily. The Uncanny Avengers sounds cool to me. Change keeps things moving forward and from stagnating.

But Marvel plays with #1 issues like they're tissues - disposable. Some of the titles involved have had multiple #1 issues and then they return to their "legacy numbering" for the big landmark issue. Take Fantastic Four for example. It ran from 1961 to 1996 without a numbering change. Then, after the Onslaught storyline, it was relaunch with a #1 as "Heroes Reborn" and lasted for 13 issues. It then relaunch with a new #1 AGAIN with "Heroes Reborn". Starting with #42 of the "new" series, BOTH numbers were listed on the cover (perhaps just to add to the confusion) - #42 and #471 of the legacy numbering. When issue #500 rolled around, they were sure to put the #500 very large on the cover and the "new" numbering faded away, ending with #79 (#508)! The series then ended AGAIN with issue #588 and the FF title was launch with a #1. After eleven issues, the Fantastic Four title was relaunch with... you guessed it! #600! Confusing the matter, the FF title continued publication as well. So for Marvel to AGAIN cancel the series with #611 and relaunch with a, "New #1!" it's hard to get excited.

Marvel Now!... Nah, perhaps later.

Fantastic Four - Issue #600 Milestone (?)

Fantastic Four will be celebrating its 600th issue very soon. It has been in publication since 1961! That's quite impressive. That's one issue a month, every month. Sort of. Kind of. Except Marvel cheated on this in a way.

Since, Fantastic Four was cancelled on issue #588. In its place was a book called FF - The Future Foundation. FF has been published for 11 issues now and the twelfth is about to come out. Meaning that Marvel has counted the first 11 issues of FF twice - once for the title FF and again for Fantastic Four. FF isn't being cancelled - it will continue on as an ongoing series. Now Marvel has tried to pull stunts like this before, cancelling a series, starting over with #1, and then returning to "legacy numbering" but it has never tried to count the same issues as adding to the number count of two comics before. Weak move, Marvel. Weak.

The FF (Freedom Foundation)

Fantastic Four #600 (kinda)

  

Beware, all those that are buying the hype for DCs major relauch with 52 #1 comics. I'd be willing to bet that things revert back to the way they were once the shine wears off and the sales start to drop. I'd say right around the time Detective Comics was slated to reach #900 (it's final issue was #881 so that would be 18 months from now). Don't say you weren't warned!