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Recently Marvel Comics have killed off the Human Torch.  Many have seen this as just another cheap, lazy stunt to stir up a bit of attention.  I have to say, if that's the case, it's worked on me!  I've found myself wishing not for the first time that I'd been collecting Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting's Fantastic Four run.  I've heard great things about it and the issue where the Torch kicked the bucket sounds amazing. But all this attention directed towards the FF has set me off once again thinking about two of the biggest disappointments I've ever encountered in all my years as a comics fan.

I can safely say that Tim Story's Fantastic Four movies are two of my greatest disappointments as a comics fan.  I've only ever seen the first film once but I own the second on DVD and will occasionally watch it just to torment and frustrate myself.  They're not just bad films, they're bad films with flickers of unrealised potential.  This makes them worse than bad, because you know that they could conceivably have been half decent films if certain avenues had been explored in more depth.  The biggest thing lacking from these two films is imagination and for a film based on work produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at their creative peak, that's just an unforgivable sin.


The first film is easily the worst of the pair.  For a start they don't actually do any super-heroing! The FF's first major escapade involves stopping the Thing from having a tantrum on a bridge, their second escapade involves a battle against Doctor Doom.  In both cases they're just cleaning up their own mess!  As for Doctor Doom, he's just a joke.  If Julian McMahon wanted plenty of face time on screen, then he shouldn't have gone for the part of the dude famous for wearing a metal mask AT ALL TIMES!  But even a maskless Dr. Doom would have been forgiveable if the character's personality had even remotely resembled the arrogant, regal, short tempered, dignified, complex nutjob that we've grown to love in the comics.  I don't know who this slimy guy with the weird eyebrows was but he was not Victor Von Doom.


Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis are spot on as the Torch and the Thing.  Chiklis seems as if he's stepped right out of the comic page and Evans makes a cocky, annoying little git seem very likeable and funny through sheer natural charisma.  The fact that they're so good makes the rest of the crappiness around them seem all the more frustrating.  Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba are worse than McMahon.  McMahon gives an awful, hammy performance but at least he's trying.  Gruffudd and Alba are just bland and dull.


The second film is a little better.  The Silver Surfer is spot on and scenes like the Torch/Surfer chase or the London Eye rescue are genuinely exciting and fun to watch.  Evans and Chiklis are even better in this film and the scene where they trade powers is hilarious.  Gruffudd and Alba however, are still like two charisma vacuums.  There's an awful bit where Mr Fantastic has a bit of dialogue that's been nicked straight from Warren Ellis' Ultimate Extinction.  Coming from  Ellis' Reed Richards It's a great little speech but Gruffudd makes it sound like the corniest thing you've ever heard.

Ultimate Extinction #2, Reed Richard's speech, art by Brandon Peterson

Oh, and Galactus is a cloud.  'Nuff said.


I could forgive all of these flaws if either film had shown just one speck  of the imagination of Lee and Kirby's original work.  In the original comics, if a story began in Reed Richards' lab then you wouldn't just see a couple of test tubes, you'd have something like this going on....

Fantastic Four #56

This would be nothing to do with the story, it was just another normal day for the FF.


If Doctor Doom was strolling through his lab you wouldn't get your bog standard array of death rays and evil machines, you'd get this....

Fantastic Four #57

This kind of awesomeness was the stuff going on in the background of Lee and Kirby's FF.  In the main stories we had Galactus (a giant being from before the Big Bang who ate planets), the Black Panther (ruler of the scientifically advanced African nation of Wakanda, whose people hold the secret of Vibranium, the metal that absorbs kinetic energy), the Inhumans (genetically enhanced superhumans whose leader, Black Bolt can cause untold destruction with a whisper), not to mention the Watcher, Prester John, the Red Ghost and his Super Apes, the Kree, Blastaar etc etc.  There was creativity overflowing from each issue.  To make an uninspired, bland, run of the mill, bog standard Hollywood super-hero romp from all this genius is nothing short of a travesty!


So if a new Fantastic Four film is made I sincerely hope they put some serious thought into it.  It should be like nothing we've ever seen on the big screen before.  I'd be quite happy if Chiklis and Evans stayed, but Gruffudd, Alba and McMahon must go!  In fact I think I know of one actor who would be an absolutely perfect Mr Fantastic.....

Jon Hamm as Reed Richards

I saw a trailer for Skyline the other day, this trailer in fact....



I can't really tell if it's going to be any good or not, but it did get me thinking about the new Superman movie.  Imagine a trailer similar to this one.  It starts with a group of ordinary people like you or me, waking up and gradually realising that their lives have changed overnight.  Huge ships are appearing in the sky and abducting people in columns of light.  Metal behemoths are striding across the city, stomping everything in their path and plucking people at random off the street with huge tentacles.   All this is interspersed with news footage and scenes of the alien menace attacking every major city across the globe.  The enemies' faces remains unseen, their motives a mystery.  Panic reigns as people desperately try to flee the cities any way they can.  News readers are weeping, people are kneeling and praying in the street, shops and homes are looted.  Lovers are torn away from each other, parents scream desperately for their children.  All hope is lost.  Amidst all the chaos there is one man slowly walking against the flow of terrified people running for their lives.  His pace quickens, he removes his glasses and the camera closes in as he rips open his shirt to reveal a familiar symbol.  John Williams' Superman Theme begins to play.....

I would love to see Zack Snyder do something like this with his Superman movie.  One of the great things about The Dark Knight is that Christopher Nolan doesn't seem to have set out to make a superhero movie.  He made a crime thriller and stuck Batman and the Joker in it.   We then got to see how the world of the crime thriller was changed by the presence of these two larger than life characters.  I reckon the same could be done with Superman.  Snyder needs to make the best sci-fi/invasion thriller he possibly can, and then stick Superman in it and see how that kind of film is changed by his presence.  At the very least it'll give Superman the chance to face the kind of threat he's never faced before on screen, and give us the chance to see a kind of Superman film we've never seen before.

What do you think?

Bleeding Cool have just made it known that Zack Snyder is directing the new Superman movie!  This is fantastic news.  Snyder is just what Superman needs.  While I'm a fan of Superman Returns there's no disputing its faults.  A Superman movie in the 21st Century has got to be more than just feelings and crystals.  In 1978 Richard Donner made us believe a man can fly, a modern Superman film has to do more than that.  Superhero movies are ten a penny these days, Superman should be taking the genre that one step further.  A modern Superman film should be showing us things we've never seen before.  I believe Snyder is the man to do this.

I'm basing this opinion mostly on 300 and Watchmen.  Watchmen definitely has its faults, mainly a script that contains far too much exposition and a godawful sex scene!  But these are balanced out with some great moments, such as the excellent opening montage and just about every scene Rorschach's in.  300 has a few morally dubious scenes, in fact it's fair to say that anyone who takes the film at anything other than face value is going straight to hell.  But who cares when a film is this much fun?! Watching 300 was one of the most fun movie experiences I've ever had.  Every single gory, homoerotic, over the top scene is just beautiful.

I usually refrain from using words like sumptuous to describe films for fear of sounding like a wanker, but it's a very appropriate word for Snyder's films and its exactly the quality that needs to be brought to a Superman film.  When I think of Superman Returns, despite some of the beautiful sets on display in the film, all I can bring to mind are the muted, dull colours of the Fortress, the muted, dull colours of Luthor's Island and the muted, dull colours of Superman's weird burgundy cape.  A Superman film needs to stand out and burn itself into your brain.  Superman's world is a world of robot duplicates, gorillas with laser vision, cube shaped planets and tyrant suns.  Superman has one foot in reality, the other in a '50s sci-fi wet dream.  Based on the look and feel of 300 and Watchmen, I think Snyder's the man to provide us with this vision.

There is however, one more reason that I'm thrilled with the decision to let Snyder direct the film.  In 1992, Zack Snyder directed the music video for Morrissey's Tomorrow.  He's directed the living music god that is MORRISSEY and now he's directing Superman! Sounds good to me!


Morrissey - Tomorrow
Uploaded by samithemenace. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Superman #330 art by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte

Fellow blogger and internet chum X-Man75 has written a great post on his blog discussing which cities of the DC and Marvel Universe contain the dumbest residents.  He argues that the residents of Metropolis must be among the dumbest, particularly the journalists of the Daily Planet and Lex Luthor, because of their failure to recognise Superman and Clark Kent as one and the same.  After all, how can a pair of glasses make you look like a different person?  This is one of the main observations that most people have made regarding Superman over the years, it is however one I would dispute.  In fact I would go as far as to say that pulling off such a disguise successfully would be perfectly possible in real life.

DC Comics have attempted to explain away the apparent flimsiness of Superman's disguise on a number of occasions.  Lois Lane's attempts to confirm her suspicions regarding Clark's secret were a staple of Superman's Silver Age adventures.  Perhaps this was the writer's way of saying "Look, she at least suspects, she's not a complete idiot!"  By the end of each story however Superman had put Lois' suspicions to rest (at least for another month) usually through the aid of a Superman robot.  Sometimes Batman put her off the scent by wearing a rubber Superman mask, which he of course wore over his own bat-eared mask.  In 1990 Ma and Pa Kent confronted Lois' suspicions by telling her that they raised both Clark and Superman at the same time.  Frankly I find it easier to believe that Lois would be fooled by Batman's magic chin putty than by the Kents' unlikely tale.

Action Comics #650 art by Curt Swan

What about Lex Luthor?  Why would the cleverest man on the planet be taken in by a pair of glasses.  John Byrne gave us the definitive answer to this in 1987 in Superman #2.  Lex built a super computer and hired a team of scientists to work out the secrets of the Man of Steel.  The computer's conclusion was one simple sentence.  Clark Kent is Superman.  Lex refused to believe it.  Apparently Lex is such an arrogant bastard that he refuses to believe that a man with such power would want to pose as as a mere mortal. Grant Morrison took this one step further in All Star Superman.  During this series Clark actually takes his glasses off and shouts in Lex's face.  Lex is so blinded by arrogance that he literally can't see what's right in front of him.  Amusingly this series also contains a scene in which Clark reveals his secret identity to Lois and she also refuses to believe that meek, clumsy Clark could be the super-man of her dreams.

All Star Superman #5 art by Frank Quietly

Possibly the least satisfying explanation for the success of Clark's disguise came in 1978, in Superman #330.  In this issue it's revealed that Clark is unwittingly hypnotising everyone he meets to see him as a skinny wimp whenever he wears his glasses.  This effect also works on photographs of Clark and assumably on Batman's latex rubber Clark Kent masks.  The hypnotic effect lingers for awhile, even when Superman loses his powers.  I find the notion that someone as powerful as Superman is wandering around messing with everyone's perception of reality without even realising he's doing it quite disturbing.  Even in that really dodgy bit in Superman II when Superman hypnotises Lois into forgetting they'd had sex, Superman is at least in control and responsible for his actions.  But in the comics Superman could accidentally lobotimise you just by putting his glasses on!  Unsurprisingly this aspect of the Superman myth has been completely ignored over the years. 

Superman #330 art by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte

In my opinion all this apologising DC Comics have done over the years for the glasses disguise is completely uneccessary.  I have no problem accepting that a man could disguise himself from even those closest to him simply by wearing his hair different, changing his posture, body language and voice and putting on a pair of glasses.

Let's put it this way.  Imagine you worked with me in a London office.  Imagine I looked exactly like Prince William except I had a beard.  You may have noticed these similarities when observing pictures of him in the press.  You may have met William on several occasions and noticed these similarities up close and in person.  You may even have noticed that I've never been around during all the royal visits the young Prince has made to our hypothetical office.  But would you really seriously consider it likely that the heir to the British throne puts on a fake beard and comes into work every day and inputs data into spreadsheets and drinks his coffee white with no sugars and has a crush on the office temp and discusses last night's episode of Doctor Who with you over his lunch of marmite sandwiches and so on and so on.  Of course you wouldn't!  Why would Prince William do that?! Why would anyone?!  Now take this hypothetical scenario and replace me with Clark Kent and Prince William with Superman.  See what I'm getting at?

Just for the record, I don't look like Prince William and I don't work in an office.

This post is ultimately unneccessary however.  The most compelling defense of Superman's secret identity has already been argued successfully by one man.  Christopher Reeve, with his brilliant performance as Clark Kent/Superman in the Superman movies.  Take for example the scene in the first movie where Clark almost reveals his secret to Lois, or the scene in Superman II where Clark actually does reveal his secret to her.  Reeve doesn't just take his glasses off (Dean Cain please take note).  He takes off the glasses, broadens his shoulders, deepens his voice and seems to grow a foot in height!  If I was working alongside Reeve's Clark I'm confident that I'd be living in complete ignorance of his double life.

Christopher Reeve- Better than Dean Cain

So what do you think?  Never mind 'You will believe a man can fly'.  Have I convinced you that a man can fool the world with a pair of glasses?  Or am I letting my love of the character blind me to the bleedin' obvious, much like Lex Luthor's hatred and arrogance blinds him?  Leave a comment and let me know your opinion.