Superhero Media: Fantasic Four - The Animated Series (1994)

I have fond memories of watching "The Marvel Action Hour" hosted by Stan Lee himself, featuring Iron Man and Fantastic Four. Some years back, I picked up the Iron Man DVDs pretty cheap, from a supermarket of all places, and found it to be not as bad as I remembered. Fantastic Four however, is pretty much almost entirely hot garbage from the second the campy theme song finishes. Yes, I like the campy theme song and they should bring it back for the next film, like with the "Spider-Man Theme" in the Rami films. What makes Fantastic Four so bad? Mostly a lack of money, really; the animation is cheap and repetitive, the scripts are paper-thin and a lot of the acting is odd a lot of the time. There is a conflict in tone between classic Silver Age Fantastic Four comics and trying to be hip and '90s; the Four having a black-tie variety benefit at which Johnny performs a terrible rap, just for example. 

In terms of the classic comic stories though, Fantastic Four is pretty comprehensive, even managing to revisit Doom stealing the power of the Silver Surfer after the first version isn't really all that good. Most of what you'd expect is here, in the forms of Galactus, Skrulls, Mole Man, Inhumans and Kree, plus there is a hefty dose of other Marvel characters, including Hulk being voiced by Ron Perlman. Most of the "guest stars" are from the other 1990s Marvel animated series, but there is the occasional fun surprise, like Ghost Rider, who takes on Galactus with his "Penitent Stare". Of course, we get a good Hulk Vs Thing fight, with plenty of smashing and clobbering and, importantly, no decisive winner, because you want to keep the fans wanting more. 

Probably the thing Fantastic Four does best is show the titular Four in a contemporary setting, which is often considered a difficult task at the very least. Personally, as someone who's actually read a fair few FF comics, I think they work fine in any era, so long as you can maintain the idea of Reed Richards being on the bleeding edge of science and technology. Even this series tries to mess with the formula and fails, with Doom being German for the first few episodes before it shifts to Latveria and moves on. Thing is, the Fantastic Four work as they are and really don't need too much changing. Averaged out, FF was the highest selling monthly comic for the entire Bronze, Dark and Platinum ages, so these are stories we want to see, even if they're not always done well.