The Return of Pop (up) Art

  

This is the other Marvel pop-up book I bought a few weeks ago. Like the X-Men book it's content centres on the origins of the characters and details their individual talents. The Fantastic Four's story goes something like this: 

Pipe-smoking genius and astronaut Dr Reed Richards is pissed-off with one-time friend and purse string holder Ben Grimm because Grimm thinks, clever though Richards is and visionary though his planned space expedition is, he's ignoring the potential hazards of cosmic rays, so threatens to cut funding for the Doctor's ambitious Starship project.

Fueled by her devotion to her future husband and knowing full well that Grimm has a crush on her, Richard's fiancee Susan Storm emotionally blackmails Ben into playing ball by questioning his nerve/manhood - a downright dirty trick if you ask me and particularly galling because: a) It turns out Grimm was right to be concerned, and b) Post-cosmic ray mutation, Grimm really gets the shitty end of the cosmic ugly stick. 

No wonder, afterwards, he wants to clobber Richards - the post-adverse-incident bendy bastard. What's surprising is how quickly Grimm gets over Reed's blunder and the frazzled four quickly realise their new freakish forms can be put to good use, helping mankind. 

But first: names. And it's Susan's dumb but loyal brother - who only tagged along on the ill-fated spin around space because he had nothing better to do but landed arguably the most useful and certainly the coolest power - who piped up first with his superhero name: The Human Torch. Big Sis followed up with her H G Wells rip-off Invisible Woman. Self-depreciating Grimm settled for The Thing which couldn't be more ambiguous and is probably a reflection on just how livid he was at the time and how choosing a silly name for his new monstrous form seemed unimportant compared to the fact that he was now hideously lumpy and orange. 

But how ultra-pissed-off all three must have been when Richards finally chipped in with his own super-smug name, Mr Fantastic. Not least because "fantastic" he was not - he was just more pliable that he used to be. Which is ironic because it was his inflexibility and stubbornness that got the team into this mutated-mess. 

If you ask me, Richards immediately recognised that invisibility, flaminess and brutish strength were all way cooler than being, basically, Stretch Armstrong, so tricked the others into subservience by adopting a leaders name. A travesty...but an interesting lesson in branding.

   

Comments

[Pia]

This is amazing! I wish DC would follow the trend as well..

[azala]

These stories of superhero origins sound chi chi to me. They'd likely sell to a high school student but not to a grown up comic book aficionado.