Fantastic Four’s Other Fantastical Adaptations

Even as Marvel’s “First Family”, the Fantastic Four have not enjoyed the same multimedia success as their younger franchise brethren.From 1994’s first Fantastic Four movie, which was so bad Marvel paid the studio to not release it, to Josh Trank’s new movie earning rotten reviews and low box office numbers,it seems like Hollywood just can’t wrap its head around a good Fantastic Four adaptation.We looked at the the infamous 1994 Fantastic Four movie earlier this week, and now we’re examining four more equally bizarre and weird adaptations starring Marvel’s first Silver Age superheroes:

Fred and Barney Meet the Thing

  

The Thing briefly starred in a 1979 NBC cartoon, which greatly changed his origin and background.  Instead of an astronaut pilot turned orange rock monster, Ben Grimm was now Benjy Grimm, a dorky teenager attending Centerville High School.  Grimm possessed two magic rings that, when touched, transformed him into the Thing, complete with Brooklyn accent.  The Thing spent much of his time fighting mad scientists or the Yancy Street Gang, reinvented as a biker gang.  No other members of the Fantastic Four appeared on the show, nor were they ever mentioned in any way or form. While the cartoon only lasted a few months, the Thing Rings reappeared in Matt Fraction and Mike Allred’s FF, when the pop star turned superhero Darla Deering used two similar looking rings to remotely summon her Thing Suit.

Bizarrely, NBC paired the superhero cartoon with a new version of the Flintstones and created a single cartoon program called Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.  Despite the name of the show, the Thing and the Flintstones never crossed over.

The New Fantastic Four

  

Another ill-conceived cartoon, the New Fantastic Four starred Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Thing and…HERBIE, a robot sidekick who replaced the Human Torch.  Although many believed that NBC replaced the Human Torch so children wouldn’t play with fire, the network actually couldn’t use the character because a rival studio was developing a live action TV show based on Johnny Storm. While most episodes of The New Fantastic Four featured classic Fantastic Four villains, one weird episode featured Magneto assuming control of the Fantastic Four and flying around in a self-propelled Magnet Car. Like most cartoons from the 1970s, The New Fantastic Four was short-lived, although HERBIE made his way into the Fantastic Four comics as Franklin Richard’s robot nanny and companion.  

The Fantastic Four Radio Program

  

While Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan were both serviceable Human Torches, the greatest actor to play Johnny Storm is famed comedian and actor Bill Murray.  Murray played the Human Torch in a radio program adapting early Silver Age adventures of the Fantastic Four that ran in 1975.  The radio program used dialogue pulled straight from the comics, and Stan Lee himself provided the narration.  Unfortunately, the radio show didn’t last very long but Murray would rise to stardom a few years later as a founding cast member of Saturday Night Live. 

1994’s Fantastic Four (Synergy!)

  

In the early 1990s, Marvel tried once again to make a new Fantastic Four cartoon series as part of its Marvel Action Hour cartoon show.  This Fantastic Four comic stayed close to the comics, using stories from both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s initial run, as well as John Byrne’s Fantastic Four series in the 1980s.  However, the series suffered from awful animation quality and fans derided the inclusion of a humorous British landlady (voiced by Joan Lee, Stan Lee’s wife).  Infamously, Tom DeFalco wrote an issue of Fantastic Four where Ant-Man (then serving as a member of the team) watched and mocked an episode of the series.  While the show improved during its second season, the entire Marvel Action Hour was scrapped, although this version of the Fantastic Four would later cameo in the much more popular Spider-Man series at the time.  

Fantastic Four: The World’s Greatest Heroes

  

The Fantastic Four’s last cartoon was an anime inspired series that ran on the Cartoon Network in 2005. Combining anime-esque art with 3D animation, the series used story elements from the recently-released Fantastic Four movie, including Doctor Doom’s shared origin with the Fantastic Four.  Despite the show’s stocked cast of Marvel heroes and villains, Cartoon Network lost faith in the series pretty quickly and pulled the show after only eight episodes.  The show’s other claim to fame was that it was the first show to use the now popular Squirrel Girl character. The Thing also had a pretty sweet spray-paint tattoo.