Hey guys!
Today, I want to talk about Marvel’s first
family.
However, before we get into that, I cooked
up this serum.
I had it sent into space and bombarded by
cosmic rays!
So, if my calculations are correct, once I
drink this, I should have the powers of The
Human Torch!
Bottoms up!
Oh God!
Oh f***k.
The after taste is even worse.
Alright.
Here we go.
FLAME ON!
Oh my god!
IT BURNS!
IT BURNS!
JESUS CHRIST HELP ME!
Holy crap!
Our story begins with an argument.
Pilot Ben Grimm is deeply concerned that if
he flies to the stars, the cosmic rays could
be dangerous.
In fact, they could kill everyone aboard the
spaceship.
Fortunately for Dr. Reed Richards and his
ill defined experiment, Susan Storm demands
that they "beat the commies" and calls Ben
a coward.
This causes Ben to go full Marty McFly and
declare that he'll do it, no matter the consequences.
And so, under cover of night, the team sneaks
into a spaceport (conveniently located on
the outskirts of town).
Susan declares that she's going up in the
spaceship as well because she's Dr. Reed's
fiancé.
Likewise, Johnny Storm declares that he's
going with his sister, no matter where she
goes.... because that's totally how that works.
So all four head toward the rocket and take
off before the guards can stop them.
There's simply no time to get clearance...
apparently... even though Dr. Reed literally
spent years building the ship himself...
Unfortunately, just as Ben feared, the ship's
shielding isn't strong enough and they're
all bombarded by cosmic rays.
Back on earth, after a rough but safe landing,
the team finds out that something is different.
Dr. Reed can now stretch any part of his body
to fantastic proportions.
Susan Storm can make herself invisible.
Ben Grimm transformed into... some sort of...
Thing... and hot-head Johnny Storm can burst
into flames and fly!
The four decide to use these fantastic powers
to help mankind.
And so was born, The Fantastic Four!
In the early 1960s Martin Goodman (owner of
Marvel Comics) noticed that rival company
National Periodicals (better known, even then,
as DC Comics) was doing very well with their
fancy new superhero team.
He was jealous.
You see, The Justice League were the talk
of the industry, super hero teams were back,
in a big way.
Goodman asked Marvel’s editor and chief
writer Stan Lee to create a team for Marvel
Comics.
According to legend, Lee was considering leaving
the comics industry at the time.
He felt he wasn’t being given the creative
freedom to write what he wanted.
His wife Joan, however, had a different way
of looking at the situation.
Marvel Comics was in a bad way a time.
In fact the entire industry was suffering.
She figured this was the perfect distraction
and (according to Comics Creators on Fantastic
Four) she said something to the effect of
“If no-one’s looking, you may as well
write what you want”.
Artist Jack Kirby had just left National Periodicals.
One of the projects he helped create there
was a team of four adventure seekers called
"Challengers of the Unknown".
Although sources vary, both Dave Wood and
Joe Simon have been credited as co-creators.
Like Stan Lee, Kirby too saw the decline of
Marvel Comics as an opportunity.
No one was paying much attention and that
afforded them some extra breathing room, creatively
speaking.
Kirby became the co-creator of the Fantastic
Four and issue #1 was released in November
of 1961 using the now famous (and somewhat
controversial) Marvel Method.
Although it's never been stated officially,
at least to my knowledge, it's pretty obvious
that Kirby brought ideas to the Fantastic
Four project that were first convinced for
Challengers of the Unknown.
Lee and Kirby's collaboration also included
the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the original X-Men,
Doctor Doom and just so many more.
Goodman asked for a Justice League knock off
but what he got was something entirely different.
For the first two issues the Fantastic Four
didn’t even wear costumes.
The covers prominently featured a monster
of the week.
There were no secret identities to be found
and plans for the team to wear masks were
scrapped.
The Fantastic Four were more of a family than
a team and, like a family, they didn’t always
get along.
They made mistakes.
Thy had character flaws.
They argued.
A lot.
These differences may sound minor, but it
was different than what most people were accustomed
to seeing.
The final product didn't look, feel or read
like a superhero book.
Writers working at that time have described
it as "comics culture shock".
The fans took notice.
I’ve said this before (in my Iron Man editorial,
link in the upper right-hand corner) but,
generally speaking, Marvel is about men and
women trying to be gods while DC is about
gods trying to be men and women.
Now, there are lots of examples of both Marvel
and DC getting away from that dynamic and
doing something different.
It's more of an overall feel than a hard and
fast rule.
However, very broadly speaking, Marvel's heroes
are people with relatable problems that get
super-powers.
DC's heroes are larger than life archetypes
that represent everything we strive to be...
but never can.
The Fantastic Four was the start of this contrast.
Marvel would get it's own team of heroes,
united from the pages of their own solo comics,
just a couple years later.
The Avengers were different in many of the
same ways that The Fantastic Four were, but
they made a much better analog to The Justice
League than The Fantastic Four ever did.
Back in 1986 little Jay turned five years
old, neon colors were all the rage, hair was
as large as humanly possible and German producer
Bernd Eichinger bought the film rights to
Marvel's Fantastic Four.
He tried to get large studios on board, including
Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures but
no one was interested.
Even the success of 1989's Batman failed to
attract any takers.
The rights were set to expire in 1992.
To keep them, he'd have to make a movie...
but it didn't have to be a good movie.
It didn't even technically have to be released.
So Eichinger hired Roger Corman, a veteran
of the B movie scene to make a very cheap
Fantastic Four movie.
Despite trailers that promised a release,
one was never planned.
In the end, Marvel executive Avi Arad bought
the rights to the film in order to return
it to the fires of Morder... and by that I
mean he literally tried to destroy every copy.
Unfortunately he failed and copies can be
found online even to this day.
Perhaps he should have used an old priest
and a young priest to cast out the evil instead.
Yeah.
References.
Oddly, Eichinger's production company (Constantin
Film) would go on to produce two big budget
Fantastic Four films starting in 2005.
Chris Evans, who played The Human Torch, would
go on to play Captain America in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe starting in 2011.
Jessica Alba played The Invisible Woman, Ioan
Gruffudd and Michael Chiklis played Reed Richards
and Ben Grimm, respectively.
The sequel entitled, Fantastic 4: Rise of
the Silver Surfer hit theaters in 2007 but
was not well received by critics or fans.
Sony attempted to reboot the franchise in
2015.
It fared even worse with critics and audiences.
If people were lukewarm to Rise of the Silver
Surfer, they were downright hostile to Fant4stic.
Rumors claimed the production had issues and
the director and studio clashed.
This lead to a round of re-shoots that, because
of Kate Mara's awful wig, stick out like a
sore thumb.
It was truly the Henry Cavil's mustache of
2015.
Michael B. Jordan, who played The Human Torch
in that reboot, would also go on to find his
place in the MCU as Killmonger in 2018's Black
Panther.
So take note, if you want a guaranteed spot
in the MCU then just play The Human Torch
in a terrible movie.
This version also included Miles Teller as
Reed Richards, Kate Mara as Sue Storm and
Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm.
Thirty years before Evans ever "flamed on",
the role was taken on by none other than Bill
Murray.
Murray voiced The Human Torch in a 1975 radio
play that lasted for ten episodes and was
narrated by Stan Lee himself.
The Fantastic Four have also been featured
in many animated TV shows over years, including
but not necessarily limited to, Fantastic
Four in 1967, The New Fantastic Four in 1978,
The Marvel Action Hour in 1989, Fantastic
Four in 1994 and Fantastic Four: World's Greatest
Heroes in 2006.
Oddly, the team was cut from the 1998 animated
series The Silver Surfer.
That series was cancelled after one season,
the result of legal disputes between Marvel
and Saban Entertainment (the company responsible
for The Power Rangers and this terrible Ninja
Turtles adaptation).
The Fantastic Four series lasted for #645
issues over the course of fifty-four years
before it was cancelled in April of 2015.
The actual number of issues where the team
appears is much higher.
Marvel has a habit of over complicating issue
numbering and there are lots of mini-series,
solo or team-up books and various guest appearances
that don't count.
So... if you'll allow me to put to my tin
foil hat for a moment…
In 2014 the website Bleeding Cool began reporting
that they believed the Fantastic Four would
be cancelled.
Evidently, it all came down to a dispute with
FOX, who owns the movie rights to The Fantastic
Four and The X-Men.
This was denied by Tom Brevoort, Executive
Editor and Senior Vice President of Publishing
at Marvel.
However, the rumors and reports (which were
not without some evidence) stated that Marvel
even went so far as to remove artwork featuring
the Fantastic Four from the company office
walls.
Reports stated that Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter
made the decision after a meeting with Fox
executives over the future of the Fantastic
Four movie rights.
Apparently, the X-Men comics were selling
well, so they were safe from cancellation
but Perlmutter ordered that both X-Men and
Fantastic Four were to get no internal promotion
unless the Avengers would get equal billing
(and AXIS did seem to give them oddly even
billing on the covers).
All licensing and publicity was to be cancelled
wherever possible.
As predicted, Marvel cancelled the Fantastic
Four comics, first Ultimate Fantastic Four
and then Fantastic Four.
Of course lots of comic runs sort-of ended
before Secret Wars... but Fantastic Four did
not come back.
Reports of cancelled posters, statues, trading
cards and other merchandise appeared in various
articles.
Jonathan Hickman (a previous Fantastic Four
writer) confirmed the reasoning behind the
comic book cancellations in an August 2017
article by George Marston on Newsarama.
Quote:
I think it’s pretty common knowledge at
this point that Marvel isn’t publishing
Fantastic Four because of their disagreement
with Fox…
We knew a year or so out that the Fantastic
Four as a property wasn’t going to be published
at Marvel past 2015.
By the end of 2017 things were changing.
New licensing deals began to pop up for X-Men.
No similar restrictions were ever introduced
for Deadpool, Legion or The Gifted and Hasbro
even got to make a new Susan Storm figurine.
Then, in March of this year (it's 2018 while
I script this) Marvel announced that they
would begin publishing a new Fantastic Four
comic series in August.
After three years, it looks like the team
is returning home to The Baxter Building.
So in the end, I can't say what rumors were
true and which were not.
The books were cancelled, we do know that.
The good news in all of this, however, is
that The Fantastic Four is coming back to
a comic shop near you.
#NotSponsored
So this video is much longer than previous
"Do You Know Comics?"
installments and yet, as I type this, I can't
help but feel that it doesn't have the same
amount of random trivia that other episodes
offered.
So let's so a lighting round.
Reed Richards and Sue Storm once joined The
Avengers but still wore the same Fantastic
Four uniforms.
During the Inferno crossover, the demon N’Astirh
kidnapped Franklin (Sue and Reed's son).
To get him back, they joined forces with Gilgamesh,
Thor and The Captain (long story short, he's
Steve Rodgers).
By issue #300, the group decided they were
the Avengers (the team was disbanded at the
time, so the name was up for grabs...
I guess).
Reed and Sue left the team after only a few
issues.
So we have yet to discuss Doctor Doom.
The team's nemesis was once called upon by
Johnny Storm to help deliver Sue and Reed's
baby girl, which is weird because I don't
think he's that kind of doctor.
In exchange for helping with what was a very
difficult and dangerous birth, Doom asked
to name the little girl.
He chose the name Valeria, after a woman he
loved... and also killed... because he's Doctor
Doom.
Dude needs to change his surname.
I mean, what do you expect from a kid named
Victor Von Doom?
Marvel uses what's called a sliding timeline.
Basically, any new story you read is set now
and all older stories happened some time within
the last 10 or 15 years.
This keeps the comics perpetually in the present.
That's a good thing too, as most of Marvel's
heavy hitters were created in the 60s during
the silver age of comics.
However, this leads to some continuity issues.
For example, Silver Age Fantastic Four comics
depict Reed and Ben fighting in WWII.
This is why the occasional universe reboot
is necessary to clean the slate, even if Marvel
tends to over do it a bit.
When promoting Fantastic Four: Rise of the
Silver Surfer, Fox and the Franklin Mint wanted
to create 40,000 real quarters that would
display The Silver Surfer on one side.
The US Mint passed on the idea.
And finally, in the late 1970s The Thing appeared
in a show called Fred and Barney Meet The
Thing.
Despite the title, they never actually met.
Instead the show featured two separate cartoons:
one episode of The New Fred and Barney Show
and one episode of The Thing.
At this time, Marvel Comics owned the rights
to several Hanna-Barbera franchises and even
published comics about them.
In the show, Benjy Grimm would transform by
touching two rings together and yelling "Thing
ring, do your thing!".
So, why wasn't this listed above when I discussed
Fantastic Four Cartoons?
Well it didn't include any of the other team
members and The Thing was a totally different
character aside from his familiar orange rock
appearance.
Marvel Comics #1 was released in 1939 but
The Fantastic Four marked the true start of
the Marvel Universe.
In 1961, Marvel released Fantastic Four #1
and the company's first superhero team set
it on a course that would turn a small division
of a publishing company to a pop culture phenomenon.
Lee and Kirby landed an unexpected hit and
when it began to receive fan mail, Lee started
printing the letters in a column with issue
#3.
He slapped "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!"
on the covers - a tradition that continued
into the 1990s and even appeared on select
issues into the 2000s.
This combination of hyperbole and direct (often
frank) communication with fans, served to
set marvel apart and gave it a different feel.
That all began with Marvel's first family
(both literally and figuratively).
Nearly 60 years later and they're still fantastic.
So jump down to the comments section below
and let us know:
Who's your favorite member of The Fantastic
Four?
What other topics should we cover in this
series?
What's he best ointment to put on 3rd degree
burns?
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Until next time guys, be kind to each other.
I’m Jay Parks.
