Fantastic Four (Man of Steel Edition) (2015)

[SurfD]

Cant really comment on the Cages, as I am not very familiar with the material, but pretty much every other set of individuals you listed (other than a possible tiny bit with Peter / Aunt May, and Kent and co) are just that.  Individuals.  They are only "family" either by offhand reference or by blood ties, and are almost never played up in their comics as being a "family" of supers.   The F4 are the only real super "family" that is billed as a family.   The rest, bar a couple of special cases, are much closer to celebrity marriges then families.  Simply saying that Magneto  has kids does not magically make the group of them a "family", in the sense of the word we are looking for here.

[Khaldun]

The Summers are a family only in that they're related to each other, as SurfD said. By that standard every comic-book character who has a living relative is a "family". As you say, Wolverine is a "family" because Sabertooth and Daken. Any character who was born or who had at some point procreated would be "family". But none of those characters live with their families, their family relationships are not a complex, shifting part of their regular stories but are instead one-dimensional (they fight, or they occasionally team-up, or they vow vengeance when they hear that some family member that they never see has been killed). Wolverine doesn't live under the same roof with his brothers or son, doesn't sit down at Thanksgiving with them, doesn't go on adventures with them most of the time. He doesn't feel defined by his family relationships--he was given family members decades after he was established as a character. Same goes for all of your examples. Hell, Superman and Supergirl in the Silver Age were cousins who generally operated entirely on their own even though they could have been living under the same roof. Comic-books mostly just don't know how to tell stories about families as families, where family life is a basic, integral part of the story.

The FF are almost the only comic-book characters who adventure AS a family, where their family ties ARE the story. That's an important distinction.

I agree though with folks who say that Sue Storm has had a really hard time overcoming the legacy of being the damsel-in-distress. That happened again with the Civil War stuff--ok, she showed great independence in leaving Reed, but then came back to him for no real reason that any writer could offer, and then accepted Reed building the Bridge and doing the whole Council of Interdimensional Reeds thing OR was woefully stupid about the fact that it was going on (e.g., she either passively let him keep going down the road he'd been on in Civil War or she didn't know enough about him to know that he was). The Incredibles was able to rewrite that character role by starting fresh--but also it took making the husband somebody other than Reed.

That's really the problem--Reed is usually written as a Mary Sue-ish plot-device who gets the characters out of a jam, rather than a really flawed person who has his own character arc. The most classic modern FF arc, John Byrne's time on the book, did good character work on everyone but Reed, keeping Reed as the sane, level-headed grown-up in the room. Later writers have made Reed's character arc, "Should I be a god or not" which is, let's say, much worse.

Writers have also never known quite what to do with the Ben Grimm-Sue Storm relationship. It's not a great family story if you have to leave one major relationship underexplored. There are a lot of ways to give that relationship some more detail and texture without going towards the obvious "friend has affair with buddy's wife" territory.  Like if Sue and Ben went out drinking together fairly often just for the two of them to talk about how frustrating Reed can be.

[Velorath]

The rest, bar a couple of special cases, are much closer to celebrity marriges then families.

Which is pretty much how Reed and Sue's wedding was portrayed in Marvels.

Edit: As someone who has only read scattered issues here and there, can someone point me to an arc that actually does something interesting with the FF themselves (as opposed to being worth reading because it introduced some other important Marvel character or did something interesting with Dr. Doom).

[palmer_eldritch]

I hope they do get the X-Men TV show off the ground as they've always had a big soap opera element which seems more suited to television than movies. I look forward to watching Scott worry about how his girlfriend's transformation into a genocidal alien being of immense power affects their relationship, while a Shi'ar spaceship hovers overhead.

You'd think a well-written X-Men show would be able to tap into the market for young adult stuff as well. Having crazy, scary powers manifest in your teen years only to discover you are part of a noble yet misunderstood group of heroes is pretty much the archetypal young adult story, I'd have thought.

On the Fantastic Four, I think writers have done the "it turns out Sue Richards is actually the strongest member of the team!!" thing so often that it's almost taken for granted now. She's certainly not the damsel in distress any more.

The trailer reminded me of Prometheus for some reason. The portentous stuff about seeking answers maybe.

[Tannhauser]

The rest, bar a couple of special cases, are much closer to celebrity marriges then families.

Which is pretty much how Reed and Sue's wedding was portrayed in Marvels.

Edit: As someone who has only read scattered issues here and there, can someone point me to an arc that actually does something interesting with the FF themselves (as opposed to being worth reading because it introduced some other important Marvel character or did something interesting with Dr. Doom).

I would start here.

http://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Four-John-Byrne-Omnibus/dp/0785158243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422568126&sr=8-1&keywords=fantastic+four+comic+books+john+byrne

[shiznitz]

$1 a page. 

[Trippy]

I think you meant 10¢ per page.

[Threash]

Pretty much all those people you listed are in the same boat, yes. To the point of parody with most of them. Some of them have had to re-write reality in order to reset their lives and repeat their stories, because there was no where else to take them.


It's not their powers, its the people. The Incredibles have the same power set on 3 of 4. It's just the speedster replacing the torch. The Incredibles work because they are NOT the FF. It's a different set of characters with different personalities and interactions. A set of characters that hasn't spent the last 40 years going through the same motions and driving them entirely into the ground.

The FF is:

Reed is a inattentive and neglectful husband and friend.
Johnny is an immature asshole.
Ben wishes he was a real boy.
Sue should file for divorce.

They've told pretty much every single story imaginable surrounding these four people and their specific personalities. The two main things that made them unique back in the day, are not unique anymore. There are lots of super-hero families and lots of heroes with public identities and fame.

Well one of them is black now, so its totally different.

[Yegolev]

My favorite FF story is the one they did on Venture Bros.

[shiznitz]

Pretty much all those people you listed are in the same boat, yes. To the point of parody with most of them. Some of them have had to re-write reality in order to reset their lives and repeat their stories, because there was no where else to take them.


It's not their powers, its the people. The Incredibles have the same power set on 3 of 4. It's just the speedster replacing the torch. The Incredibles work because they are NOT the FF. It's a different set of characters with different personalities and interactions. A set of characters that hasn't spent the last 40 years going through the same motions and driving them entirely into the ground.

The FF is:

Reed is a inattentive and neglectful husband and friend.
Johnny is an immature asshole.
Ben wishes he was a real boy.
Sue should file for divorce.

They've told pretty much every single story imaginable surrounding these four people and their specific personalities. The two main things that made them unique back in the day, are not unique anymore. There are lots of super-hero families and lots of heroes with public identities and fame.

Well one of them is black now, so its totally different.

Yeah and he is the immature asshole. RACIST!

[Margalis]

Sue hasn't really been the damsel since John Byrne did FF in the 80s, and you could always take old stories and just put a different damsel in their place.

One problem is that Reed has been handled terribly. Another is that the nature of serialized super hero comics makes doing a thoughtful family-centric book hard. Mostly though I think it's just that the FF has had a string of bad writers or writers who were bad for it.

[Threash]

What happens in the comics doesn't really matter like at all.  The reason F4 is a thing is the same reason any other super hero property is a thing, they happened to be the popular ones at the one and only time in history people cared about comic books.  The only "recent" super hero property worth a damn is deadpool, and he's not even from this century.  I don't understand why Marvel thinks cancelling the fantastic four comic or killing wolverine affects anything at all, nobody at all cares about the comic book versions of those characters. 

[jgsugden]

Except they do....

If you evolve the character in the comics by killing it, replacing the person in the suit, etc... it enters the mainstream media.  A lot of people that once read comics register it.  It becomes something more than just words on a page.  Superman, Batman, Captain America, Wolverine, etc... dying gets on CNN.  Thor becoming Thorella, Miles in the Spidey suit, Rhodey becoming Iron Man - these all made national headlines, too.   It undermines the traditional notion of the character and creates reasons for the public to say, "This is a dated concept".

It isn't exactly a tidal wave that sweeps the movies aside and makes them fail all by itself, but it does have an impact ...

[Velorath]

It doesn't have an impact at all. People who get their comic book news from CNN aren't going to care enough to remember 24 hours after hearing about it that a woman is Thor now, let alone still be thinking about that by the time the next Thor movie comes out.

I don't understand why Marvel thinks cancelling the fantastic four comic or killing wolverine affects anything at all, nobody at all cares about the comic book versions of those characters. 

We'll never know if any of the speculation is true that Marvel was doing any of that stuff to undermine the movies. With all the Secret War/reboot stuff coming up it's quite likely that stuff will be undone in a matter of months anyway.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Changes in comic books never stay around long enough for people to give a shit.  Not to mention these changes only happen in one line of characters that tend to have mutiple.

" Oh, spiderman is black? that's a crazy change but great!"  "Oh, only in amazing spiderman?  Yeah ultimate/spectacular/fantastic/superawesome and day job spiderman are all still peter parker."

This is what comics do and this is why people do not give two shits about comics anymore.  Fool us with character death once, shame on you, fool us six times? Shame on us.

[jgsugden]

Given the history of clear lines of 'sabotage' focused on characters that were predominantly not MCU characters, Marvel seems to disagree with you -especially if you look at the timing of the moves.

[eldaec]

Changes in comic books never stay around long enough for people to give a shit.  Not to mention these changes only happen in one line of characters that tend to have mutiple.

" Oh, spiderman is black? that's a crazy change but great!"  "Oh, only in amazing spiderman?  Yeah ultimate/spectacular/fantastic/superawesome and day job spiderman are all still peter parker."

This is what comics do and this is why people do not give two shits about comics anymore.  Fool us with character death once, shame on you, fool us six times? Shame on us.

This was the pre-Disney approach. I can't imagine they'll put up with it indefinitely.

Which is a shame, because imho the continual retelling often in parallel is the best thing about comics.

[Velorath]

Given the history of clear lines of 'sabotage' focused on characters that were predominantly not MCU characters, Marvel seems to disagree with you -especially if you look at the timing of the moves.

Sure, if you ignore the fact that they also also made Thor and Cap different characters (and made Iron Man a dick again). But yeah, I'm sure the reason Amazing Spider-man 2 tanked wasn't because it was a bad movie like most of the reviews said, but because everyone at the time knew that Peter Parker was just completely dated and that Doc Ock  (or Miles Morales) was the only real Spider-man. Ignoring of course the cartoon, which still featured Peter Parker and probably had more viewers than any of the Spider-man comics had readers.

[jgsugden]

Given the history of clear lines of 'sabotage' focused on characters that were predominantly not MCU characters, Marvel seems to disagree with you -especially if you look at the timing of the moves.

Sure, if you ignore the fact that they also also made Thor and Cap different characters (and made Iron Man a dick again). But yeah, I'm sure the reason Amazing Spider-man 2 tanked wasn't because it was a bad movie like most of the reviews said, but because everyone at the time knew that Peter Parker was just completely dated and that Doc Ock  (or Miles Morales) was the only real Spider-man. Ignoring of course the cartoon, which still featured Peter Parker and probably had more viewers than any of the Spider-man comics had readers.

Note the use of the word predominantly - if they were all non MCU characters, there would be clearer law suit trajectories.  As for your later argument, I addressed it already a few posts up. 

[Velorath]

Given the history of clear lines of 'sabotage' focused on characters that were predominantly not MCU characters, Marvel seems to disagree with you -especially if you look at the timing of the moves.

Sure, if you ignore the fact that they also also made Thor and Cap different characters (and made Iron Man a dick again). But yeah, I'm sure the reason Amazing Spider-man 2 tanked wasn't because it was a bad movie like most of the reviews said, but because everyone at the time knew that Peter Parker was just completely dated and that Doc Ock  (or Miles Morales) was the only real Spider-man. Ignoring of course the cartoon, which still featured Peter Parker and probably had more viewers than any of the Spider-man comics had readers.

Note the use of the word predominantly - if they were all non MCU characters, there would be clearer law suit trajectories.  As for your later argument, I addressed it already a few posts up. 

Don't complain about the overuse of the facepalm and then say things like this.

 

[Margalis]

Given the history of clear lines of 'sabotage' focused on characters that were predominantly not MCU characters, Marvel seems to disagree with you -especially if you look at the timing of the moves.

These kinds of changes happen all the time. It makes news, it shakes things up, and it makes the return to the status quo all the more enjoyable.

Hulk was green and dumb, then he was grey and sly, then he was green and smart, then he was a space gladiator, then there was a red hulk. Spider-Man was a clone, he was married, he wasn't married, he wasn't a clone. The Thing got even more spiky, was replaced with a woman, came back less spiky again. Superman was killed and replaced by 4 dudes. None of these is sabotage, it's par for the course. Temporary change is a constant in comics.

It's possible that Marvel is thinking "why put a lot of effort into properties we don't own in movie form?" But Wolverine is coming back - let's get real! Part of the point of killing him off is the buzz they get when he returns. FF has been considered a struggling / low-quality / in-disrepair book for a decade or more now.

If you want to point at things Marvel is doing to cater to the movies a better example is something like increased emphasis on the Inhumans, since Inhumans are sort of subbing in for mutants in the movies and TV.

[Evildrider]

If you want to point at things Marvel is doing to cater to the movies a better example is something like increased emphasis on the Inhumans, since Inhumans are sort of subbing in for mutants in the movies and TV.

Or the complete Marvel Comic universe being completely rebooting this coming summer to match the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the changes made to characters.

[Tannhauser]

I might pick up an Iron Man and see how it goes then.  Will Spidey be Morales or Ock or Parker in this new universe?

It's awesome and funny that the MCU is now the 'official' Marvel continuity. 

[Ironwood]

The Thing was a woman ?  Uh ?

[Velorath]

Wasn't Ben Grimm obviously, but yes there was a She-Thing.

Edit: Apparently there is now also a "Miss Thing".

[Merusk]

#whitenerdjokes

[Khaldun]

I don't think it's a given, by the way, that the Secret Wars thing ends with a MU that matches the MCU. If nothing else because they still see the comics as a testing ground for intellectual property of value, which means in part that they still want to be able to rummage through past stories and want to keep all the characters they've created in circulation somehow. I would just think that they're going to slough off some of the complexity of the way some of their popular characters are spread over different realities and alternate times. But there's only so much compression you can do--if you put Miles Morales in the same universe as Peter Parker, he's not exactly Miles Morales any longer (given that he's defined in part by being Peter's successor). There's a big difference between choosing 616 FF and Ultimate FF (Ultimate FF are nasty and depressing). Etc.

[HaemishM]

The MCU has been altering the 616 for years. Nick Fury, Jr. is just one concrete example, as is the emergence of Phil Coulsen in the comics. The MCU will continue to pick and choose the good parts of the 616 and Ultimates (things like the Winter Soldier story) while not giving a fuck about adhering to any sort of status quo established in any Marvel Comic ever.

The top seller in paper comics for the month of Dec. 2014 was Batman with 113k with the middle of the pack books selling less than 10k. Trust me when I say this, movie execs give not two fucks about maintaining any sort of parity with numbers that paltry. They just fucking don't, nor should they.

[Margalis]

I don't think it's a given, by the way, that the Secret Wars thing ends with a MU that matches the MCU.

For the most part they already match up pretty well. Black Nick Fury is probably the biggest difference.

They are never going to match up in terms of events - there are a lot more comics and the movies are a "best of" version picking from different parts of history. A full 99% of the comics stuff doesn't even exist in the movies, to get them to match the comics would have to pare down and stay down to a few dozen characters. Even if they tried to somehow reboot and make them match exactly Marvel has such poor control (or to spin it positively: grants them creative freedom) of their writers that they would diverge again almost immediately. Someone is going to say "hey, what if Iron Man was replaced with a Skrull posing as an Asian woman?" and they'll do that for a while.

I suspect that at the end of the reboot black Spider-Man will be around in addition to normal Spider-Man, black Nick Fury will replace white Nick Fury, the Ultimate universe will be gone and that will be pretty much it. I mean, of course other stuff will happen, and maybe they'll use the opportunity to clean up some shit like red hulks or whatever, but there's no way it's going to end up being the MCU.

There have always been concurrent different versions of Marvel guys. Cartoons, TV, movies, comics, newspaper comic strips. As long as the rough details are the same the specifics don't matter all that much or confuse / turn off the audience.

[Lakov_Sanite]

For the most part they already match up pretty well. Black Nick Fury is probably the biggest difference.

Actually, wasn't ultimates nick fury modeled after Sam Jackson before the movies?

[Merusk]

Yes. Legend is it's how they got Sam to do the part.

[Margalis]

Actually, wasn't ultimates nick fury modeled after Sam Jackson before the movies?

Yeah, he was drawn to look exactly like Sam Jackson.

What I meant by "black Nick Fury is the biggest difference" is that black Nick Fury exists in the Ultimate Universe, which is likely going away. The Nick Fury in the main Marvel Universe (AKA 616) is totally different.

That Nick Fury is extremely old at this point and I don't think many people are particularly tied to him emotionally so I assume Sam Jackson Fury will become the canonical version. The white Fury backstory is horrible outdated (he's a WW2 vet but unlike Cap he wasn't frozen in ice so wtf) and he's drawn as Mr Fantastic with an eye patch so he could use a rework.

[Khaldun]

There was always some horseshit about how Fury had gotten some kind of formula that let him live longer, but that didn't really work when he used to be palling around SHIELD with his old Howling Commandoes buddies. Wow, they all got it? You can't do with him what was done with Reed and Ben, who started their careers as WWII vets also, but eventually that just dropped out of their backstories.

I still feel like the FF have some real life in them. Maybe it'll turn out that it was right to try something really different, if this film actually is really different.

I'm still going to puke if Doctor Doom turns out to be an unpleasant blogger.

[DraconianOne]

I'm still going to puke if Doctor Doom turns out to be an unpleasant blogger.

Haven't they updated it since to make him a GamerGater?

 

[Khaldun]

It's all about ethics in secret projects to travel to other dimensions!