Farewell Fantastic Four, I never thought I would ever say something like that. I never thought I would see the day when Marvel Comics would cancel or stop publishing what is definitely their flagship title, the first family of Marvel, of Comics. The word went out early that Marvel was considering cancelling this title. I remember when Marvel launched Marvel Now, I was relieved to see the Fantastic Four. So I told myself this would not happen, Marvel will not cancel the Fantastic Four. Well, I was wrong. Boy, was I ever wrong, as it turns out they did. It was big news all over the comics world, everyone was tweeting about it, news sites picked it up, everyone was buzzing and I'm pretty sure a lot of fans were confused as to why. Was the title not generating the numbers? Were sales bad? The answer to all that was No. The answer to that question came from elsewhere.
Back in the day when Marvel was trying to get their characters on to the silver screen, a lot of Marvel's properties were optioned out to various studios. The X Men was optioned to Twentieth Century Fox, Spider Man was optioned to Columbia Pictures while the Fantastic Four also went to Twentieth Century Fox. Fox produced three Fantastic Four movies. The first had a rating of 5.7, the sequel scored a rating of 5.6. Then the geniuses at Fox decided that they would reboot the Fantastic Four, make a better movie with a younger director and a younger cast. Basically turn the FF around, bring the fans back and in 2015 they released their reboot of Fantastic Four, IMDB gave the movie 4.3 rating, 4.3 out of 10. You see a trend here, each movie scored less than the original. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 9 % rating. 9 %!! Can you believe that? Even Ted 2 scored a 46% rating. The movie bombed at the box office and it was a bomb with critics and fans. Rumors were flying around about how the Director Josh Trank was difficult, the studio was difficult, there were major re shoots without Trank's involvement, there was no real story, all these rumors were flying around faster than Johnny Storm. Let's not even mention what they did to Dr. Doom. Fox in three movies managed to screw up a major character from the Fantastic Four comics.
Apparently before the piece of crap.....sorry "movie" was released, Fox had a test screening or something and Fox basically told the media to not say anything. A gag order of sorts was ordered. That was a weird move. A move that shocked everyone but the writing was on the wall, something was wrong. I guess Marvel knew something was up because before all the tell tale signs started bubbling to the surface, they announced that they would stop publishing the Fantastic Four with Issue # 645. Writer James Robinson who was writer of the Fantastic Four confirmed that the new FF title that was launched in February of 2014 would be going away for a while. James Robinson together with artist Leonard Kirk's run on the Fantastic Four was apparently moving towards the end of the title. So it was confirmed, what fans had dreaded for the longest time was true, the Fantastic Four would end. The title which first hit news stands in 1961 would be no more.
No official reasons were given as to why the Fantastic Four was going away for a while but a lot of fingers were pointing towards Fox. Their selfishness, ego, greed and stupidity real came shinning through. They would arrogantly say that they would reboot their reboot and make another Fantastic Four movie. Why? Because they were apparently rivals. They were Marvel Studios' competitors and they wanted to show Marvel Studios who was the better studio or something equally as childish. They refused to let the rights of the FF return to Marvel. Columbia saw the light when their Spider Man reboot and sequel were doing well. They knew they couldn't do it so they made the right and some would say smart move in collaborating with Marvel instead of doing what Fox is doing. Which is grabbing the ball and going off to sulk and screaming
"I don't wanna play no more, I'm taking YOUR ball and I'm going home!!!"
Fox was basically being a sulking bully who didn't like it when others were not afraid of them. A number of the people involved with the Fan4stic fiasco were really arrogant about how they will see that the sequel or reboot will be made. We all know what happened to that idea. It was reported that the reboot of the reboot or sequel to Fan4stic has dissipated or has gone missing from their calendar of movies. As you can tell from my words, I am still pretty sore with the attitudes of these Hollywood bigwigs and a#$&holes. Even though it appears the movie is not longer an option, they are still holding on to the rights to the FF. What do they want with the rights? You've already proven that you guys are incompetent and the bunch of you couldn't even get yourselves arrested even if you think really really hard.
Anyway, that's the back story to this edition of the broadcast. I don't know when or if Marvel will bring back the first family, I hope they do. They should but as it stands right now, it's clearly not happening. So I've decided to dedicate this edition of the Broadcast to the Fantastic Four. Time for me to say Farewell to the Fantastic Four. As you can see, I feel very strongly about this subject. I feel that this is something that shouldn't happen. It took place because of callous cowardly people.
I think I've mentioned before that my first comic book ever was Fantastic Four. It was one of the first comics I ever read. This was the issue:
I loved this comic book to bits. Literally cause I can't find it anymore. I must have read it over and over and over again cause I remember a few of the pages vividly. In fact whenever anyone asks what was my first comic, I would talk about this issue even though I had no idea who drew, who inked and who wrote this issue. There's a big rocky guy, there's a girl who can turn invisible, another becomes a fire guy and one guy can stretch (I'm pretty sure at the time I didn't know the word stretch, I must have used...another word to describe Mr. Fantastic) and they were losing their powers and they fought some Vikings. I can still picture the pages in my head, well these days you don't have to do that. I never found my copy of Fantastic # 224 but I hope one day to maybe find a copy out there.
I remember these panels. It was at the time a story you need to read to believe. The Fantastic Four's powers were going crazy and Ben Grimm The Thing was losing his rocks.
I didn't know at the time about the creators who did this issue, Fantastic Four # 224 was written by Doug
Moench and while the art was done by Bill Sienkiewicz who did the breakdowns while Pablo Marcos did the finished art and inks as well.
I remember this page very well, I was going crazy reading about how Ben Grimm's powers were just going crazy, look at him, half his rocks are gone, Susan Storm is partially visible. It was a memorable issue for me, memories of this issue was something I cherished quite often. It would a few years later after I read a few more comics then I realized there's a storyline in comic books. I never bought Issue # 225 to find out what happened. Maybe one day I will. So what did happen in this issue? A strange red mist descends on New York and
messes with the FF's powers. When they head to the Arctic to
investigate, they are captured by a race of scientific vikings who need
help with their dying god.
After I lost this issue, I stumbled across more Fantastic Four Comics and by then a writer/artist who had previously worked on The Uncanny X Men had take over the World's Greatest Comic Magazine. I immediately followed Fantastic Four again and bought as many issues as I could. I'll tell you the story about John Bryne's run on Fantastic Four on this broadcast soon.
In February 0f 2014 as part of Marvel Now, James Robinson together with Leonard Kirk launched a new Fantastic Four series.
I loved that Marvel had launched a new Fantastic Four title for Marvel Now, I loved everything about it, the writer, the artist except for this:
This looked almost exactly like the Fan4stic move logo, I didn't like it but I don't think Marvel would have changed anything because one guy didn't like it. Well, seeing as how Marvel had launched a new number one issue, then I thought all the talk about the cancellation was just talk, rumors and hearsay. Unfortunately I was wrong. James Robinson would later confirm that the Fantastic Four would indeed be cancelled. I guess I should have known as this new title didn't start off with a happy note. Here's a look at a few pages from Fantastic Four # 1.
It was as if the series was starting with the end of the team.
While the Fantastic Four by Robinson and Kirk received a lot of praise, there were a few bagging questions, chief among these questions, Why the change in costume color? Why Red? I remember reviewers were asking why this wasn't touched on or explained? I was more concerned with why this title was to be axed.
Still all the questions, Robinson and Kirk delivered a great Fantastic Four comic. Robinson and Kirk even introduced a new Fantasticar. Cool!
For the first issue, Robinson and Kirk delivered a great story. Guess what time it is!!
For a brief moment there, I almost forgot that the Fantastic Four would come to an end. After a while, it was all but confirmed that the FF would end. It was confirmed by James Robinson that the FF would revert to it's original numbering, it would be Fantastic Four # 645. So the question now is what would happen to the Fantastic Four? Well it was finally revealed in Marvel Comics' Secret Wars.
Now if you have not read Secret Wars # 9, then there are spoilers ahead. Consider yourself warned. In the aftermath of this issue, the Thing is now working with the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Human Torch is acting as an ambassador with the Inhumans and with Franklin's powers restored and Reed having absorbed the power of
the Beyonders from Doom, the Richards' family are working on travelling
through and reconstructing the multiverse.
Well, I guess it wasn't an ending that sucked. The Fantastic Four go on to do more good this time in the multiverse. Recently on instagram, someone reminded me that like a few characters that were killed off before, they'll be back, eventually. I hope so, I hope they do come back. So late last year, I made a very specific purchase, I bought the final four Fantastic Four tradepaperbacks.
The end is fourever? I hope. I truly hope one day soon, Marvel will bring the First Family of comics back. I hope Marvel will bring back their Flagship title. Well, this is my farewell to the Fantastic Four, hope you enjoyed it, come back soon for more right here on the Co(s)mic Comic Book Broadcast. Thanks for taking the time to have a look at this blog of mine. Follow the blog if you like, leave a comment. Thanks again and take care.
Farewell Fantastic Four
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