Les 4 Fantastiques

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.

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 1990s animated series of "Fantastic Four" is never going to be mentioned in the same breath as the "Spiderman" or "X Men" shows from the same decade. The overall quality of the above series is a bit uneven. The first season of "Fantastic Four" has some weak episodes with the Puppet Master villain. I've never been convinced that he has been a particularly effective adversary and this is shown here. Ben Grimm/The Thing is my favourite member of the Fantastic Four, he's quite funny as well as being tough. The later episodes are much better, especially when Doctor Doom is in them. He was always going to be the top villain to the Fantastic Four and he doesn't let the side down. I reckon this series could have lasted another season.

This series (which was based on the Marvel comic of the same name) initially ran for two seasons in syndication as one half of a weekly show called The Marvel Action Hour (the other half was Iron Man). Perhaps The Fantastic Four was a rare case on a series that actually improved later on. The first season was lacking in various areas. The animation was stiff and appeared to be lacking with the textures (they looked very bright and rough to put it in other words). Somehow, there was at times a feeling that the stories were boarding towards camp. What stands out the most about the first season of The Fantastic Four is the theme song. Although the theme song was catchy, it was also really cheesy and sounded more like a jingle than anything else. Throughout the series, certain annoying factors tended to surface whether it was the theme from the first season or some fairly irritating supporting characters. When the second season came along, several improvements were made. The animation was better, a stronger theme song was put into place, and the episodes felt more action packed.

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.