The Fantastic Four

[School of Movies 2022]

For years this seminal, game-changing Silver Age comic book has seemed damned-near impossible to adapt into a movie, with all four efforts failing resoundingly at getting major audiences to care about Marvel's First Family. And yet Pixar did it twice with the serial numbers filed off and the clear vision of Brad Bird.

So Sharon and I look back on those movies, two that we've covered in the past just based on their own merits (2005 and 2007) and two others whose productions deserve delving into (1994 and 2015), and we compare them against the comic itself from various periods (Lee & Kirby, Byrne, Simonson, Morrison, Waid, Straczynski, Hickman) and not only speculate on how they could fit into the MCU, but celebrate their characters (along with Doom, Silver Surfer and Galactus) in a way that film has been unable to, at least to date. This episode took a hell of a lot of research and is richly prepared for all of you.

Our shortlist of recommended reading is as follows...

1. FF #48-52 ('The Coming of Galactus', 'This Man, This Monster', The Black Panther debuts)

2. FF #262 ('The Trial of Reed Richards')

3. FF #334-346 ('Into the Time Stream')

4. 1234 (Limited 4-issue series)

5. Vol. 3 #67 - Vol. 1 502 (4-issue 'Unthinkable' arc)

6. #538-543 ('Civil War')

7. #570-572 ('Solve Everything')