Fox Rejected a FAR Superior Version of This 20-Year-Old Marvel Film (Psst...It's Fantastic Four)

 

Did the 2000s nearly offer a DIFFERENT Beatlemania inspired movie starring Marvel's First Family? I look at future Daredevil showrunner Doug Petrie's Fantastic Four draft this week at CBR.

Housewife or Hellraiser? The Fantastic Four vs. Sue's Dark Side

 

One of John Byrne's more daring Fantastic Four comics received a surprising animated adaptation on a forgotten '90s show. I look at Malice's animated debut this week at CBR.

Clobberin' on a Budget: The Nixed Fantastic Four Film with a Wisecracking Dr. Doom

 

Batman writer Sam Hamm presented a more comedic approach to the Fantastic Four, but his quippy Dr. Doom might've gone too far. I review this week at CBR...

The Wildly Expensive '90s Fantastic Four Film Nixed by Fox

 

This week at CBR, I look at the Fantastic Four film we could've gotten in the '90s -- and I don't mean the Roger Corman movie!

The Batman Beyond Villains Foiled by DC's Lawyers

 

Adventure(s) Time continues, as I look at Batman Beyond and the Marvel parody villains DC's lawyers really didn't want making a return appearance.

Michael Chabon's Rejected Retro-Cool Fantastic Four Pitch

This week at CBR, I look what could be the strangest abandoned project (or simply a pitch) in the superhero film genre. In 1995, Michael Chabon wanted to take the Fantastic Four back to the 1960s...quite literally.

That OTHER '90s Marvel Series on Disney+

This week at CBR, I look back at the second season (the good one) of the '90s Fantastic Four cartoon. It's a nice compliment to X-Men once you're finished with that rewatch.

How Embracing Lee and Kirby Saved The Fantastic Four Animated Series

Well, saved it creatively, at least. This was, sadly, its last season. This week on CBR, I revisit the second season premiere of the '90s Fantastic Four series.

UNCANNY X-MEN & FANTASTIC FOUR ‘98 - September 1998

Thresholds

Credits: Joe Casey (writer), Paul Pelletier & Leo Fernandez (pencilers), Andrew Pepoy, Keith Champagne, Rob Leigh, & Ray McCarthy (inks), Richard Starkings & Comicraft (letters), Serrano/Ramos/Soto/Smith/Schigel (colors)

Summary: Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman go out for a night at the opera, a performance also attended by Beast and Cecilia Reyes. Meanwhile, Wolverine forces Cannonball to join him in a poker game with the Thing and Human Torch. Unbeknownst to Mr. Fantastic, his new miniaturizer device is identical to one developed by Stark-Fujikawa scientist, Bradley Beynon. When Beynon is fired for copying Mr. Fantastic’s design, he raids Stark-Fujikawa’s vault and discovers a Psycho-Man robot and an Emotion-Stimulator Box. Beynon sends the robot to the FF’s headquarters and attacks the opera with the Box. The heroes defeat Beynon, but must soon protect him for an enraged Psycho-Man. During the battle, Beynon targets Mr. Fantastic with his miniaturizing device, but accidently sends himself and Psycho-Man to the Microverse.

Continuity Notes: Cannonball is portrayed as a novice poker player who has to be forced into the game, although he outplays everyone and consistently has winning hands. This is virtually identical to the story in X-Men #48, which also featured the Thing and was only a few years old at the time. The only difference is that Scott Lobdell heavily implied that Cannonball was pretending not to know how to play, while Joe Casey treats him as a genuine novice. Perhaps Lobdell should’ve looted a scientific vault and launched an attack on Casey for stealing his idea.

“Huh?” Moment: When Wolverine and Thing race out of Pier-4 to respond to Mr. Fantastic’s signal flare, Wolverine discovers Thing has somehow crushed his motorcycle with the FF’s “flying bathtub.” How exactly this happened isn’t explained at all.

Review: Team-ups were the gimmick for the 1998 annuals, which sounds fine on paper, but I seem to recall almost all of them getting bad reviews. This one certainly isn’t a stellar entry. The “humorous” character subplot is an unintentional rerun of a recent story, the villain has a shaky motive, and for some unexplained reason, the reader has to accept that Stark-Fujikawa keeps a Psycho-Man robot and accompanying device in its closet. It’s no secret by now that Casey has more of an affinity for the Fantastic Four than the X-Men, but the only real highlights in this issue come when he riffs on Joe Kelly’s concurrent X-Men run. While his characterizations of the Fantastic Four don’t go much deeper than a few catchphrases, his portrayal of Beast and Cecilia’s budding romance (a subplot dropped from the main books just as this annual went to press) brings some life to the story. Casey’s depiction of Cecilia’s response to her first brush with mind control -- she’s furious and wants to kill the guy -- also adds a nice touch of reality to the story. The rest of the issue is easily forgettable. Even the art, by the usually reliable Paul Pelletier and Leo Fernandez, is obscured by the rushed inking job.

ONSLAUGHT Crossovers Part Three – September 1996

Fantastic Four #416 (DeFalco/Pacheco/Comicraft with numerous inkers & colorists) – The final issue of the original series, as it is relaunched by Jim Lee a few months later. DeFalco continues to wrap up the dangling plot threads from his run, while using the Onslaught storyline to provide villains for the team to fight. One of the subplots, a “real world issues” storyline involving Cassie Lang discovering that her friend is being abused, is resolved in just a few lines of dialogue. DeFalco knows his time is up, so he dedicates the majority of the double-sized issue to a giant fight scene with various FF villains. The setup is that Franklin Richards is sending a mental call for help to the team, and Onslaught is twisting his message and using it to create psionic projections of various villains. Some of the FF’s allies, including Namor and the Inhumans, show up to help. Dr. Doom even arrives, and agrees to join the fight against Onslaught. It’s a reasonable way to end a long-running series that has to dedicate its final issues to an outside crossover. There’s no way this could actually please dedicated FF fans, who didn’t want the continuity rebooted by Jim Lee and certainly didn’t want the last issue of this series to be a part of an X-crossover, but DeFalco does what he can. And it is nice to see Carlos Pacheco’s interpretation of the Fantastic Four’s entire rogues gallery.

Iron Man #332 (Kavanagh/Bennett/Dzon & McKenna/Felix/Kalisz) – And here’s the final issue of Iron Man’s first volume. While Fantastic Four’s final issue at least made some effort to acknowledge the title’s history, Iron Man is content to fight Sentinels with the Avengers for the entire issue. The nominal plot has Iron Man making his way to the Wakandan Consulate so that he can gain access to the Black Panther’s vibranium supply, which he’ll use to finish the anti-Onslaught psi-armor. This is the teenage version of Tony Stark, who replaced his older, adult self a few issues earlier. This was a last ditch effort on Marvel’s part to revive interest in the title, which backfired to the point of becoming an industry joke for years (Kurt Busiek didn’t even seem that interested in explaining how exactly Stark returned to normal when he eventually took over the title).

It’s amusing that Kavanagh is still trying to sell the storyline, even though he had to have known this was the last issue of the series. Teen Tony behaves like a stereotypical teenage comic character, hiding his insecurities behind a cocky attitude while saving the day. If only there was room to introduce a few love interests, so he could agonize over which one to take to the prom. Or maybe one of his friends could develop a drug problem, and he could help him work through it. And I’m sure someone at school needs advice on how to deal with an abusive father. The letters column, which is surprisingly non-sentimental for the final issue of a long-running series, does print one negative reaction to the new direction. The editor’s response is essentially, “maybe you’ll like what Jim Lee does instead”, which reads to me like, “Fine. You kids buy whatever crap you like. I’m probably getting laid off next week anyway.”

ONSLAUGHT Crossovers Part One -August 1996

AVENGERS #401 (Waid/Deodato/Palmer/Oakley/Kalisz) – Following Uncanny X-Men #335, Gambit joins the Avengers as they track Magneto's energy signature to the Southeast. The rest of the issue mainly consists of Rogue and Joseph fighting off the Avengers, who think that Joseph is still his old self. Rogue's afraid that if Joseph finds out about his past, he'll revert into Magneto again, so she spends a lot time yelling at the Avengers and telling them to shut up. The conflict ends when the Scarlet Witch recognizes that Joseph isn't the man she knew, and convinces everyone to calm down. This is the classic "heroes fight over a misunderstanding" issue, but Waid's characterizations keep it from getting too dull. As far as crossover tie-ins go, this isn't so bad. There's some nice work with the Scarlet Witch, and a few amusing interactions during the fight scene. Pairing Mike Deodato with Tom Palmer is an odd look, and Palmer's influence unfortunately doesn't tone down some of the more egregious '90s poses and anatomy.

Fantastic Four #415 (DeFalco/Pacheco/Wiacek/Starkings/Comicraft/Lenshoek) – Carlos Pacheco was taken off of Excalibur in order to draw these final two issues of the original Fantastic Four series. This issue contributes to the plot by re-establishing Franklin Richards’ latent mutant power (which is described as the ability to “restructure matter”) and sending Onslaught after him. Onslaught reverts to Xavier’s form and tries to convince the Richards into sending Franklin to his school, as a team of Avengers and X-Men members arrive to stop him. There are also a few pages dedicated to resolving storylines from DeFalco’s utterly bizarre run on this title (although editorial restraints seem to have calmed him down by this point). The rest of the issue is mostly a large fight between Onslaught and the various Marvel heroes. There’s a clever bit that has Onslaught clouding Franklin’s mind while he plays a card game as the battle goes on around him, but Pacheco’s art is the only real redeeming aspect of the fight. If Onslaught is such a devious, cunning foe, it seems like he would’ve had a better plan than just knocking his way through any heroes who happened to be in the FF’s headquarters that day. Since he’s supposed to be the most powerful telepath on Earth, he could’ve used his mental powers in a variety of ways to easily get Franklin away from the team.