Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Heroes (2006) – 1 season, 26 episodes.
I had only seen a few clips of FANTASTIC FOUR: WORLD’S GREATEST HEROES over the last few years. This isn’t odd since it’s been awhile since I paid for cable, but when I was reading the Never Wrong entry for WGH I saw that I wasn’t alone. It debuted on Cartoon Network in September 2006, but they only aired 8 episodes before yanking it. The following June saw 9 more episodes get an airing. The remaining unaired episodes didn’t hit the airwaves until 2009, and on another channel. So I think we all get a pass for not seeing WGH before now.
At your earliest convenience, correct the oversight.
FF: WORLD’S GREATEST HEROES is a, er, fantastic cartoon. (Right. I realize that “fantastic” is my go-to word signifying high praise, so I’ll try to tone it down for this review.) As visually unique and highly stylized as it is on first glance, WGH is a show that’s very loyal to the spirit of the comics. I mean, yeah, the FF’s costumes here are pretty ugly, and yes, Johnny is borderline too-annoying-to-stand, and yes, Johnny and Reed’s voices never quite sound right, but WGH gives us so much goodness in terms of the stories we experience and the characters we see that I devoured the series and I wish there were more than 26 episodes to watch.
WGH gives us a post-cosmic rays, pre-married Reed and Sue, so we’re in the early days of discovery for the Fantastic Four. Typically, when they meet someone, it’s for the first time – so, we get the first forays into the Negative Zone, the first meeting with Namor, the Kree, the Skrulls, Impossible Man, etc. They’re celebrities in the city but their reputation hasn’t been solidified. There’s other tenants in the Baxter Building and they’re often less than thrilled with their upstairs, super-powered neighbors. The show hits the ground running; the origin story is in the titles so we don’t have to sit though that experience, but the show will occasionally offer a flashback or a time travel story to give us some extra details.
While the show isn’t one long story arc, it does reward the long-time viewer. When Ronan shows up the second time, he references the first time in such a way to set up that new plot. It helps give the show a feeling that all of these stories really are happening to the same people, and that they resonate beyond the closing credits.
The conception of these characters is totally traditional: Reed is the brains, Sue sees the big picture, Johnny is a punk, and Ben is the troubled muscle.
Johnny is a bit overbearing (and I really dislike how they draw his head and hair) but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at him every now and then. When Reed starts to talk science, Johnny can often be heard in the background yelling, “Nerd alert!” It’s childish, and the first couple of times it happened I wasn’t impressed but at some point it did become funny. Everything Johnny does is loud and almost everything he does is childish, so a little of him can go a long way. When the show turns the tables on him, though, and has his boasting turn to a childish fear of getting wet, or when Johnny turns the volume on the bad guys instead of Ben, his attitude is most effectively deployed. When Ronan shows up with the Super Skrull to take the Torch down, Johnnys, “Do I know you?” routine is really rather hilarious. There’s even a question as to whether Johnny actually remembers him (we see that his brain remembers details of the previous event, but not Ronan’s part in it), which makes his characterization even better because it shows that we’ve got well-rounded characters here.
Sue is my favorite character on the show, but only because she’s the voice of reason amidst the chaos. (If the chaos wasn’t there, my attitude towards her seriousness might be more in line with Johnny’s.) When Namor first shows up on the surface being all angry, it’s Sue who tries to step in and reason her way to a conclusion. Nobody else is having it, but Sue doesn’t stop trying. The show doesn’t hide that she’s attracted to Namor, either, which wouldn’t resonate as much if her and Reed were already married.
WGH was created by a French company called Moonscoop and I think they’ve done a bang-up job on this show. Even though I was put off at first by the animation and attitude, I quickly realized this show feels like it was created by someone who genuinely loves the FF and generally understands superhero comics, and I came to appreciate the animation and characterizations. We don’t get Galactus or the Inhumans, but we do get Diablo and the Contest of Champions. We get guest shots from Ant Man, She-Hulk, and nearly every suit of Iron Man armor.
FANTASTIC FOUR: WORLD’S GREATEST HEROES was a tremendous and pleasant surprise. This is a very good show.
