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Fantastic Four Animated Series
pillageplunder writes "CNN is reporting that Marvel Enterprises has cut a deal with Frances Antefilms Productions to make an animated TV Series based on the Marvel superheros.
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No doubt to capitalize on the film (2005). (Which will hopefully turn out better than an earlier try (1994) Of course, us late boom kids will remember this animated series and try to overlook this one (1978), when PC and non-violence destroyed Saturday morning TV ("Oh dear, children might see Johnny erupt in flames and try to emulate their animated role model and pour gasoline all over themselves and strike a match! Won't someone please think of the children!')
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I first read this I was pretty excited... but to be honest I'm not so sure now. It seems like lately cartoon series' are really lacking. I mean look at the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles compared to the old one... They chopped out so much of what make the Turtles so cool. I think its because they tried to adapt them more to pop culture. Hopefully they won't do the same to the Fantastic 4.
Then again, maybe I'm just getting old.
"What we are trying to do with our major brands is to support them in every way possible," Marvel Studios chairman and CEO Avi Arad said. "To support the franchise between sequels, we'll have the animated series, the video games (through Activision) and the merchandise licensing. We are just elated to be reintroducing this huge property." And by "support" they obviously mean "suck dry"
Erm, no. Not really.
The 1950s were a really bad decade for comics, as publishers substantially scaled back their output, and then the publicy outcry over some percieved link between comics and juvenile deliquency that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. All this is true, but the fact of the matter is that the situation had massive improved by the end of the decade.
DC led the resurgence of the market by reviving a number of its older, 1940s era properties. The first among these was the Flash, but that was followed, in short order, by others, like Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and so on (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were, of course, still around, being just about the only characters to survive through the "dry" years). By 1960, things were looking good enough for DC to revive the Justice Society of America, which had been its main superhero team back in the 1940s. Updated to feature the new characters, and retitled the Justice League of America, it premiered in 1960, and was an immediate hit, moving very quickly from occassional appearances in one of DC's "showcase" books (Brave and the Bold) to its own title.
The Fantastic Four, though quite successful, were latecomers to all of this. The traditional story goes that the publisher of Timely Comics, Martin Goodman, was playing a round of golf with Jack Liebowitz, DC's publisher. Liebowitz was bragging about the success of Justice League, and so Goodman's response was to immediately go to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who were on Timely's staff, and tell them to come up with Timely's own version of the JLA, changed just enough so as to avoid raising the ire of DC's lawyers.
Published under the new name of Marvel, Fantastic Four was the publisher's first big success since the 1940s, and propelled Lee and Kirby to the forefront of the genre. It allowed Timely/Marvel to start investing more effort into superhero comics, and paved the way for such titles as Spider-Man, the Hulk, and X-Men. So it was important, in the long view, but it did not save the industry. It was merely another entry into a comic book renaissance that was already well under way by that time.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."