I've mentioned this before, but without the accompanying image. This was the inspiration for the story I did in FF 236, "Terror in a Tiny Town". Thinking "What if this shot was for real. . . ?"
And coincidently, I was just looking at the covers posted in the Ben Grimm thread and noting Fantastic Four #17. Did that scene with Sue and those metal poles perhaps subliminally influence you with your Aurora cover early on in Alpha Flight?
That's a great cover, and I love the story. It's cool to think that it inspired my favorite story of your run, JB. "Terror In A Tiny Town" is one of the best of all the "Fantastic Four" issues, in my opinion. It's up there with "This Man, This Monster" and the Galactus trilogy for me.
I was just looking at the covers posted in the Ben Grimm thread and noting Fantastic Four #17. Did that scene with Sue and those metal poles perhaps subliminally influence you with your Aurora cover early on in Alpha Flight?
*****
It's not impossible!
(Weirdest example of one cover evoking another: When I was doing LEGENDS for DC, I turned in a cover of Captain Marvel standing on a black background surrounded by the empty costumes of his fellow superheroes. The guy who was cover editor back then at first wanted to reject the cover because it reminded him of a FLASH cover -- from 20 years earlier!!!)
JB: "(Weirdest example of one cover evoking another: When I was doing LEGENDS for DC, I turned in a cover of Captain Marvel standing on a black background surrounded by the empty costumes of his fellow superheroes. The guy who was cover editor back then at first wanted to reject the cover because it reminded him of a FLASH cover -- from 20 years earlier!!!)"
What's really weird to me about that is that back when DC reused cover ideas all the time. There was a "Comic Book Marketplace" that showed how DC reworked the covers from several science fiction tales and old "All Star Comics" into newer "Justice League of America" covers. And those covers, apparently, were done intentionally. Not quite homages, as revisting a good cover idea, I suppose.
Well I've never heard this. This is the perfect Fantatsic Four movie. I would seriously love for this story to be some kids first experience with the Fantastic Four. Every once in a while we talk about dream projects for JB. If I had the power to command JB to do what I wanted, I would first make him clean my apartment for all the terrible things he's said about his early work; and then I would make him write a novel version of "Terror in a Tiny Town."
That was what Shooter instructed me to do, for the 20th Anniversary Issue -- "Fantastic Four -- The Movie". So I set about coming up with a story that would have all the elements that would introduce the characters to someone who was unfamiliar with them -- as a movie would -- but in such a way that they would not seem old hat to long-time readers.
Funny to think that only 5 years later the post-SECRET WARS Shooter was so totally about micromanagement that the 25th Anniversary issue was a very, very different beast. . .
By coincidence, "Terror in a Tiny Town" was my very first Fantastic Four -- and it did the job. I was an instant fan.
I was a penny pincher (read "poor") and had no idea at the time where John Byrne was since he had left the X-Men. The drug store just didn't seem to have his other FF and I had never been interested in FF before. Then I saw that cool JB cover with (my then obsession) Woverine tucked into one corner and I snapped it up.
I remember getting my friend to buy a copy too because "This is that artist I was telling you about." My friend was also an instant fan.
Hadn't realized what a stroke of luck this was until reading this thread. It was a mind-bender to read -- scary when Reed comes home with blood all over his arm and talking crazy. Brooding when Ben refused to leave -- then truly thrilling when they managed to triumph despite their tiny size. What a great story -- made better to me by not really knowing who these people were ahead of time.
It's instructive to note how thoroughly we are shown who these guys are by their actions without any "short-hand" references to the past. In that issue, Reed really is a genius because he solves such an incredible mystery; Ben is a truly loyal, heroic friend, Sue is brave and loving through a real crisis, Johnny is charming, young, and true.
Could this really work as Fantastic Four - the MOtion Picture? I'd have to say yes -- since that's essentially what it was to me.
"Terror in a Tiny Town" was the first of my stories to be screwed up by another writer, and from that experience I learned an important lesson.
Bill Mantlo asked if he could use the "tiny town" in MICRONAUTS, which he was writing at the time, and I said sure, since I had no firm plans to return to the setting for a while. I imagined immediately that a fun story could be done with the tiny Micronauts suddenly finding themselves giants in what seemed a perfectly normal human town. A few months later, I happened to be chatting with Bill and asked him how this story was going, and he mentioned what he was doing with the Puppet Master and Doom in his book. I was a little taken aback, since I had left the Puppet Master and the rest of the robot citizens of "Liddleville" chasing Doom, and the whole point had been that being robots they would never tire, and never stop chasing him. "Oh, they just stopped," said Bill. "It was what I needed for my story." So I raised the point about the 3 inch tall Micronauts being giants, and he said no, he was portraying them as the same size as my little robots. "But that would mean the town would need to be the size of a football field!" I said -- which was not how I had shown it in the key shot in FF 236, of course. Bill just shrugged, and again said it was "what (he) needed for (his) story."
It was my first encounter with such an obvious example of the "Can I Use These Characters to Tell MY Story" approach -- tossing vital elements of my story to make his work -- and it taught me that I could never, ever consider any story I did to be completely bulletproof.
Thing is, Bill wasn't even messing with my story maliciously. He genuinely did not see why changing elements upon which my original story basically turned would be a problem. Since then I have seen my stories turned inside out by writers who were doing it for malicious reasons. A sad commentary on what the industry has become, I guess.
JB wrote:
<<So I raised the point about the 3 inch tall Micronauts being giants, and he said no, he was portraying them as the same size as my little robots. "But that would mean the town would need to be the size of a football field!" I said -- which was not how I had shown it in the key shot in FF 236, of course. Bill just shrugged, and again said it was "what (he) needed for (his) story.">>
That was the only Micronauts story I every read (because of Doom and the Puppet Master being the guest stars). I had no idea that they were only 3 inches tall. I thought "Micro" meant something smaller than an inch.
Speaking of great inspirations, the TV show "The Prisoner" was the inspiration of the FF #84 story (I got the reprint of it) because Stan and Jack were fans of that show. I read somewhere once that Jack did artwork for a "Prisoner" comic book for DC (I think), but it never happened. Then in 1988 DC put out a "Prisoner" limited series which I enjoyed. How come they didn't use any of Jack's art? Do you know anything about that, JB?
As I've mentioned before here, I have an ex-girlfriend who fled to Virginia with my copy of EACH AND EVERY page of that Kirby prisoner story. Yep, I won a xerox of the whole thing off Ebay...and now it's gone.
Ever since I've read that Terror was "Fantastic Four: The Movie", I've had a hard time shaking the idea that it would indeed make a phenomenal feature.
IIRC, the Micronauts were suppose to be 6 inches tall when they appeared in our universe.
You'd think being the Micronauts writer from the get-go Mantlo could just easily concoct some pseudo-scientific reason why the 'nauts happened to be the same size as the denizens of Liddleville instead of just ignoring what was established earlier. Aw well.
I believe the ususal Micronauts excuse for sudden size changes was some irregularity in breaching the space wall or possibly some silliness with the Prometheus pit located in the bowels of H.E.L.L.
That comic had some awesome sound effects. Vreet! Vreet! Breeow! PuhCHOOM! PuhCHOOM! "Dallan and Sepis preserve mu... Gleeargh!"
Karza was awesome. He was this Anti-Osirus figure who combined Darth Vader,Thanos, Darkseid,Hitler, and a Shogun Warrior(shoots off his fists! Yeah!) with his own special poor man's version of the power cosmic and even had an astral form like DR. Strange! He was the perfect evil demigod villain for the late 70's /early 80's. He came back from the dead more times than some Legion of Superheroes villains! He had his own personal force field and a deadly cannon in his navel!
And to think he was just a variant of an action figure of Steel Commander Jeeg that Mego happened to license from some side niche of the Japanese Microman line!
I even loved the original Endeavor! It was sort of like a funky Reed Richards protoype for a house hold air conditioner! Or maybe it was more of a food dehydrator with legs.
Now I've done it. You guys probably think that I say *TIK!* between every three words when I talk huh? Well I did draw orginal acroyear armors fighting phobos units in my notebooks back when I was in grade school. I'm hopeless.
