The Fantasticast: 2015 In Review - Part IV

With only a few hours to go until the end of 2015, we're taking a look back at 2015 in the life of The Fantasticast. On Monday, we covered January-March, on Tuesday we covered April-June, and yesterday we took a look at July-September. Today, we're focusing on October-December, which features a lot of Roy Thomas...

October

We started October, and Roy Thomas's tenure as Fantastic Four writer, looking back to the origins of the series, with Fantastic Four #126 - The Way It Began. This issue retold the origin of the team, with a few updates, to launch the next couple of issues worth of stories. To celebrate 100 episodes since he took over the podcast cover design, we invited Sam Savage back to help us look at this issue. We also had some fun playing an excerpt from the Power Records adaptation of this issue.

It didn't come as much of a surprise to us that, after recapping the origin, Roy Thomas chose to feature the Mole Man heavily in Fantastic Four #127 - Where The Sun Dares Not Shine. And not just the Mole Man - Tyrannus and Kala as well. Don't worry if you've not heard of Kala, she's obscure even by 1970s Marvel standards!

Fantastic Four #128 - Death In A Dark And Lonely Place was the subject of our landmark 150th episode. The cracks are beginning to show in the previously happy Richards marriage, thanks to Roy's insistence on writing Reed without any form of subtlety at all. There's also some underground shenanigans with more betrayal in one page than at a Stark wedding.

The furious Femizon from the future, Thundra, made her debut in Fantastic Four #129 - The Frightful Four Plus One, becoming the latest person to fill the fourth slot on the Frightful Four. Roy's mission to break the classic team apart continues, as marital strife becomes the first challenge the Fantastic Four can't overcome. Well, it's actually the next issue. Or the one after. It's become rather difficult to recall what happened in the issues we only read a couple of months ago...

Thundra and the Frightful Four battle their way to the heart of the FF in Fantastic Four #130 - Battleground: The Baxter Building. With the team seemingly broken apart and defeated, can the combined force of Franklin and Sue Richards save the day? What unthinkable consequences will their actions bring? And has Steve just nicked the copy text from the original post to beef up the word count for this episode?

November

Marvel Team-Up #6 - As Those Who Will Not See saw the Thing team up with Spider-Man to tackle both the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker. Rather unexpectedly, this issue revealed the origin of the Puppet Master and how he came to be Alicia's stepmother, in a sympathetic and engrossing flashback. Shame about the rest of the issue... Our cover artist Michael Georgiou returned to the show to investigate this comic.

One plot line that's been bubbling away for a few issues is Johnny wanting to reunite with Crystal, going so far as to invade the Great Refuge to get back with her. Fantastic Four #131 - Revolt In Paradise, drawn by fill-in artist Ross Andru, revealed that Crystal has been shacking up with Quicksilver, and is a member of a hierarchy that created a slave race and systematically oppressed them for thousands of years. Hard to work out which is worse...

The confused story of slavery in the Great Refuge concludes in Fantastic Four #132 - Omega The Ultimate Enemy, as does Roy Thomas's first run as FF writer. Relationship statuses change, creative teams change, costumes change, this issue is all about change. And, in one very brief moment, this issue is also about Black Bolt's Coffee Shop, but you'll have to listen to the episode to find out why.

One of our favourite issues of the year closed out November, as we looked at Fantastic Four #133 - Thundra At Dawn. With phenomenal guest art from DC legend Ramona Fradon, this wonderful one-shot issue sees Thundra call out Ben Grimm for a punch-up on New Year's Eve. The artwork is superb, and have I mentioned the great art? A highly-recommended issue of the Fantastic Four, and the first for new writer Gerry Conway.

December

Our year of covering the Fantastic Four closed with a two-part story that featured the return of Gregory Gideon as the villain. Yes, the return of Gideon. You remember him, right? Anyway, he returned in Fantastic Four #134 - A Dragon Stalks The Skies. We invited Resurrections: An Adam Warlock And Thanos Podcast host Al Sedano onto the show for this episode, which turned out to be rather fortuitous, as we also had to look at Jim Starlin's first issue of Captain Marvel, which also featured an early Thanos appearance. On top of this, we also looked at Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #9, where Cage went after Doctor Doom for a $200 bill.

Fantastic Four #135 - The Eternity Machine was our final Fantastic Four issue of the year. It also featured Gregory Gideon, which immediately biased us against it. 

Finally, we closed out the year with Marvel Team-Up #10 - Time Bomb!, in which Spider-Man teamed up with the Human Torch to defeat time-travelling missiles launched by Kang The Conqueror and Zarrko The Tomorrow Man. Despite the run of Marvel Team-Up issues covered this year being rather low in quality, our enthusiasm for Marvel Two-In-One, arriving early in 2016, has not been dampened!

Well, that wraps up our look back at the year in podcasting. We'll be back tomorrow to launch 2016 with some huge news, and we can't wait for that!

The Fantasticast: 2015 In Review - Part III

As we trudge ever-closer to the end of 2015, we're taking a look back at this past year in the life of The Fantasticast. On Monday, we covered January-March, and yesterday we covered April-June. Today, we're focusing on July-September. We had two Fantastic Four movies to cover, did a whole bunch of Fan-Splaining, and started our regular Marvel Team-Up coverage...

July

July started with our first-ever fill-in issue, Fantastic Four #119 - Three Stood Together. Roy Thomas provided his first Fantastic Four script, a neat and effective tale of racism, intolerance, and a thinly-veiled apartheid-era South Africa analogue. The cover format had recently changed, but this was also the first appearance of the new Fantastic Four logo and, thanks to our designer Sam, our own new logo. Just in time for some special episodes...

After a few months away, Stan Lee returned to the FF with Fantastic Four #120 - The Horror That Walks On Air. Stan's final run on the FF isn't a high point, and this story gets underway with a limp retread of the first appearance of the Silver Surfer. And, with our special episodes just around the corner, our decision to start a four-part story just before taking a few weeks off shows that our ability to plan ahead is, as always, impeccable.

Despite the movie turning out to be terrible, we decided to celebrate its release with a series of special episodes, kicking off with Steve And Andy Fan-'Splain The FF Part 1. Taking more than a little inspiration from Rachel And Miles X-Plain The X-Men, we decided to run through the first 51 issues and 3 annuals of the Fantastic Four in just under an hour. It was something a bit different for us, and we hope that it was a lot of fun to listen to.

Our second special episode was Steve And Andy Fan-'Splain The FF Part 2, bringing our recap of every Fantastic Four issue covered on the show up to date. In just under an hour, we rattled through Fantastic Four #52-120, along with annuals #4-6. Huge thanks go to our designer Sam Savage for these wonderful covers, and to Michael Bailey of From Crisis To Crisis for counting slowly and clearly for us.

August

Our final special episode was our commentary on the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie, produced by Roger Corman. It's not a great movie, but history is unlikely to judge this the worst Fantastic Four film. The film featured some phenomenal glove-acting, a terribly-animated Human Torch, and we added some more fun to the mix by turning Youtube's automatic subtitling feature.

After much anticipation, we finally got to start our coverage of Marvel's 1970s team-up comics with Marvel Team-Up #1 - Have Yourself A Sandman Little Christmas by Roy Thomas and Ross Andru. We also took this as the excuse to invite back onto the show Avengers Inspirations host Jon M. Wilson, as the show has taken so much inspiration from Jon's former show Amazing Spider-Man Classics.

It's at about this time that the Fantastic Four movie was released into cinemas, to some of the worst reviews seen since After Earth. Steve got to see the movie just before release, and managed to get his conflicted, angry thoughts in order to produce a midweek minisode, reviewing the film. After a very long time away from the core FF title, we returned for Fantastic Four #121 - The Mysterious Mind-Blowing Secret Of Gabriel. It's another Stan Lee runaround issue, frantically looking to fill time until the glorious final splash page by John Buscema. Sadly, at the end of everything, it turns out that the secret of Gabriel was neither that mysterious, nor particularly mind-blowing...

Fantastic Four #122 - Galactus Unleashed turned out to be one of most physical confrontations between the Fantastic Four and the World-Eater seen in comics. Making Galactus someone that the team can take on in combat may remove some of his mystique, but it lends itself to some great artwork from John Buscema. After two issues of very streamlined storytelling, Stan Lee remembers that he's Stan Lee and splits the team up to give greater story possibilities.

Our final episode in a very busy month looked at Marvel Team-Up #2 - And Spidey Makes Four. The Frightful Four are invading the Baxter Building, and only the Human Torch and the Amazing Spider-Man can do anything about it. Assuming, that is, that Spidey can shake off his brainwashing and stop fighting as part of the Frightful Four! We also brought along Cinematic Universe co-host James Hunt to take a look at this packed issue.

September

September was all about bidding farewell to Stan Lee as regular writer of the Fantastic Four. We kicked off with the conclusion to his latest Galactus story in Fantastic Four #123 - This World Enslaved, featuring a return of our favourite FF guest-star - Richard M. Nixon. We also had a brief peek at Captain America and Falcon #150, and a longer look at Incredible Hulk #152, the prelude to the Trial of the Incredible Hulk.

Fantastic Four #124 - The Return of the Monster was the start of Stan Lee's final story for the FF. It's fair to say that wasn't a huge clamour for the return of the Monster from the Lost Lagoon, which led (in this issue) to a lot of running around for no real reason at all. We also spent some time looking at Incredible Hulk #153, in which the Fantastic Four find themselves participating in the Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and Reed faces a moral quandry.

Morbius, The Living Vampire was the villain for Marvel Team-Up #3 - The Power To Purge, in which Spidey and the Torch teamed up, attended lectures, drank tea, and took on the not-quite-undead. Continuing our theme of teaming up with other podcasters, we invited Stacey Taylor of Stacey's Pop Culture Parlour onto the show to help make sense of this issue. Spoilers: We didn't. And we still don't really know what an enzyme vampire actually is...

This is it - Stan Lee's final issue of the Fantastic Four as regular writer. What a shame we couldn't get something a little better than Fantastic Four #127 - The Monster's Secret. With more running around and a rushed, nonsensical conclusion, this certainly isn't a good example of Stan's writing. Bidding farewell to our Fearless Leader, we also took a little bit of time to compare and contrast Stan's return to the book with his return of Amazing Spider-Man.

Well, we're nearly there. Check back tomorrow for the final episodes of 2015, and then come back on Friday for an exciting announcement about the future of the podcast.

The Fantasticast: 2015 In Review - Part II

As we trudge ever-closer to the end of 2015, we're taking a look back at 2015 in the life of The Fantasticast. Yesterday, we covered January-March. Today, we're focusing on April-June, as we moved closer to the release of the Fantastic Four movie, and a lot of people started to pay attention to what we do.

April

We started April with a feeling of deja vu, as we covered Fantastic Four #108 - The Monstrous Mystery of the Nega-Man. Why? Well, Fantastic Four #108 saw the unfinished Jack Kirby artwork for a rejected issue of the Fantastic Four repurposed and enhanced to provide the origin of Janus the Nega-Man. This led to an unusual episode, where a lot of the visuals had already been covered by us (Fantastic Four - The Lost Adventure), but the context (and Stan's scripting) was new.

No prizes for guessing who the villain in Fantastic Four #109 - Death In The Negative Zone was! To celebrate the return of Annihilus, we invited Chris Thompson, host of Orbital Comics In Conversation, to join us for this episode and the next. Chris is a fantastic podcaster, and his interviews are some of the best in comics podcasting. He's also a huge FF fan and, as an extra bonus, works at my local comics shop. We had a lot of fun looking at this issue and the general craziness that comes with any return to the Negative Zone.

May

After a few weeks off for personal reasons, we returned in May with our coverage of Fantastic Four #110 - One From Four Leaves Three. We also invited Chris Thompson of Orbital Comics In Conversation to return to help us finish off this episode. Thankfully, by this point, Janus the Nega-Man had left the story, never to return*. Instead, we got to have more fun with Annihilus and Agatha Harkness. Fans of Steve's singing (We're not sure you actually exist) will be pleased to know that this is the episode to feature his version of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt theme.

*Janus returns. This knowledge haunts us all.

A plot line that had technically be running through the last few issues finally came to the fore in Fantastic Four #111 - The Think -- Amok!. With Ben Grimm turned against the Fantastic Four - and humanity itself - the remaining team members scramble to contain his rampaging. As well as this, we had a rare solo appearance for Sue Richards, in Sub-Mariner #38, and we started our brief, erratic cover of the Kree-Skrull War with a peek at Avengers #89.

100 issues after their first battle, the Hulk returns to battle the Thing in Fantastic Four #112 - Battle of the Behemoths. As might be expected, this is a big action issue, with plenty of punching, statue destroying, and hurling of carousels. Oh, and the Thing dies at the end. Yeah, spoilers for that one.

Fantastic Four #113 - The Power of the Over-Mind was the first appearance of the super-villain Over-Mind. And if your response to that question is 'Who?' then you're  not alone. It seems fairly certain that neither Stan Lee of John Buscema quite knew who or what the Over-Mind was when they created him, as it would take until the final issue in this story for the Over-Mind to present a consistent and credible threat to the team. Oh, and the Thing gets resurrected at the start. Yeah, spoilers for that one.

The Over-Mind story continued in Fantastic Four #114 - But Who Shall Stop The Over-Mind? With the population of New York turned against the Fantastic Four by the power of the Over-Mind, the team must scramble to return to the Baxter Building, and to discover more about their foe, a task made harder by the Over-Mind's ability to remove memories of his existence from them. We also checked in with the Kree-Skrull War in Avengers #92, where the team make appearances in court to defend Captain Marvel.

June

June kicked off with a new writer for the Fantastic Four, as Archie Goodwin arrived for a short run on the book. His first task was to create an origin for the Over-Mind, which became the focus of Fantastic Four #115 - The Secret Of The Eternals. To delve into this, we invited W. Blaine Dowler of the Unofficial 75 Greatest Marvels Podcast to come on the show. Sorry about that Blaine - we should have found a better issue for you! Also, the Eternals in this issue have nothing to do with the Jack Kirby Eternals from later in the 1970s, just to be clear.

Doctor Doom - in charge of the Fantastic Four? That can only mean one thing - it's Fantastic Four #116 - The Alien... The Ally... The Armageddon! In an oversized issue, the Over-Mind finally presents a credible threat to the team, and only the assistance of Doctor Doom can save them. We also took some time with Avengers #93, another oversized issue, which guest-starred the Skrull cows from way back in Fantastic Four #2.

The short-lived flirtation of oversized issues left a feature-length story to be spread across two issues, which is probably why Fantastic Four #117 - The Flame And The Quest felt so unsatisfying as an issue. It sort-of-but-not-really brought Crystal back to the Fantastic Four, and committed one of the cardinal sins of any Marvel comic - it featured Diablo as the villain. We also had a detailed look at Sub-Mariner #44, and a far briefer look at Avengers #94.

June closed out with our coverage of Fantastic Four #118 - Thunder In The Ruins. This was Archie Goodwin's final issue, and although the conclusion to the Diablo/Crystal story was about as good as you might expect, the final five pages of this story turned out to be something rather different. The Thing and Lockjaw briefly visited an alternate universe - Earth A - where Reed Richards had been the one to be turned into the Thing by the cosmic rays.

We'll be back to take a look at July-September tomorrow, as we revisit our first dealings with Marvel Two-In-One, the Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie, the Josh Trank (and others) Fantastic Four movie, and a whole heap of fan-splaining!

The Fantasticast: 2015 In Review - Part I

We've got a handful of days between now and the end of the year, so this felt like a good time to stop and reflect on what has been a crazy year for The Fantasticast. Over the next few days, we'll be looking back at 2015. The comics, the episodes, the guest-hosts, the ripping-off-of other podcasts!

January

It seems like such a long time ago, but at the start of 2015, we were still covering Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's classic run on The Fantastic Four. We started January with Fantastic Four #98 - Mystery On The Moon. Produced to celebrate the 1969 moon landing, this issue wilfully ignores established continuity, and earned Marvel a letter from NASA pointing out that they were perfectly capable of landing on the moon without any fancy-schmancy superheroes lending a hand, thank you very much. Did I say NASA? I must have meant J. Jonah Jameson...

The last few issue of Stan and Jack's collaboration on the Fantastic Four were not their best work together, and Fantastic Four #99 - The Torch Goes Wild is a particularly strong example of how out-of-sync the two creators were. We also took a brief peek at Silver Surfer #17, and had some fun answering the 1970 Marvel Readers' Survey. Most likely because we really didn't want to talk about this comic...

We our first major milestone with Fantastic Four #100 - The Long Journey Home. This was the first big Marvel anniversary celebration. I think it's fair to say that they learned a few lessons from this one, such as 'how not to do an anniversary celebration comic'. We learned, after the recording, that this comic had originally been planed to be an annual-sized issue, which accounts for some of the problems with this one. But not all...

Late January saw the release of the first full-length Fantastic Four trailer, and we sat down to give our thoughts on it for a Midweek Minisode. It's worth remembering that there was a point when one of us still hoped that this film wouldn't be terrible...

Finally, we finished January with a late resurgence of quality, when we covered Fantastic Four #101 - Bedlam In The Baxter Building. This issue featured The Maggia, the organised crime syndicate who definitely aren't the Mafia, and a real sense of danger and fun, which is more than can be said for the Inhumans feature in Amazing Adventures #1, which we also covered.

February

February saw us welcome our first guest-host as Micheal Leyland of Heykids Comics joined us to bid farewell to Jack Kirby. Together, we covered Fantastic Four #102 - The Strength Of The Sub-Mariner, the first of a three-part story that would require some significant help to finish off. We also took a look at the Inhumans feature in Amazing Adventures #2.

Things took a brief diversion, as we took an episode to review the achievements of one of the greatest runs of comics - Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four. As well as our own thoughts and critiques, we also solicited feedback from our listeners for a bumper episode. And, to wrap things up, we also took a look at the 2008 one-shot Fantastic Four - The Lost Adventure, which recreated a rejected Fantastic Four comic from Jack Kirby's incomplete artwork.

Fantastic Four #103 - At War With Atlantis saw the first appearance of short-term Fantastic Four penciler John Romita Sr. Picking up another artist's plot and running with it is not a great situation, but Romita managed to bring focus, pace, and Richard M. Nixon to the story. We also took a brief look at Sub-Mariner #30 and Fantastic Four Annual #8, for those keeping track of Namor's solo title, or reprints.

Stan Lee and John Romita concluded the first continuing FF story in over a year with Fantastic Four #104 - Our World -- Enslaved! Handily, Roy Thomas mirrored this invasion of New York with one of his own in Avengers #82, which afforded us the opportunity to compare Lee and Thomas's approaches to similar plots. We also had a look at Sub-Mariner #31.

March

March kicked off with our coverage of Fantastic Four #105 - The Monster In The Streets, the first post-Kirby issue and the first signs that the book would be able to continue without one of the major creative forces that brought the title into being. Despite the editorial shenanigans that suddenly removed Crystal from the book, this was a surprisingly strong issue, considering that it came at a time of great change.

The post Lee/Kirby era continued with Fantastic Four #106 - The Monster's Secret. I recall rather enjoying this issue at the time, but details of what happened or why I enjoyed it escape me eight months later. The show-notes suggest that Andy and I had a disagreement during the recording, but again, I forget about what. I suspect Andy hasn't, though - he tells me he's tattooed my transgression on his arm so that he will always be reminded of it. Unless he's wearing a jumper.

Fantastic Four #107 - And Now - The Thing! marked the debut of regular Fantastic Four penciller John Buscema. Unfortunately, it was also the first of four issues to feature the villain Janus, one of the more underwhelming adversaries of the Fantastic Four that we would encounter this year. Come for the artwork, stay for the spelling mistakes and the consequences of said spelling mistakes.

We'll be back tomorrow to take a look at what happened to the show in April, May and June!