Fantastic Four Animated Series

pillageplunder writes "CNN is reporting that Marvel Enterprises has cut a deal with Frances Antefilms Productions to make an animated TV Series based on the Marvel superheros.

Four again, and again, and again..

[ackthpt]

No doubt to capitalize on the film (2005) [imdb.com]. (Which will hopefully turn out better than an earlier try (1994) [imdb.com] Of course, us late boom kids will remember this animated series [imdb.com] and try to overlook this one (1978) [imdb.com], when PC and non-violence destroyed Saturday morning TV ("Oh dear, children might see Johnny erupt in flames and try to emulate their animated role model and pour gasoline all over themselves and strike a match! Won't someone please think of the children!')

Re:Show a little respect

[ackthpt]

A FF cartoon may not be all that original, but the FF is the group that put Marvel Comics on the map and revitalized the entire industry. Even Superman, Batman, and the rest of the Justice League owe a great deal to the Fantastic Four.

Fantastic 4 began, IIRC in the 60's. Batman and Superman date at least to the 30's, Wonder Woman the 40's. Fantastic 4 was effectively Marvel's answer to DC (original name: Detective Comics)

Marvel kinda imploded between the late 80's and early 90's, verging on bankruptcy, when the comics market collapsed (like so many other fad markets) after overheating on about 47 million X characters and all their own lines of comics. Eventually they did some house cleaning and had some goofy war to re-establish a manageable core of characters, about as shameful as DC's death of Superman.

can't believe I actually know this crap...

Re:Show a little respect

[Wildfire Darkstar]

Erm, no. Not really.

The 1950s were a really bad decade for comics, as publishers substantially scaled back their output, and then the publicy outcry over some percieved link between comics and juvenile deliquency that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. All this is true, but the fact of the matter is that the situation had massive improved by the end of the decade.

DC led the resurgence of the market by reviving a number of its older, 1940s era properties. The first among these was the Flash, but that was followed, in short order, by others, like Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and so on (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were, of course, still around, being just about the only characters to survive through the "dry" years). By 1960, things were looking good enough for DC to revive the Justice Society of America, which had been its main superhero team back in the 1940s. Updated to feature the new characters, and retitled the Justice League of America, it premiered in 1960, and was an immediate hit, moving very quickly from occassional appearances in one of DC's "showcase" books (Brave and the Bold) to its own title.

The Fantastic Four, though quite successful, were latecomers to all of this. The traditional story goes that the publisher of Timely Comics, Martin Goodman, was playing a round of golf with Jack Liebowitz, DC's publisher. Liebowitz was bragging about the success of Justice League, and so Goodman's response was to immediately go to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who were on Timely's staff, and tell them to come up with Timely's own version of the JLA, changed just enough so as to avoid raising the ire of DC's lawyers.

Published under the new name of Marvel, Fantastic Four was the publisher's first big success since the 1940s, and propelled Lee and Kirby to the forefront of the genre. It allowed Timely/Marvel to start investing more effort into superhero comics, and paved the way for such titles as Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men. So it was important, in the long view, but it did not save the industry. It was merely another entry into a comic book renaissance that was already well under way by that time.

Re:Four again, and again, and again..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, read the imdb link you posted [imdb.com]. It tells us that the Human Torch character was "just not legally available for use in these cartoons" because the TV rights had already been optioned.
It wasn't political correctness, it was legal hassles.

Any chance of seeing the 1994 Fantastic Four Movie

[Anonymous Coward]

The first Fantastic Four was made in 1994 but never released because unbeknown to the cast and crew, the movie was never intended to be released, and was made only because the studio who owned the rights to make a Fantastic Four movie would have lost the rights if they did not begin production by a certain date.

The old Spiderman cartoon rocked!!

[Drunken_Jackass]

That is still my favorite cartoon from when i was a kid. That and G.I.Joe (a real american hero, you know - and knowing is half the battle).

I was pretty impressed with the new Spiderman CG series that appeared on MTv after the first movie. Besides being voiced by some bad choices - Ian Ziering from Beverly Hills 90210 voiced Harry, and Jewel was MJ, and Peter Parker was voiced by Doogie Howser MD it was a good series that served as a good arc between movies.

However, they did have some fresh villians - one of the things that the first Spiderman series (with Iceman and Firestorm), and the animation was really cool - especially all of the self casting shadows.

If this new cartoon (let's face it, they're still cartoons) is as good as that.

I also think you can get the new series on DVD now.

Sean Baby's Superfriend's Page

[conan776]

Obligatory link to Sean Baby's Superfriend's Page [seanbaby.com].

If you recall that show, click that link and prepare to crack up.

anyone here remember JACK KIRBY ?

[Anonymous Coward]

im surprised that no-one has mentioned the amazing artwork Jack Kirby did for the Fantastic Four in the 60's -

for me, the Galactus - Silver Surfer arc is perhaps the high point of Marvel comic-dom -

bringing Jack Kirby's vision of this tale to the large, or small screen has the potential, if handled properly, to be one of the greatest comic-based movies of all, imho -

http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/comics101/27.html/ [moviepoopshoot.com]

so if they get the first movie right, (where we have another great character Dr. Doom, a super-villain with diplomatic immunity !) FF2 should be worth waiting for...

It's been done...

[Sean the Impaler]

http://www.tvtome.com/FantasticFour/ [tvtome.com] (circa 1994)

And maybe once more before that???

http://www.tvtome.com/NewFantasticFour/ [tvtome.com] (circa 1978)

But wait, there's more!

http://www.tvtome.com/FantasticFour_1967/ [tvtome.com] (circa 1967)