Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes

Hey folks. Back again. So looking through the archives of pseudo successful Marvel films, I speak of the moderate high Marvel was enjoying from Fantastic Four in 2005 and its lackluster sequel in 2007. We will gloss over the 2015 film because, I never bother to watch it. For all I know, Doom is a habitual basement-dwelling nerdling that masturbates constantly and dreams of ruling the world. 

During the staple of Marvel Movie Madness prior to the last ten years, that Moonscoop Productions (Code Lyoko, Bunny Maloney, SamSam and Tara Duncan) with Marvel's blessing, to project the titanic tetrad into action. This is Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes.

HULK SMASH!!

What separates them from The Avengers, Defenders, X-Men and hell we even throw in the Champions is they were explorers and adventurers prior to their power set. An experimental rocket test flight bombarded our curious quartet with cosmic rays, forever altering their DNA with untold powers. Funny you'd think NASA would be sending up military for truckloads of powered beings. Buckets of Heroes!!! Mind you, there would always be a handful of men and women using their powers for their own end, instead of saving the day. Hmm, cancel cargo caravan of cosmic cronies.

Professor Reed Richards, a brilliant cross-discipline scientist, Test pilot and war hero Ben Grim, Hothead, hot rodder Johnny Storm and constant den mother (still bad ass) Susan Storm compiled a group of heroes that operated more like a family than just teammates.

Dare we say, you are DOOOMED??!!

Keep in mind the inception of Reed Richards was in the sixties and I think they just followed the Doc Savage pulp fiction formula. Y'know men capable of multiple PHDs. Either that or the intelligence quota was just higher and men yearned more for science. Yes ladies, Sue gets more of a role than girl hostage like she did in the sixties. Yeah girls can fight too. Who knew? Never saw that in G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Silverhawks and...oh wait, YES I DID! Johnny's a smart ass and constantly pranking the Thing and yeah we love him for it, dammit.

Unlike its 1994 previous work, this rendition of Fantastic Four is fun, clever and action-packed. Naturally we have the rivalry of Doctor Doom and Richards. The anime style artwork really enhances the story, we have a real sense of the team's dynamics and yes we get a good old smack down between Yancy Street's blue-eyed Thing vs gamma and rage fueled Hulk. Private and public property damage is assured when these two throw cowboy.

Fight sequence or Tai Chi?

There's a drinking or calculator game. Hell, make it both. For all damages, what improvised throwing weapon crunched out of a car, manhole cover or mailbox and how many buildings are trashed.

When not being threatened by cosmic war mongers, tin plated dictators with delusions of godhood and villainous plots, the foursome is engaging in one of Mr. Fantastic's science experiments, procedures or newest technical jiggery pokery. Mishaps into the Negative Zone, exploration into space (Because Richards perfected a vehicle capable of leaving our solar system!!) or reverse engineering Skrull and Kree technology. Seriously, the crosswords do nothing to entertain this guy's mind.

Best part of this series? The humor. It feels natural, fluid and works well with the action. This is cartoons done right. Avengers Assemble and Young Justice must have been taking notes because this was the first cartoon next to Justice League I felt got the characters and their psyche downpat.

Understand, the 1994 power packed Saturday morning series to be alongside, The X-Men, Iron Man, Spider-Man and The Hulk were not really good stories, the dialogue was clunky and it was kind of painful to sit through. Out of that whole alumni, I liked the X-Men series and even still wasn't blown away by the stories garbling more than 40 years of writing.

This 26 episodes is found in three volumes that was released in 2010 and I am not aware of any reprints. They're out there though, folks. Get them while you can.  Even though Moonscoop is gone now.

What age bracket would I recommend this for? Uh, all ages. Whether you are a newbie to the franchise or an old school follower of the comics (John Byrne and Chris Clarmont era for me), you can easily find something to love about it. Naturally it has been off the air since 2010.

Ho boy...