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Long before there was a live action movie starring Jessica Alba, the Fantastic Four comic book was turned into an animated TV series by Marvel Comics. Twice.
The second of them is contained in the newly released DVD box set Fantastic Four: The Complete 1994-95 Animated Television Series. The 1967 series, beloved by many Marvel fans for being more true and more fun, is not yet available.
"Oh boy, hold on to your seats!" says legendary Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee in an introduction to the first episode in the 1994 season. "This is gonna be a good one."
Lee's intro is hyperbole, of course. The second series was a troubled one, as the hardcore fans already know.
First, some facts. The box set is a four-disc collection with the 26 episodes made over the two seasons the second series ran. Like all the Marvel DVD sets, there is a Stan Lee Soapbox, in which he rhapsodizes over how and why the characters, which were developed by Lee and influential Marvel Comics artist Jack Kirby, came into being.
"For me, they were a nice, tight-knit, familial group," Lee says, revealing much less than he usually does about the creative process. The other bonus is his string of introductions.
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The trouble with this series is that season one pretty much sucks, with a few moments of respite from the mediocrity, while season two salvages the operation.
The Marvel team knew in season one that things were not working. So, for season two, radical changes were made, although most of the voice cast was retained: Beau Weaver as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Lori Alan as Sue Storm/Invisible Girl and Chuck McCann as Ben Grimm/The Thing. But Brian Austin Green was replaced as the voice of Johnny Storm/The Human Torch by Quinton Flynn.
The radical difference between the seasons is the improvement in the animation, because it started off as substandard even for 1994, and the renewal of the storylines, which suddenly followed the original comics more closely.
That all leaves this box set as a mixed blessing that will appeal more to comic book fans than general interest viewers. Meanwhile, completionists are still waiting for the release of the 1967 series that the true believers worship.