Marvel Hits Refresh Button On Fantastic Four

[spacecaps]

Marvel hits refresh button on Fantastic Four - Yahoo! News

[madmarva]

While the story is clear, the headline's a bit confusing in comics parlance.

The headline might make some believe Marvel's relaunching FF like DC did with all its characters last year.

I think this series of GNs is a good idea by Marvel. I know as a kid it would have been cool to have an origin story in hard back form. It's interesting that the story wasn't serialized and then collected.

I dearly loved the paperback reprints of the Marvel character's early adventures from the 70s or maybe early 80s. Although I'd been reading the characters in the current comics for a good while, they were my first introduction to Kirby and Ditko's work on FF, Spidey, Hulk. I re-read those books until they just about fell apart.

[ctc]

>I think this series of GNs is a good idea by Marvel.

It's not a bad idea at all. The only problem is that they'll have to do this again every 10-15 years for much the same reasons. I wonder if that'll eventually lead to them running series on different "Earths," like DC did with Earth 1 and 2 back in the 70's.

Don C.

[The Bat]

I not opposed to this. Sometimes Comics have storylines that just linger on for far to long, and then a new creative team comes on board and the plot threads NEVER get resolved. I cancelled FF awhile back. Sometimes a fresh start is sorely needed.

[kingdom warrior]

Nothing wrong with updating the characters to fit the time they are in.

Superman is not exactly leaping around anymore working for the Daily Star....

[Brazoo]

The saddest thing to me about the Marvel approach to dragging these characters forward decade to decade is that they have to keep doing this kind of force-fitting.

In the 60s Marvel characters fit the time, and were aging. Reed and Sue got married and had a child - Johnny went from high-school to college, they weren't stagnant.

I have no problem with updating the characters, but adding cell phones doesn't seem very creative or revolutionary, besides, Reed hasn't invented anything better than a cell phone at this point?

[ctc]

>Trying...hard.......to care...but...can't............

Haw! The cell phone bit might be a bad example, but if Reed really did work with the French Underground, he'd be around 90 now. I'm wondering how long this will last: having a definite start gives you an absolute progression of time, and having that start readily available for the new fans means it doesn't just "go away" after a few generations of readers.

Maybe they should do like Zot did, and it's just always 1965.

>Superman is not exactly leaping around anymore working for the Daily Star

....on SOME Earth, somewhere, he is....

Don C.

[Brazoo]

Sorry ctc - I changed my post because I thought it was maybe a little unnecessarily antagonistic. Plus, it was inaccurate - because despite myself I do care.

I love the FF - and pick one up here and there - but it never seems good enough. I'd almost appreciate a full tear-down and start again approach better. If adding cell phones was the big example then it doesn't seem like anything is really being changed.

"Reed likes to play Warcraft online in his spare time now!" You're welcome Marvel - that innovative update was free!

[sprytel]

Origin stories should be timeless. References to cellphones and Twitter are going to be dated the day it is printed.

A refresh isn't a bad idea... I just question the direction they are taking it.

[samurainoir]

I think it's often been pointed out the contrast between John Byrne's Spiderman Chapter 1 and Brian Bendis/Mark Bagley's Ultimate Spider-man in terms of both critical and commercial success.

Byrne's updating really seemed to be of the superficial "Peter gets a computer instead of a microscope" school... it's almost slavish to the original. Whereas Ultimate felt accessible and contemporary while remaining true to the spirit of Spider-man.

This includes the format... while it was popularly criticized for "decompressing" the story from the original handful of pages into 8 full issues at the time, millions have since read the first trade paperback of Ultimate Spider-man over the original 30,000 copies of the first issue that were printed the month of it's first release.

I feel the same way about The Ultimates finding that balance as well.

On the other hand Ultimate Fantastic Four probably fell too far off the beaten path, and Ultimate X-Men definitely wandered way past the line as well.

[MIB41]

I'm hopeful we get a CGI Thing this time. As much as they tried to make him look believable in makeup, it just didn't work. It was just too apparent he was in a costume.

[samurainoir]

^^^
I think they need to go CGI with the Thing as well. Preferably Ron Perlman in a motion capture suit (since he's no longer doing the make-up thing after the second Hellboy).

[Brazoo]

This isn't about the movies - but I assume at some point they'll try again with a reboot.

I agree about The Thing. When I saw the first production stills of the first movie that got leaked I figured it was more of a prop outfit for the actors to use - and motion capture CG would be substituted in some way.

Though, the script was a much bigger problem than the terrible effects - in my opinion.

[MIB41]

^^^
I think they need to go CGI with the Thing as well. Preferably Ron Perlman in a motion capture suit (since he's no longer doing the make-up thing after the second Hellboy).

Ron Perlman would be an AWESOME choice! Good idea.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Maybe I'm weird, but I kind of liked the suit. I believed the Thing more than the Hulk in the Ang Lee flick.

Chris