This is a Fantastic Four thread.

[Pinderpanda 600]

Xanderby

Y'know, I've never read any of the Franklin one-shots.

Great (if self-conciously derivative) cartooning but it's JUST ONE JOKE over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Xanderby

I did read some of the MA books, but the Fantastic Four ones did not read well. They seemed very forced, and the characters were written like...not the characters.

Shame. Though I know Jeff Parker wrote a few of them, so perhaps you just have to cherry-pick. Then again, the impression I've got is that MA:FF was about retelling old stories, while the approach of MA:Spider-Man is more, "PETER NOW HAS AN INDIAN GIRLFRIEND WHO CAN TALK TO OWLS AND PUGS, AND EVERYONE WORKS FOR THE BLONDE PHANTOM DETECTIVE AGENCY, AND COS WE'RE NOT IN CONTINUITY THEN THE BORING FANBOYS CAN'T SAY s**t. HA!"

Anyone got any ideas for what'd be a nice light'n'breezy FF read to balance out the Hickmania?

[Wally_West]

This.

[Agent Orange Larfleeze]

Wally_West

This.

SO FUN. Also, it got released in hardcover, which is nice, because something about digest format drives me crazy. It's probably that I read way too many Archie comics as a kid and fully expect Jughead to show up in any book that size.

...

But he never does! crying

[Wally_West]

Wait till Tiny Titans/Archie is collected. 3nodding

[Agent Orange Larfleeze]

For real?

[Wally_West]

Awww, yeah!

[Maiadorn]

Why do the Fantastic Four work for you?

They manage to feel, at the same time, like an old-timey, pulp Terry and the Pirates, Doc Savage ADVENTURE!-type outfit AND the cutting edge, shiny-bright pioneers of the future. The Cornell model is one I've got a lot of time for, because the FF works for me in the same way Doctor Who works for me, in that it's a framework you can use to tell virtually any kind of story.

Why don't they?

The one problem I have with them is one of the problems identified by Waid in his pitch for his run that started with Imaginauts. It's very, very easy for them to fall into predictable routines. And it's very easy for them to be written badly. When that happens, Reed is just a cold, calculating computer, but with none of the Doctor-like, Holmesian full blown enthusiasm and passion for what he's doing and why he's doing it. Sue gets stroppy and starts contemplating adultery with a man I am convinced always smells faintly of sardines. Johnny stops being an incorrigable happy-go-lucky scamp and starts being a self-centred, unlikeable turd. Ben just mopes. Similarly, I don't like interpretations that suggest that somehow Doom is anything other than a self-aggrandizing bullshitter with about as much nobility as may be found in a half-eaten sausage roll.

Which is your favourite run?

Waid and Ringo's. Everything I love about the concept was in it. Next question?

Story?

The Fantastic Fourth Voyage of Sinbad would have been it, if it had been five issues longer. Similarly, I like the Marvel Knights run, but it never quite gets ahold of the bright and shiny ADVENTURE! that is my FF ideal. I'm afraid I'm going to have to be very predictable and say True Story. Everybody gets to their moment to be awesome, it's wall to wall shinybrightADVENTURE! from the word go, and it's got the cast of The Wind in the Willows in it.

Character?

Ben. Absolutely, without question. From the first moment I clapped eyes on him, he became the Idol o' Millions...and One. He's totally lovable, fiercely loyal, utterly dependable and possesses everything that is decent and admirable in the human spirit. I grew up without a father, and mostly with no father figures. If you gave me the whole of fiction to choose from and invited me to pick a Dad, my first and only choice would be Benjamin Jacob Grimm.

Reed invention?

The butterscotch ice cream that burns more calories than playing Rugby. We can but dream.

How do you see their place in the MU? They're the foundation of the whole thing, but they always seem kind of marginal. How does that work?

I'm rubbish at questions like this. If nobody minds, my crippling insecurities and I will move briskly on to the next question, which has scope for me to be all flippant and make jokes about going to the lavatory... ninja

How would you have done the films?

No Stan Lee. Absolutely not. At least not in a speaking role. It's not just that I have a personal indifference to the man, it's that when he cropped up in the first movie, any suspension of disbelief I had going suddenly twatted dully into a brick wall and I had to fight like hell to get it off again. Let him stand in the background and run a burger stall, by all means. He'd probably just end up telling every extra in earshot about how he invented the hot dog (unlikely, now that I think about it..).

Also, I'd have:

Cast Anne Hathaway as Sue.
Given her ruddy amazing forcefield fight scenes against giant Doombots or something, WITHOUT her getting a nosebleed while looking like she's having a larger than average bowel movement.
Done away with the completely pointless and gratuitous 'Sue getting undressed for no reason' moments.
Cast Tobey Maguire as 'Wedding photographer'.
Allowed Ioan Gruffordd to use his real voice. There aren't enough awesome Welshmen in Hollywood movies. My friends and I constantly mourn the fact that a Welsh Batman exists nowhere outside of our own fevered little heads.

And if Ioan Gruffordd happened to get undressed pointlessly and gratuitously, then no harm doneDOUBLESTANDARDS.

Which was the first FF story you ever read?

Phoo, now you're asking. It was during the Claremont mid-90's run, I know that much. Something to do with Kree terrorists on the Blue Area of the moon I think. Or possibly not. I think Reed and Ben foiled a hijacking on a plane. I can't go and get the issue to check, as it's in my other house.

Who'd you most like to see write and draw them?

Eoin Colfer and Roger Landridge. Whoever makes this happen can have all my stuff and I'll go and live out the rest of my life in a monastery in the Orkneys.

[Pinderpanda 600]

Wally_West

This.

I love This.
This was the height of my Slott-love, This was.

And if you ever get a chance to read Slott's Amazing #590-1 from last year, it works almost as an additional chapter to This.

Oh! Here's an interesting thing. I was just googling for the issue numbers of that story, and turned up something else altogether...

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/dan-slott-amazing-spider-man-100802.html

Quote:

Nrama: Speaking of the Fantastic Four, one of the teaser images released so far is Spider-Man in what looks to be a Fantastic Four uniform.

Slott: Fantastic Spider-Man! Yeah. What about it? (Laughs.)

Nrama: Probably nothing you can comment on, huh?

Slott: I don’t want to step on Jonathan Hickman’s toes, but he’s got a big storyline coming up [in Fantastic Four] called “Three.” And you take three, and you add one, and you’re back to four.

Nrama: Can’t argue with the math there, seems to all check out.

Slott: There’s been a lot of speculation about what’s going to happen at the end of “Three.” Just say that if something really big happened over at Fantastic Four and became “Three,” just saying ... if you lost one of your strongest members it might behoove you to have someone with spider-strength on your team.

Nrama: Seems like a natural fit.

Slott: Yeah! Or if you have somebody like Franklin who might be going through a very hard time because of some kind of loss, then perhaps having your favorite superhero and someone you admire around to help you through that could be a good thing too. Or ... if you were one of Spider-Man’s best friends, you might want it be known that if something ever happened to you, that you’d like him to take his place.

Nrama: Or ...

Slott: Or ... if you lost your biggest brain, who came up with all your gizmos and gadgets and science and tech and helped you explore, you might need someone with Peter Parker-level intelligence to help out.

Or ... maybe it's just Fantastic Four appreciation day and that's the suit Spidey had in the closet. Or, hey, who's to say that's Spidey in that suit at all? Maybe it's the all-new Tarantula? OK, have I created enough obfuscation there?

[Pinderpanda 600]

Maiadorn

The FF works for me in the same way Doctor Who works for me, in that it's a framework you can use to tell virtually any kind of story.

I've got a theory that the Fantastic Four was fiction's considered response to contact with the mind of Jack Kirby. It needed to extrude constructs capable of exploring an imaginationscape that vast.

Maiadorn

Doom is anything other than a self-aggrandizing bullshitter with about as much nobility as may be found in a half-eaten sausage roll.

There is now something to quote if I ever get bored of that line from the Waid manifesto about how he'd "tear the head off a newborn baby and eat it like an apple while his mother watched if it would somehow prove he was smarter than Reed."

I still haven't read that Marvel Knights run you mention, even though I've got the first trade lying around somewhere.

[Maiadorn]

pinderpanda

There is now something to quote if I ever get bored of that line from the Waid manifesto about how he'd "tear the head off a newborn baby and eat it like an apple while his mother watched if it would somehow prove he was smarter than Reed."

I watched Amadeus for the first time the other week. I was trying desperately to treat it with the reverence I'd convinced myself it deserved, while simultaneously trying to ignore the voice sitting in the back seat of my brain that kept going 'He's turning into Doctor Doom! You watch, any minute now, he'll get a huge ******** off castle and robot copies of himself!'

It's the part of my brain that never lets me be fully immersed in any Sci-Fi or Fantasy movie because it's too busy working out which Doctor the story would work best for.

If you're interested, District 9 felt like a distinctly Virgin New Adventures Seventh Doctor outing (probably written by Ben Aaronovitch) and Avatar had Tenth Doctor romp written all over it, albeit in very tiny writing that only I could see BECAUSE I'M NOT RIGHT.

pinderpanda

I still haven't read that Marvel Knights run you mention, even though I've got the first trade lying around somewhere.

I went in cautiously, I'll admit that. The MK approach seemed to me to give everything a good solid whack with the specious shillelagh of realism = problems and arguing AND NOTHING ELSE. And there is a bit of that. But there's also stuff like Ben pounding a time-travelling pharoh on the head with an SUV. So, you know. Swings and roundabouts. Although the roundabout is actually an awesome reality-buggering centrifuge that hurtles you into a parallel dimension where flatulence smells of newly-baked biscuits and there is no Ricky Gervais.

[Giabrenna]

Is that the trade where they find out they're bankrupt and all have to get new jobs?

If so, It's definitely NOT "Imaginauts," but it has a lot of great rah-rah moments in it anyways. It was worth the dollar I paid for it and then some.

[JollyJack87]

All i can really say is that reed Richards has caused the end of the universe more times than any super villain. His line of what can be done and what should be done at times seems very blurred.

[Pinderpanda 600]

SharkWithMachete

His line of what can be done and what should be done at times seems very blurred.

Oh, but the current arc is so very much about that question. Though it turns out it's not Reed we should be worried about.

[Hartley Rathaway]

I can't wait till I get back in the states on Sunday and can read comics again. gonk I am DYING to see how this goes past the preview they showed us some weeks back.

[Pinderpanda 600]

Whatcha gonna do when Hickamania runs wild on you?

Previews for everything!
SHIELD #4
Fantastic Four #584
Ultimate Thor #1

I wonder if he'll bring the last of those into his Busiek-bothering web of interconectivity.
Have we ever seen an Ultimate Nathaniel Richards?