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Underground > Comic Books >

herbie the robot!!??!?!

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

18:07 / 04.02.02

Okay, so I was pootling around on IRC, and I found a guy who was offering downloads of the fantastic four cartoon. And I'd not seen the thing since I was about 6, and the only other involvement with the FF was reading FF1234, so I thought, yeah, I'll download an ep. But then to my infinite horror, as the title sequence rolls and they introduce the characters... Reed Richards, Sue, Ben Grimm, "and their newest member- herbie the robot!!" And I was like what the fuck! where's Johnny Storm? He was my favourite! How the fuck could they replace Johnny with that twatty little robot?
Is this because some kid set himself on fire so he could be like Johnny? Does anybody know why this crime against comic-loving society happened? Was this pisshead of a droid in any of the comics? How did they write out Johnny, or did he just mysteriously vanish? Does anybody know any of the backstory about this guy (both fictional and real-life?)
Anyway. Rantette over.
Also, any other sickening major modifications to comics anyone feels like bitching about?

Oh, and if any moderator-types think this should be in movies/tv/theatre and not here, then move it... I just thought, cartoon of a comic, blah blah blah....

[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: Johnny Haiku ]

18:34 / 04.02.02

The truth about HERBIE.

My life has been full of lies! The "Keep the Children from trying to Flame On" rumour has been questioned. Dear Lord.

[ 04-02-2002: Message edited by: moriarty ]

19:38 / 04.02.02

That's a sucky reason. I liked the Junior Johnny 'flame on' story better.

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

20:00 / 04.02.02

cheers for the link moriarty.
quote:
<from link>
This meant that, the following year when NBC wanted to buy a new, animated Fantastic Four series, the rights to the Torch were encumbered. Universal -- which was not to be involved in the cartoon show -- would not make a deal that would allow the Torch to be included. Therefore, he was replaced by a robot named H.E.R.B.I.E., conceived and named by Stan Lee and designed by Jack Kirby.

It gets worse- I had some kind of faith in Kirby and Lee not to do something this sucky- I assumed that some middle management/marketing dude was behind the decision. I mean, couldn't they have made up a 'new' character called, say, Jimmy Strom, who glows with electricity and shocks people or something? Why a robot? And why such a goddamn annoying one?
The image (above) presumably came from a comic- does this mean herbie and johnny were seen together in print? or did the comics with herbie have johnny mysteriously disappear as well?

20:16 / 04.02.02

Sorry. Before I edited my first post to reveal the truth (Damnable Truth!) I mentioned that HERBIE appeared in numerous FF issues, where he became possessed and tried to kill his teammates. Yes, HERBIE and his rival Johnny met.

05:09 / 07.02.02

There were plenty of fun FF cartoons made before that which did have Johnny in them. Many of the stories were straight out of the comics. Cartoon Network airs them all the time.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

13:07 / 07.02.02

(geek alert)

Marv Wolfman brought HERBIE into the comic soon after #200 and eventually revealed that one of his villains from Tomb of Dracula (Dr. Sun) was the mind inside the robot...which always made me wonder if Reed Richards was smart enough to create all the inventions he did, why couldn't he build a simple flying robot without that happening? Jesus....Dr. Doom was able to build robots so good that Marvel used them to explain away any shitty Doom story.

The Sinister Haiku Bureau

14:18 / 07.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Sandfarmer:
There were plenty of fun FF cartoons made before that which did have Johnny in them. Many of the stories were straight out of the comics. Cartoon Network airs them all the time.

That's good to know- I was kinda confused because if there weren't any cartoons with johnny, then I wouldn't have seen them, which means that I wouldn't have known who he was (til ff1234), and I do, which made roundabout no sense... I'll try and find some of those, the PROPER ones...

14:28 / 07.02.02

They were done in the 60's. One thing to notice about them is the credits. They actually give Stan Lee and Jack Kirby story and creator credits. Makes me think about how fucked up it is that on Marvle's "Ultimate Spider-Man" they give story credits to fucking Bill Jemas but not to Stan Lee and Ditko. Its the same fucking story just told differently. In short, fuck everyone.