"It's Clobbering Time!" in the first complete season of the animated FANTASTIC FOUR DVD(2008).
© 20th Century Fox
Mania Grade: B+
DVD: The Fantastic Four; Complete First Season
Rating: Unrated
Starring (Voices): Hiro Kanagawa, Lara Gilchrist, Christopher Jacot, Brian Dodson
Written By: Chris Yost
Directed By: Various
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Original Year of Release: DVD (2008)
Extras: Audio commentaries, Three Featurettes, Art Gallery
Buy it now!
DVD: The Fantastic Four; Complete First Season
Rating: Unrated
Starring (Voices): Hiro Kanagawa, Lara Gilchrist, Christopher Jacot, Brian Dodson
Written By: Chris Yost
Directed By: Various
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Original Year of Release: DVD (2008)
Extras: Audio commentaries, Three Featurettes, Art Gallery
Buy it now!
DVD Review of The Fantastic Four; Complete First Season
By: Tim JansonReview Date: Sunday, July 13, 2008
Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes is the fourth animated TV series for Marvel Comics’s flagship title. Premiering on the Cartoon Network the show has had a bit of a spotty broadcast history but now you can see the complete first season, including several unaired episodes, in this set just released by Fox Home Video.
Now a word of warning, while the series is largely faithful in idea to the comics, this is a re-imagining of the characters and they are given a more 21st century look. This results in both good and bad. The updated looks are just fine and who really wants to see Sue Storm with a bouffant hairdo anyway? The only exception is Johnny Storm who looks like he belongs in a Dragon Ball Z cartoon rather than the Fantastic Fantastic Four. Ughh! Just horrible! It doesn’t end with Johnny’s/The Human Torch’s look. His character absolutely annoying. Even a teenaged Johnny Story was never this obnoxious in the comics. After a few episodes his personality begins to grate on you.
Reed Richard’s personality and voice acting (Hiro Kanagawa) is also week. Reed sounds like a frat boy nerd who lacks confidence, almost the opposite of the analytical, often emotionally stunted scientist from the comics. On the other hand, The Invisible Girl and the Thing are done quite well. Admittedly, it’s not hard to do Ben Grimm buy Brian Dobson nails him as well as you can. Lisa Gilchrist gives us a Sue Storm who is more forceful and self-assured. With a nod to the animated show of the 70s, there’s even a return of H.E.R.B.I.E, this time as the F.F.’s super-computer.
As far as the stories goes, this series has the most dynamic array of villains and guest stars in any FF cartoon series yet. Thankfully it’s not all about battling arch-nemesis Dr. Doom over and over. Besides Doom, the roster of villains includes The Skrulls, The Mole Man. Puppet Master, the Super-Skrull, Annihilus, Terminus, Diablo, The Frightful Four, Attuma, and Ronan the Accuser. Guest-stars feature The Hulk, She-Hulk, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and the Submariner. Alas, however, there is no Silver Surfer or Galactus in the first season episodes.
Then animation is produced by the French company Moonscoop, best known for the Code Lyoko series, also broadcast on the Cartoon Network. Like that show, the Fantastic Four combines traditional 2D animation with 3D CGI animation with a distinct, but not overwhelming, anime look. This is a nice change of pace from the more cartoony look of shows like The Teen Titans. The 3D allows for better visual effects. It was noted in one of the featurettes that Moonscoop originally wanted to give Sue Storm pink hair and thankfully Marvel nixed that idea. Those crazy French!
Even though the series doesn’t faithfully adapt any comic stories they do come reasonably close.
“Trial by Fire” stars the villainous Kree Accuser Ronan, who puts Johnny on trial after the Torch destroys several Kree probes. This is a loose adaptation of Fantastic Four #65 Vol. 1.
“Revenge of the Skrulls” features the Super-Skrull, a Skrull augmented with the powers of all four members of the F.F.
“World’s Tiniest Heroes” finds the team shrinking due to an experiment of Reed’s gone haywire. The episode guest-stars the Hank Pym version of Ant Man and is based on a story appearing in Fantastic Four #16, Vol. 1.
There are guest-stars aplenty in the show: The Hulk and the Thing have one of their classic battles in “Hard Knocks” The Sub-Mariner shows up a couple of times, and Iron Man helps the team battle several sets of his armor that has been taken over by Dr. Doom.
The writers did a good job of capturing the spirit of the comic, particularly the first volume but with a modern sensibility and pizzazz. They missed the boat, though, by omitting the Silver Surfer and Galactus, which is arguably one of the most famous story arcs in Marvel history.
Extras:
The set comes with three featurettes:
“From Origin to Animation” (18:00) features comments by Stan Lee on the creation of the comic and its evolvement into the current animated series. Even though you’ve probably heard the tale before, Lee is such an engaging, enthusiastic guy that you can listen to him all day.
“Rise of the Rogues” (9:30) looks at the villains from the first season and how they were adapted and updated.
“Traveling to New Dimensions” (8:30) takes viewers on a tour of the Moonscoop animation HQ to see how the show was developed.
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