Fantastic Four

The first season of this show kind of sucked. Weak animation, herky jerky lines of dialogue, an obnoxious opening theme and lame plots. The second season was a big improvement, sporting better animation, a better opening theme and what not. Well, the pilot found the Fantastic Four on a talk show discussing how they became the elastic Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards), the Invisible Woman (Susan Storm-Richards), the Human Torch (Johnny Storm; actually an ode to an earlier character that appeared during the 2nd World War era) and the rock hard Thing (Ben Grimm). During the first season they were regularly pestered by an obnoxious land lady with a cute dog, met the Sub-Mariner/Namor (who had a thing for the Invisible Woman), the Silver Surfer who in turn helped them fight his master Galactus, the Skrulls, creatures from alternate dimensions, Dr. Doom, and many others. The 2nd Season introduced the Inhumans (I think that's what they were called), one of whom, Crystal (voice of super model Kathy Ireland) Human Torch fell in love with, but was separated from because of a funky force field dome that would eventually suffocate their native city of Avalon, so a frequent topic during this season was cracking the dome before everyone inside died (the dome was later shattered by the city's leader Black Bolt, who had quite a voice). The Silver Surfer made a return for this season's finale in conjunction with Dr. Doom, along with Galactus, meanwhile some very big guest stars included Daredevil in the season premiere, the Incredible Hulk (who also guest starred on Iron Man in that series' 2nd season), and Thor God of Thunder (voice of John Rhys Davies, who we all know for Sallah in the Indiana Jones films and the dwarf Ghimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, who played this part again for a guest spot on "The Incredible Hulk). Note that the first two guest stars, Daredevil and Hulk, have gotten a crack at feature films while the Fantastic Four and Thor still haven't.

The voice actors were pretty good (Chuck McCann, voice of the Thing/Ben Grimm, also voiced one of the Beagle Boys on Disney's Duck Tails and was the voice of the soldier Leatherneck on "GI Joe") and they did what they could with the occasionally bad dialogue they had during the first year. But like I said, the 2nd year was a big improvement. It's a shame it got canceled, but what do you expect when it aired AHEAD of X-Men and Spider-Man on Saturday mornings instead of along with them?

This show aired as part of the "Marvel Action Hour" which aired at 7:00 AM on Saturday mornings between 1994-1996 in conjunction with an Iron Man cartoon. Iron Man similarly had a bad first season and a superior second. Both sets of stars later made guest spots on "Spider-Man".

This Fantastic Four cartoon was part of the Marvel Action Hour along with Iron Man. At first, the animation and dialogue was pretty bad and they had annoying supporting characters, but the series remained true to the comics. The story lines they took from the comics were done very well, like episodes involving the Silver Surfer. When the second season began, animation vastly improved and the series became more serious. Too bad it was the last for the show.

Ah! the corny chorus of the 1994 Fantastic Four Theme song. To the untrained ear of a five year old, it is a catchy upbeat little piece that brings a quaint smile. But listening to it years later, that smile is one of bemused disgust; an uncomfortable smile to hold back the disbelief that one ever considered this "cool" back in his younger days.

"Lame" could not even begin to describe the first season of the 90s Fantastic Four animated series. First you had the low quality animation courtesy of a Taiwanese Animation studio. Weird poses, a mediocre frame rate; a few fluid shots here and there could not make up for the generally dismal quality. It looked like something 15 years behind the times. Art-wise, the designs lacked detail, the colors used were bright and cheery and characters continually went "off model" ending up looking silly.

On the bright side, the voice cast to an impeccable job of becoming their characters. Particularly noteworthy is Chuck McCann whose pitch perfect Brooklyn accent captures the spirit of the ever lovin blue eyed Thing, Ben Grimm. For comic books fans, The stories within the series were faithful recreations of the classic 60s fantastic four comic tales by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. However the execution of those great stories was nothing short of terrible. Silly dialog and Random humor was added particularly in the form of the FF4's new landlady who was continually trying to evict them. That coupled with unforgettable (for all the wrong reasons) moments like a rapping Ben Grimm, The great Galactus hungrily licking his lips and Stan Lee himself pausing the show to break the fourth wall, all of it adds to the utter silliness of the first season.

Season 2 in 1995 to 1996 saw a vast improvement in the overall quality. The most obvious change was in the animation. A higher level of detail, darker colors and more consistent artwork complemented the smooth animation work courtesy of a new Production studio. The writing also takes a darker turn, adapting stories from the 1980s Fantastic 4 comic book run. Gone is the humor, replaced now by more mature narratives and actual human drama. Aside from the various foes the FF4 must face, their greatest conflict comes within themselves and among each other. Reed's inner guilt, Ben's ongoing quest for acceptance, Sue's feelings of inadequacy, even Johnny's broken heart, all of them very real themes that people can relate to. There were episodes that did get a little angsty but no more angsty than those Japanese anime saturating the internet nowadays.

Owing to the vast differences in quality in the respective seasons, the rating above reflects the averaged rating between the two.

Season 1 = 2/10

Season 2 = 8/10

Average = 5/10

Casual viewers should just sit through season two but long time fans of the comic books could check out both seasons and see their favorite stories faithfully translated into animation.

The first season of this cartoon contained painfully bad animation and rather weak story lines and a terrible opening with a cheesy theme song. The characters looked too stiff, especially the Thing, and my 2 favorite guest characters looked awful; Doctor Doom looked badly out of proportion, and the Silver Surfer looked like a walking piece of melted wax. Fourtunately after the series was (miraculously) renewed for a second season Marvel switched to new animation studio and the show was vastly improved, the animation was cool and looked similar to the X-Men cartoon, the characters looked better, the story lines were mostly adapted from the original Lee/Kirby run on the comic with great faithfulness and there were tons of cameos and guest roles from various marvel heroes and villains, including the Silver Surfer who looked awesome, plus it had a great opening that showed classic moments from the comic brought to animated life. If you get the DVDs than take my advice; skip the first season and go straight to the beginning of the second season unless you want to laugh at the bad animation.

The first season (or episodes 1-13 if you're watching on Disney+) is really quite poor. This is apparent fairly immediately too as you're hit by a dreadful disco opening theme. The animation isn't terrible but it's not good either, villains especially look bad, most notably Dr Doom and the muscle-bound Silver Surfer (serving a poor Galactus). Unlike the other Marvel cartoons there is no depth to any storylines, they're quick, easy, and very conveniently finished by having Mr Fantastic just saying something about science and you're done. It's a kids cartoon that can only be enjoyed by kids. It's super camp as well, in one episode Johnny Storm even has a musical number for no reason.

5/10

The second season has far better animation, dialogue and plots. It gets a lot more interesting as in the last few episodes there are a lot of crossovers with other characters from the Marvel universe. Perhaps with it being the same release years as other cartoons then plots could have interlinked instead of being repeated though (mostly with Silver Surfer). It's still far from perfect, especially with one of the last episodes just being a very lazy clipshow, but majorly improved.

7/10.