Stretchiness IS goofy. As far as I can tell, the idea of a super-stretchy person as a superhero was invented by Jack Cole, an unbelievably talented and imaginative cartoon artist with several completely different stryles (he created and ran different works in different venues, undetected and unsuspected by even fellow cartoon artists). His Plastic Man was the original stretching hero, who managed to stretch himself into a variety of very interesting and inventive shapes, in a series of highly stylized and comic adventures, with villains drawn as bizzarely as anything out of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. He didn’t intend to create a “serious” superhero.
But everyone imitated him. DC comics produced Elastic Lad (Jimmy Olsen, at times) and even Elastic Lass, and the ongoing (and ridiculously-named) Elongated Man*. Marvel gave us Mister Fantastic. And, of course, The Incredible’s Elastigirl (Note how those names still payed homage to the original, resembling it in some way).
Only Elongated Man and Mister Fantastic were ever meant to be really “serious”, and Reed Richards was more the Scientific Genius than the Stretching Hero.
*Frank Miller, in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, his follow-up to The Dark Knight Returns, has Plastic Man rightly criticizing the similarly-powered Elongated Man:
“You never turn into anything! You just STRETCH! You’re the most boring superhero I’ve ever met!”
It’s true – if you can’t turn into something, or have something else going for you (super intelligence), then what’s the point? Elastigirl turns into some GREAT things, and the way she moves when she stretches – something you can only approximate in the comics** – is a joy to behold.
** Something Jack Cole DID manage to do. See the Art Spiegelman/Chip Kid biography “Jack Cole: Forms Stretched to their Limits”
Technically Galactus was not a cloud but a shit ton of sentient ships somewhat bug like. They chose to go with Ultimate Galactus (or Gah Lak Tus) instead of regular Galactus.
That version is the bug ships version.
Just look at those two pictures on the wiki page. Stupid as hell. When I heard there was going to be an Ultimate Galactus I was happy. Then I got the first issue and realized they were giant bugs I said, “Bwah?” and I never got the next two issues.
Going with the giant bugs instead of the real Galactus was the dumbest thing out of both movies. I knew they were going with giant bugs so I wasn’t surprised but my friends all thought it was just a giant cloud and thought it was stupid for a giant cloud to be one of the biggest threats Earth ever faced.
If they had gone with the real Galactus it would have been epic especially if there was a shot like this:
Well sure… Before his face got all mangled. That altered his voice and now he sounds just like Cobra Commander. Check Wikipedia… I’ll wait here… I won’t go edit the wiki page to support my assertion.
I disagree that it was solid - I would have liked to see some lighthearted banter, but there was no emotional investment, because the characters were flat and frankly insipid, even Chiklis as The Thing. It may have been bearable if you read the comics, but to those of us who don’t it felt fake and tedious.
The Silver Surfer himself was an improvement - there was some real weight and tragedy to his character. But it never went anywhere and the entire final act was miserable and had no payoff. Plus, I hate Invisible Woman’s disgusting self-centerdness.
I don’t blame the powers, I blame the writers. Daredevil was doing so poorly Marvel was printing it bi-monthly until Miller showed the potential of the character. The X-men was in the same boat before Claremont/Byrne got ahold of it. Green Arrow couldn’t carry a title on his own before Mike Grell did a re-vamp of it. Even *Iron Fist *had a decent mini-series, and that’s about a guy who can get in one good punch a day.
In the parody of them on The Venture Bros Reed is such an arrogant, selfish, controlling dick that inviso-girl left him for a midget with a couple prosthetic limbs!
Comedian Norm Macdonald does a great bit sort of about this on his album Ridiculous. He plays Reed and is discussing what each member should be named, and after the logical choices for the other three he suddenly pulls ‘Mr Fantastic’ out of his ass for himself! And then each of the others slowly try interrupting him trying to grasp his logic that his (rather silly) superpower of ‘stretchiness’ warrants him getting to be called ‘Mr Fantastic’ (let alone him being the de facto leader!)
I wonder if Marvel could sue Sony, on the grounds that although they sold them the rights to use Galactus, they didn’t sell them the rights for Gah Lak Tus
It’s actually a very fuzzy area – defining how much of the FF world Sony owns when it comes to specific characters. As recently as two years ago, Marvel wasn’t sure if they own the film rights to Namor: The Submariner. Also, that’s why The Avengers fought the Chitauri instead of Skrulls – not because Sony owns Skrulls, but because Marvel wasn’t sure if they did.
It’s heavily implied by the MARVEL MANGAVERSE version of Reed, who prides himself on leading the team with mere brainpower from a safe distance and (a) derides his physical ability to stretch as largely useless in combat while he (b) beds a string of extremely satisfied women.
