I would have been 12 years old and fully caught up in the “Marvel Age of Comics” — that Christmas I would get a copy of Jules Pfeiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes inscribed by Mom with, “To Warren, the comic book fiend of 1965.”
Charles Schultz’s comic strip “Peanuts,” of course, was an integral part of the daily diet, and so it was a Big Event for comic book fiends when “A Charlie Brown Christmas” debuted. It was amazing to see all the characters come to life on our TV screen.
I was also a Top 40 music fiend, and so I recognized the unique sound of the Vince Guaraldi Trio, who’d had a hit a couple of years earlier with their tasty rendition of “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Of course they’re best known now for this soundtrack.
For the most part the show was everything you might expect from Schultz, as poor old Charlie Brown went from mishap to mishap in his efforts to make it a memorable Christmas, until Charlie Brown cried out in frustration, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?!”
I’m pretty sure I didn’t breathe for the next minute after Linus replied calmly, “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about,” and proceeded to recite the story that my father insisted on reading to us every Christmas over cookies and candlelight.
These are the most magnificent 78 seconds in cartoon history.
I so wanted to love Fantastic Four: First Steps. The third cinematic iteration of Marvel Comics’ greatest comics magazine of the 1960s is oh-so-close. The characters are there, the familial love is there, almost all of the elements were there.
But you know what it felt like? Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I was back in the late 1970s — an absolute great Superman movie followed not long after by a movie featuring one of my all-time favorite casts of characters, this time the crew of the starship Enterprise, but even with all of the original ensemble in place, it kind of fell flat.
The Fantastic Four casting director got it right — this is a great team, although Pedro Pascal needs to get over himself and shave the mustache. Reed Richards only has facial hair when he’s been working in the lab for days trying to save the world. And what’s with the orange brick beard that they gave Ben Grimm halfway through the movie? And please don’t get me started about H.E.R.B.I.E., the silly robot pal who never appeared in the comics until the TV cartoon invented it to appeal to the kiddies.
Nitpicks, all. The family of superheroes I remember were all up there on screen. As I suspected, they wisely used the immortal Galactus trilogy of F.F. #48-50 as the foundation of the story.
It’s a very, very good movie that checks most of the boxes, but it didn’t give me the comic-book-geek thrill that Superman did just a couple of weeks earlier. Still, if Superman was a home run, Fantastic Four: First Steps is a solid triple.
I believe it will all come together in the sequel, just like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn saved that franchise. That’s if we get a proper sequel — the blurb at the end of First Steps says the F.F. will return in Avengers: Doomsday.
The Fantastic Four were the heart and soul of Marvel Comics, not Spider-Man, not the X-Men, not the Avengers. They came first, and the whole “Marvel Age of Comics” was built around the Fantastic Four. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben are not supporting characters in the Avengers; they are the root from which everything else grew.
Maybe someday we’ll get the Fantastic Four movie the characters deserve. They’ve got the pieces in place at last, and they’re oh-so-close.
Back in the day, the two can’t-miss Marvel comic books every month were The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. I always made sure I had at least 24 cents in my pocket when I entered the comics store, so I could see what Peter Parker was up to and where in the universe Reed Richards, Susan Storm Richards, Johnny Storm and Benjamin J. Grimm were now. Especially the first 38 issues of Spider-Man and the first 102 issues of Fantastic Four were as good as it gets.
To be more specific, Fantastic Four #s 39 to 51 were (and remain) an absolute treasure. We moved across New Jersey when I was 10 years old, right after FF #24 came out, and it was 15 long months before we found a place that sold Marvel comics. Finding Fantastic Four #39 on a spinner rack, with Doctor Doom looming behind my favorite foursome and special guest star Daredevil, was finding water after a very long march across the desert.
The gang had lost their powers after an epic battle against the Frightful Four, and they were frantically trying to replicate their powers mechanically before some dastardly foe figured it out and came after them. Too late! Doctor Doom was just preparing an assault on his hated enemies.
With the help of Daredevil, who happened to be in the neighborhood, the Fantastic Four went on the defensive in “A Blind Man Shall Lead Them.” The story continued in issue #40, “The Battle of the Baxter Building,” in which The Thing defeats Doom in a most cathartic fashion, then quits the team, setting up “The Brutal Betrayal of Ben Grimm” in #41, the first in another epic arc that lasted the next three issues.
Before we could catch our breath, that was followed by the four-part introduction to the Inhumans, which was followed by perhaps the most legendary Fantastic Four saga of them all, starting with “The Coming of Galactus” in #48, which also introduced the amazing Silver Surfer. From the trailers, the new film borrows heavily from the Galactus trilogy.
After that came the most heartbreaking one-part F.F. story ever, “This Man, This Monster,” in issue #51. I am mortified to admit that I missed the next issue, in which yet another new character was introduced, by the name of Black Panther. But those 14 issues, which cost me $1.68 back in the day, were worth many times that in sheer entertainment value. Truth to tell, the comic continued to be excellent for many years after that, but those 14 issues were just so innovative and groundbreaking and just plain exciting. I had reconnected with the Marvel universe just in time.
When the movie Spider-Man came out in 2000, I was over the moon. Director Sam Raimi and company nailed the character and the tone of the comic books to perfection. If Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 weren’t so great, then audiences might have been kinder to the subsequent movie Fantastic Four and its sequel, which were pretty good, but they weren’t as good as the Spider-Man films or the X-Men movies that came first.
A second attempt to bring the team to life failed rather miserably in 2015. The less said there, the better.
From the reviews, the new movie Fantastic Four: First Steps comes much closer to what Marvel fans have been waiting for all these years. That makes July 2025 a tremendous month for comic book fans in general, because the new movie Superman comes much closer to what we have been waiting for all these years. The superhero movie has life after all.
Because I’m a frugal old guy, Mary and I will probably be seeing the new film on $5 Tuesday, but my expectations are high — not sky high, because the F.F. has been here before and disappointed us — but high enough that I think we’re going to have fun.
