"Mask of Doom" - Fantastic Four

Every once in a while, I’ll come across a superhero that even I can’t bring myself to care about.  For Marvel, those heroes used to be the Fantastic Four.  For some reason, even as I was gobbling up the most recent Spiderman and X-Men cartoons and reading every issue of Young Avengers I could get my hands on, I just wasn’t interested in tracking down anything starring Reed Richards and company.  When I saw the “blockbuster” films from 2005 and 2007, I was even less interested.  And when I saw this show?  Let’s just say Marvel was lucky I stuck around long enough to give Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four a try.

Fantastic Four debuted in 1994 and is comparable to Sky Dancers in that it didn’t last long and had a budget the size of an Ant-Man (pick one).  It’s not quite on that level of lameness, but it’s trying its hardest.  Apparently, this show was the second half of The Marvel Action Hour (the first half was an Iron Man cartoon), which featured narration by Stan Lee.  Though he doesn’t narrate so much as show up at the beginning of Part Three to shame those of us who didn’t watch the first two parts.

Also, I think he stole someone’s goggles, but I’m not sure if they’re Kato’s or Booster Gold’s.  Possibly Animal Man?

So we start off with what appears to be a cheap ‘90s talk show that just happens to be called Fantastic Four but is actually the opening credits. (Seriously, look at the opening card!)  After the truly trying theme tune (“Fantastic Four!/Don’t need no more!/(That’s ungrammatical!)”), we begin outside the Baxter Building, where a mysterious spacecraft full of robots is attaching itself to the FF’s place of residence. 

Unfortunately, our heroes are too busy to notice: Sue and Reed are practicing their ballroom dancing, Johnny is listening to his Walkman (ha, ha, outdated technology is funny) and can’t hear anything, and Ben is trying yoga because the writer wanted some easy sight gags.  Also, Ben must be made of razors or something because he manages to slice right through the sofa.

The invading robots take advantage of all this by destroying Johnny’s trading cards and Ben’s CD collection, so that each will blame the other and start throwing furniture around.  Either these robots know them extremely well, or they just took a massive chance that happened to pay off.  Also, was it ever established in any comic how often the Fantastic Four has to replace their furniture?  Because just judging by the first five minutes of this episode, I should think they’d be too busy furniture shopping to go out and save the world.  (“Reed, the Skrulls are attacking again!” “In a minute, honey!  First you have to check out this new ottoman I just constructed!  It has a built-in foot massager, drink mixer and jet propulsion!”)

Meanwhile, Johnny and Ben’s fight finally catches Sue and Reed’s attention.  Reed runs off to investigate and BOY if he isn’t the worst flirt since Bruce Wayne in Batman: The Movie, I’d really (not) like to know who is.

*in a bad, vaguely European accent* "I'll be back soon for my rumba.  Olé!"

It’s things like this that make me wish I was doing video reviews so I could personally show you this moment instead of quoting it and saying “here, check out 4:36 on this YouTube video.”  I know that may not look bad in writing but just… trust me on this one.  The delivery is bad, the accent is bad, it’s all BAD.  I can’t even tell what accent he’s trying to do.  French?  Italian?  Did he make up a new language off the top of his head so he could impress Sue with the spiffy new accent he just invented?  I don’t know.

Anyway, now that Sue is left by herself, she does what any self-respecting woman would do and gets herself kidnapped.  The guys don’t notice until she’s long gone and Dr. Doom is threatening to kill her unless they do exactly as he says.  In this case, Doom says to step into his light beam so he can suck them into his spaceship like so many cows.

“Doom says jump to the left!  Doom says step to the right!  Now put your hands on your hips!  Ha!  Doom didn’t say ‘Doom says’!  Doom is victorious!”

Once on board, Doom drops them through some ridiculously convenient trapdoors in the floor.  I am not kidding.  At one point, Ben actually predicts what’s going to happen and jumps away before the door opens… only to land on another trapdoor.  Is Doom supposed to be psychic and someone just forgot to tell me?  Each of the guys is placed in a trap specifically designed to counteract their powers and Sue… is invited to eat dinner with Doom.  Truly a fate worse than death.

To distract Doom and buy time for the others, Sue gets Doom to tell her about when he was an itty-bitty Doomling.  I’m gonna call him Vicky.  Because I can. 

Doom explains that his father was a healer, not to mention the only light-skinned blond smart guy in a village of dark-haired dark-skinned superstitious “g*psies.”  Never mind that that word is etymologically incorrect, politically charged, and plagued by offensive stereotypes.  But there will be plenty of time to talk about that sort of thing later.  Trust me.

Meanwhile, Reed, Johnny and Ben come up with a plan of escape while speaking Pig Latin.  Don’t ask, it makes no sense, but the plan works, so whatever.

What, did the Human Torch turn into a pixie all of a sudden?  What kind of perspective is this?

Part One ends with our men heroes trying to find their way through the labyrinth of caves beneath Doom’s castle.  I’m not really sure how structurally sound a building could be with a series of gigantic roomy caves right beneath it, but if Wayne Manor can survive this long, I guess Doom’s castle deserves nothing less.

Part Two picks up where we left off, with Reed, Ben and Johnny in the tunnels fending off the Indiana Jones Rip-Off Traps of Doom.  But the supposedly interesting stuff doesn’t start until Doom continues his storytelling, explaining that his father was one day kidnapped by a Baron (generic enough for you yet?) who wanted him to heal his plot device wife, but the wife is beyond mortal help.  The Baron threatens to kill the father (does he even have a name?) if his wife dies, so Dad takes Li’l Vicky and tries to escape in the Latverian wilderness.

Apparently Vicky also doubled as a suitcase.  Sadly, this does not save Pops from dropping dead of exposure after an arduous fifteen minutes on the lam.  Oh, and if you were wondering where Vicky’s mother was during all this, we get one brief line of exposition that says the Baron’s soldiers killed her at some vague point in the past for no given reason.  Stuff and nonsense!  We all know Doom’s mom is merely biding her time in an alternate dimension until Doom frees her from Chthon so that she can turn his castle into a mind-control spa.

You tell ‘im, Coco.

Once Vicky grows up, he invents all kinds of spiffy toys so he can play juvenile pranks on the elite.  Of course, the elite have no sense of humor and he is forced to flee for his life, ending up at a prestigious American university where he meets fellow student Reed Richards.  Doom does quite well at the university, at least until his experiment literally blows up in his face.  It’s implied that his face was horribly disfigured, but he never actually says that, and we never see his face without the mask after his accident.  So for all we know Doom was trying to build a Total Perspective Vortex and succeeded just enough to make him want to hide his face in shame for all eternity.

Hey, those are the same clothes he was wearing when the Total Perspective Vortex blew up.  He had time to go to the hospital, get his face bandaged, and fly all the way out to Tibet, but he didn’t have time to change his clothes?  Anyway, while in Tibet, he meets up with a bunch of monks (when in doubt, add monks) who teach him how to make a metal mask to hide his supposed deformities.

Back in the present…

Heehee, look at the expression on Pointless Henchman’s face. (Yes, Doom has a henchman.  No, he doesn’t do anything.) You just know he’s heard this story about a zillion times.  Doom probably forces all of his captives to hear his life story before condemning them to hard labor or whatever.  Heck, it’s probably Latveria’s most popular method of enhanced interrogation.  “Talk, cretin!  Or would you prefer that Doom tell you of Doom’s first attempt at shaving?!”

While this is going on, Reed and Co. try to get into the castle from the outside by ripping off Indiana Jones some more (this time it’s the bridge scene from Temple of Doom).  But lo and behold, Doom PLANNED for them to escape and break back in ALL THE TIME!  In fact, the true purpose of kidnapping Sue was to hold her hostage and threaten to hurt her unless the others go back in time to ancient Greece and steal the coffin of Argos. 

…There is not enough facepalm in the world to accommodate the mass amounts of stupid here.  And I’m not just talking about Doom’s time machine, which consists of a rectangle and a triangle. 

I bet his death ray is a circle and an octagon!

But seriously, why didn’t Doom just do this in the first place instead of putting them in those ridiculous prisons and subjecting Sue to the audiobook version of his autobiography?  (Wait, I think I just answered my own question.) I guess since this is Doom’s first appearance on the show, they felt the need to shoehorn his origins in somewhere, even though they have absolutely no bearing on the story and could have been summed up in about three sentences. 

Doom’s logic, so called, was apparently to prevent their escaping the room they’re in now by placing them in the room they were in before, but why?  How does escaping one room make them less likely to escape another?  Shouldn’t that have just warmed them up?  Also, why do they have to back to ancient Greece to do this?  Assuming it wasn’t destroyed or lost, shouldn’t the coffin of Argos still exist in modern Greece?  If not, would it have killed you to explain this to us?!

Bonus question: Which Argos are we discussing, the guy who built Jason’s ship or Odysseus’s dog?  Neither option makes any sense, so I’m going to pretend it’s the dog until somebody tells me otherwise.

And so begins Part Three, which is easily the absolute WORST out of the trilogy, at least if you’re a fan of Homer and/or easily provable facts.  Doom tells Sue that Argos’s coffin will give him unimaginable powers because… because dog bones are made of magic, I guess.  Meanwhile, the guys have landed in ancient Greece smack dab in the middle of a battle between the Greeks and the Persians.  And then this happens.

"We don't want to affect the course of history... but the Persians were merciless tyrants, while the Greeks gave birth to the ideals of democracy."

Oh yeah, them Greeks were ideal democratic angels, so long as you weren’t enslaved, formerly enslaved, born anywhere but Greece, indebted to the government, or female, and as long as you had enough free time to go to forty annual meetings with your peers (which, fyi, would have been practically nobody without the slaves doing all the work).  And what did those lousy Persians ever do for us?  Nothing!  If by “nothing,” you mean “all but inventing math and various other things that the modern world and Reed Richards’ livelihood as a scientist depend on,” but that’s chickenfeed compared to the TOTALLY BODACIOUS CONTRIBUTIONS of the ancient Athenian political system.  Also, regardless of the admittedly legitimate influences on democracy, the Greeks had their fair share of “merciless tyrants” too.  Also also, Cyrus the Great would have words with you on the whole “merciless tyrant” descriptor, but who needs facts?!  KILL IT WITH FIRE.

That’s for furthering our understanding of astronomy, you big weenies!

After the fight, Mr. Fantastically Ignorant sticks a Babelfish in his ear to translate what the Greeks are saying, which, surprisingly, is not “Why is there a sentient orange rock man in funny underpants making vague threats at me?”  Instead, the Greeks say that Argos’s coffin is in the underworld, and the only way to find it is to ask the Oracle on Mount Olympus.  Okay, the Oracle they’re probably TRYING to refer to is the Oracle of Delphi, whose home base was on Mount Parnassus and nowhere even remotely close to Olympus.  In any event, there were no oracles based on Mount Olympus because that was the home of the gods and oracles aren’t gods!!  Argh.  I’m gonna defer to Handy on this one, okay?

"It's HOMER... READ A BOOK!!!"

Okay.

Meanwhile, Sue proves she’s not entirely useless by escaping from Doom’s deathtrap.  Doom gets all up in arms over this and sends a sentient tiled floor to retrieve her.  It does, and she plays the good little damsel-in-distress for the remainder of the episode.  End scene!

Back in Greece, the Thrilling Three borrows some Greek armor to appear inconspicuous and race up *sigh* Mount Olympus to get to *double sigh* the Oracle.  When they get to the Temple of the Oracle… um… look, if this is supposed to be the Oracle at Delphi, then it should be called the Temple of Apollo.  The Greeks only built temples to their gods, which again, the oracles were not.  Did you people do any research?

"That's hydrogen sulfide from the mineral springs in the crevice, Ben.  The ancients believed such things had magical powers."

Ehhhh… I’ll give you that one.  Scientists are still trying to work out just what chemicals supposedly gave oracles their “powers,” and though it’s far from certain, hydrogen sulfide is one of the candidates.  So apparently someone somewhere did actually read a book at some point but only got two sentences in before being distracted by a shiny object across the hall.  Oh, and incidentally, hydrogen sulfide is highly toxic, so yeah, nice job warning Ben to stay the hades away from it, you big dumb jerk.

Whatever.  The Oracle tells them to follow the river Styx, which leads to the underworld, which they should have known already since the Greeks OUTRIGHT TOLD THEM the coffin of Argos was in the underworld.  Are you trying to tell me all that research I just did on oracles and temples and stuff was just for some pointless mythologically inaccurate padding?! *bangs head on table* While we're on the subject, just what did Argos do that was so bad it warranted his remains being thrown into the underworld?  That dog was so loyal he’d put Lassie to shame, and this is how you repay him for twenty years of waiting in misery and cow dung?!! (Seriously, read The Odyssey.  That poor dog is the saddest thing ever.)

And just when you thought they couldn’t rip off Indiana Jones anymore if they tried, guess who decides to turn himself into an inflatable-style raft and go flying off a cliff?

At least go back to ripping off the good ones.  Also, I’m fairly certain the river Styx did not begin on the top of Mount Olympus, but I doubt it’s worth the effort to look it up.  In any event, the guys find themselves not in the underworld but in a nice roomy grotto filled with all kinds of ancient treasures, including the coffin of Argos.  Unfortunately, Johnny lights a lamp that emits sleeping gas as it burns, and the guys nod off just as those eeeeeeeebil Persians show up again.  Yeah, because those rapids of death we just saw them ride down could easily accommodate a full sized boat.  And how did the Persians know where they were, anyway?  Were they stalking them or something?

When our heroes wake up again, they find themselves chained to a boat oar a la Ben-Hur.  They easily break free (“Bondage makes me nervous,” says Ben, unwittingly sparking a veritable tsunami of kinky slash fanfics), the coffin of Argos has shrunk for some vaguely defined and stupid reason, and Reed magically recognizes a small portion of the Greek coast to determine that they about to enter the Battle of Salamis.

Not being a Greek scholar by any means, I immediately assumed this referred to an ancient war instigated when one side stole the other’s lunch meats, but a quick trip to Wikipedia straightened it all out.  In brief, Persia tried to conquer Greece, Greece said no thanks, fighty time ensued, and Greece overcame really crummy odds to spank Persia in a series of several battles, the first and most famous of which was the Battle of Salamis.  And for another vaguely defined and stupid reason, Reed decides to help the Greeks win the battle in the interests of making sure “history comes out right.”  Which is a load of pants, because you already know the Greeks will win, so theoretically, as long as you don’t stick your stupid noses into things, the Greeks will still win.

But now I’m really talking too much.  Let’s finish this mess.

Our heroes help defeat the ridiculously homogenous looking Persians.  Then a freak storm apparently drowns all the Greeks (guess they had to explain the Greek casualties that Reed’s pointless interference prevented somehow) and makes Reed and Johnny think Ben is dead. 

What in Gaea is that?  A tornado?  On the water?  Okay, in all fairness, apparently these actually exist, but given the level of research the writers didn’t put into the rest of the episode, they probably thought this is what a hurricane looks like.  And that hurricanes form instantaneously.

The suspense over Ben’s supposed death is entirely pointless as the Delphic Oracle randomly shows up two seconds later to demonstrate that Ben is just fine, and then the floaty rectangle-triangle shows up to sweep them back to Latveria.  Doom gives Sue back to the guys and cackles about how powerful the whatever in Argos’s coffin is going to make him.  And hey, just what is this all-powerful mystical item that will enable Doom to conquer the world?  Lucky for us, Reed accidentally lost the item during the freak storm, and as it fell into the ocean, we got a good look at it!

…um …beware the chewed-up mummified doggie toy of death…?  Anyone care to elaborate and tell us what this actually is or what this thing does?  You know.  The thing that was supposed to drive the entire flipping plot?  I’ve heard of MacGuffins, but this is just pure lazy.  Even Hitchcock took five seconds out of his way to explain what his MacGuffins actually were.  Come on.

Reed brings the coffin back to Doom nonetheless, and Doom is very excited at the thought of world domination via squeaky toy until he discovers that Reed replaced the coffin’s contents with Greek fire.  Hmm, a mysterious ancient box that spews hellfire when opened… where have I heard this before…?

*sigh* This isn’t even fun anymore.  Good thing the episode’s over.

During the first two parts, I was willing to write this off as simply another cheap, stupid 90s cartoon, but by the end, I realized it was more than.  This is a cheap, horrendously stupid 90s cartoon filled plot holes, plot dead ends, flat characters (and I don’t just mean Reed) and ignorance the likes of which I will be very happy to never see again.  There was absolutely no visible effort put into research or resolving plot points or… well, anything.  At all.  The creators could have saved us all a lot of time and agony by simply climbing the nearest hill and screaming “WE DON’T CARE” at the top of their lungs.

I mean, I know this is a kid’s show, and I don’t want to be one of those people who cries “Bigotry!” at everything up to and including their toast, but ignoring and skewing historical facts to demonize the dark-skinned Persians (i.e. Iranians) and idolize the comparatively light-skinned Greeks (who never conquered other civilizations, no sir!) smells fishy to me.  Combine that with the fact that the only good, non-ignorant Rom was Doom’s blond, lighter skinned Daddy and suddenly it’s like Sea World in here.  Ben does get a few good lines in here and there, but it isn't anywhere near enough to make up for the ridiculousness of the rest of the episode(s).

And should I even bother mentioning the wild inconsistencies in the animation?  Like Johnny’s ruby comm necklace that only shows up that one time he needs it, Doom’s shape shifting mask, or this little gem of Reed placing a hand on Johnny’s shoulder THE AIR.

To be fair (not that they deserve it, but…), this story arc takes place in Season One, and sometimes it takes a show a season or three to find its footing.  And Wikipedia, at least, seems to believe that Fantastic Four improved in its second season.  That doesn’t make me feel any better about watching this phoned-in mess of a cartoon, but I thought I should mention it.

In other words, if you’re looking for a FF fix, go read Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four.  The fact that it’s aimed at kids only means that it will actually be fun and you will not end up throwing the comic across the room in a rage because they killed off a decent character just for shock value and sales and DANG IT MARVEL I AM GOING TO TRACK YOU DOWN AND MAKE YOU WATCH LAND BEFORE TIME SEQUELS UNTIL YOU BRING NIGHTCRAWLER BACK!

Ahem.  So.  Um.  Yeah.  Fantastic Four.  Don’t watch it.  Instead, READ A BOOK!!!

Next Time: In which J’onn J’onzz is adorable, Hal Jordan almost manages to be likable, and even ye olde schoole Lois Lane manages to be more badass than anyone else in the room.  Oh, yeah, and something about end of the world as we know it.

Images from Fantastic Four, marvel.com, The Tick and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

EDIT 10/14/16: I made couple minor edits to censor or eliminate uses of the g slur.  I'm really not sure what I was thinking using it like that when I JUST went on a mini-rant on how it was offensive, and I apologize if my carelessness hurt anyone.