Category Archives: Shorter Works

Marvel Age Fantastic Four 3

Plot: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Writer: Sean McKeever
Artist: Joe Dodd
Editor: C. B. Cebulski

Remakes make the world go around. From toys to movies to comic books, we are surrounded by remade products in our popular culture. (In high art, it’s called re-interpretation or forgery, depending on whether the new artist acknowledges their creation.)

In the toy world, we apparently want to own the toys of our youth or, at least, given them to our children. This is perhaps the most explicable since toys wear out (we’ll pretend that everyone actually plays with the toys they buy and never places them in a display case). Like any other useful item, a good toy (or tool or whatever) may not go out of fashion. Consider the fork, the chair, the potted plant.

At the other logical extreme, we recreate movies. The traditional arguments in favor of this behavior are: 1) updating an original for modern tastes; and 2) improving an inappropriate/poor original. (Sometimes an original is redone as a means of making a separate, unrelated point, such as Mario Van Peebles just-released remake of his father’s [b]Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song[/b]. These works are making something entirely new.)

Comics have a long history of remaking popular tales. Most commonly, superhero origins are re-visited to fit modern tastes or plot requirements. Wolverine’s claws and Green Lantern’s power ring change with the stroke of a pen. Even with the re-envisioning, it is not so common to restart a comic series from the beginning. DC’s Year 1 explorations might be viewed as such. Marvel’s Ultimate line continues to plumb the same territory. Marvel Age is the first series, however, to take the actual plots and follow along issue by issue. It is an interesting experiment, but it does beg the question of why Marvel does not simply re-publish the original issues at user-friendly prices. Throughout their history, Marvel has had whole series of reprints, ensuring that new readers could catch on to current happenings.

So, we are to gather the original required improvement, if only for the sake of modern audiences. It can not be because the original issue was inappropriate for all ages. That was the whole point of comic books in 1962. If the child was interested in the comic book based on the cover, then it was appropriate for them, especially if it featured superheroes.

So, the remake is to fit the current world and modern tastes require new artwork and fewer words? I’d like to believe that it is not true, but I’ll grant that it may be. But doesn’t a remake need to remain true to the original and what made it special?

This issue is a re-make of Fantastic Four #3 from March, 1962. That issue introduced the team’s costumes, their “skyscraper hideout”, and the Fantasti-Car. They also confronted Miracle Man for the first time. Miracle Man was a lousy villain and the plot involving him was mediocre. The cool stuff in the story involved sub-plots and technical details. The Baxter Building is mapped out within the original issue. The uniforms provide wacky entertainment. The Marvel Age issue focuses too much on Miracle Man and not enough on the cool stuff. The Skrull issue did a delightful job updating the original with a heaping dose of humor. MA FF #3 started in the same vein, but faded down the stretch until my co-reader and I grimaced at the lame ending. And the soap opera cliff-hanger was no masterpiece forty years ago either.

All in all, though, I still think that you should be giving Marvel Age comics to every child on your shopping list. They don’t need to see Spiderman 2. They need to read the $6 trade paperback collecting Marvel Age Fantastic Four.

July, 2004

Family Valued: Naked Trolls and Near-Death

We here at the Family Valued executive washroom, microwave kitchen, and unified pressroom have randomly selected a ten-year-old from among the one immediately available.

So, what have you been reading lately?
Thud!.

What is that?
It’s the latest book written by Terry Pratchett. It’s funny fantasy. He is a very good writer from Britain. The other ones I remember are Truckers, about these teeny little people who live inside this store. Wee Free Men is about a witch who realizes that there are little blue people that live in this hill and are a bit smaller.

He seems to have a thing about little people.
Yes, I’m not sure why.

Thud! seems like a very big book.
Yes, it’s the biggest book I’ve ever read by myself. I wanted to know what happened and things did happen and it was fun. The Discworld series has a very good creation myth- like some Godly figure made this turtle and its four elephant bothers and they jumped up on its back and its ectoplasm jumped up and formed the world. It was something like that. Every book he tells about different people. Thud! is about the Watch in Ankh-Morpork, a city in Discworld. They’re kind of police. Trolls don’t usually wear clothes. I guess clothes are not a troll-y thing. Death always appears in all of his books at least once. He has to in every book. He just does.

So you’re reading about death.
It isn’t exactly. He’s a character. Death said that Vimes (Commander of the Watch) was having a near-death experience and Death was having a near-Vimes experience.

Would you recommend the book?
Yes, I would. It has humor and adventure.

February, 2006

Family Valued: Museum of Kids Art

The wind blew stong and cold this past Saturday morning when my son and I met Michelle Cardulla outside 90 Webster Avenue. Cardulla is the Executive Director of the brand new Museum of Kids Art, which has its Grand Opening this Saturday (12/9) 6-9 p.m. MoKA sits atop a Flatiron-style building gorgeously restored by North East Area Development, Inc.

We bundled ourselves up the bright stairs, lined with colorful art patterns. The museum grew out of Cardulla’s concern for the marginalization of the arts in American education and life. MoKA’s purpose is “to activate art programming, by existing as a center for arts and learning that employs the visual arts to foster a sense of accomplishment and hope in the urban community.”

Massive paper lanterns, decorated in fantastic ways, hung from the ceiling. MoKA is currently designed to involve children from Kindergarten through Sixth Grade. Classes are being offered in dance, cooking, weaving, and painting. In the future, Cardulla hopes to involve teens both as participants and as mentors. For that matter, Cardulla would be keen to see MoKA grow into an arts center for the entire community writ large (“I’d love to attract world class people.”)

My son loved the insect drawings and the hand made tiles. Saturday’s Grand Opening will feature art to view, art to buy, art to do, refreshments, and a surprise or two. Visit www.museumofkidsart.org [defunct link] for more information.

December, 2006