Imaginauts

I'm cribbing a little from Larry Young right off the bat here. It's not the blaming Nixon part, but the space part and the forward-looking part.

Our company belongs to a Tech Council. I think the Tech Council does some really neat, outstanding stuff for organizing events and sponsoring educational activites... but there are no jet packs, no ray guns, and none on the horizon. That's what I want out of the Tech Council. That's what I want out of 2005.

Leading me to Fantastic Four movie. Ain't seen it, could be Citizen Kane. More likely it's not, but I'll just judge what I've seen trailer-wise. And it ain't good.

When Lee and Kirby launched the FF almost fifty years ago, they made them a family first, and adventurers second. The movie looks kinda like they maybe sorta also focused on the famial part. "Adventure" looks lacking. And there needs to be some adventure.

The Kirby-Lee run, the Simonson year(s), the Waid-Weiringo run a last year (has it been that long?) put the adventuring into "adventurer." Waid and 'ringo made me stand up and cheer with their take. Literally. One-upping the hell out of everything I, as a reader, ever thought of tackling, they sent Reed, Sue, and Johnny to "heaven" to find Ben and bring him back. The greatest explorers in a fictional little universe (a little universe that makes it's shareholders billions) went to the afterlife to find their friend. Not in some dumbass Touched by an Angel way either, but in a "are you mental? You don't belive in god but you want to go stomp around this place where he MIGHT exist and tell him he doesn't know what he's doing? You ARE mental?" It was a great storyline. The end ended the way it had to, with the *cough* Deus Ex Machina making the most sense and more than slightly resembling a guy who could create entire universes on an afternoon.

What I'm saying is: Lee-Kirby, Simonson, Waid, 'ringo, and the others upped the ante. They took science as far as they could, shifted it over a little bit, and then let all hell break loose. Simonson took them to the end of the universe. I mean the universe while it was ending. And they tried to fix it! They're either that stuck on themselves or that good. They named the sled "Rosebud II!" There's no more work to be done: I'm in.

They made it fun, funny, sad, smart, and sexy. They made it goofy and familiar and new. There were stakes and wins and losses.

And yesterday I read that there's a greenlight for a second FF movie. With the same director. So it can also not be good.

Fifty years of how-to manual on making the characters work and the characters don't work. I would've ripped off Mark Waid and been done with it.

And now, on the eve of 2006, with the possiblity that I can ($200,000 later) get close to space maybe, I want my jet pack. Or at least a good Fantastic Four movie.

...maybe I'm more with Larry Young and blame Nixon.