Marvel Comics wanted a piece of the action on Saturday mornings in 1967. Spider-Man's rights were given to the same Canadian studio that did The Marvel Super Heroes Show a year earlier in syndication, but Hanna-Barbera picked up the rights to the First Family of the Marvel Universe, the Fantastic Four. Braunelf uploaded the familiar intro, which features a narrative, which I'm guessing was done by actor Vic Perrin (ex-The Outer Limits), who also did some of the villains' voices on the show. The narrative has been deleted from prints of the series that have been shown on Cartoon Network and its sister channel, Boomerang, in recent years, for reasons known only to the network.
We've previously covered the Thing's unfortunate sojurn back to H-B in 1979, and the less said about that, the better at this point. Someday, we'll take care of the 1978 DePatie-Freleng incarnation of the FF. The FF would get one more crack at Saturday morning stardom as part of the mid-90's Marvel Action Hour syndicated series before moving to Sundays on UPN. Their last series, produced by an European studio, aired briefly on Cartoon Network & Boomerang before shifting to Nicktoons last year. Well, at least they've fared better on the small screen than at the multiplex.......
Back to the 1967 series. The producers were as faithful as possible, with one big exception. With Sub-Mariner's rights held by Grantray-Lawrence, any adaptation of his appearances in the FF books saw him rebooted as "Prince Triton of Pacifica". Fortunately, DFE took care of that problem 11 years later. Gerald Mohr voiced Reed Richards, with Paul Frees as Ben Grimm (The Thing). The two also worked together on the Green Lantern shorts on the Superman-Aquaman Hour of Adventure. Jo Ann Pflug was Sue Richards (Invisible Girl) and Jac Flounders was the Human Torch. To me, this was the best version of the series, and probably will remain so for all time.
Rating: A-.
2 comments:
I must agree!
Best animated version of the Fantastic Four ever!
I think the reason was the fact that the scripts were fairly close to the comics at the time, rather than coming up with completely original stories. it has more of an "old school" feel to it than most shows like it.
Exactly. Marvel learned its lesson from the Marvel Superheroes show, and it showed. Of course, animation-wise, Spider-Man would catch up a year later, thanks to that Bakshi fellow........
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