1) Caption needed; 2) wearing a hard hat wouldn’t saved whoever that guy on the right is.
No caption needed. What does the caption add? Either way you have to know the normal real world is Fantastic Four and the fifth guy is the joke. And either way you have to surmise the fifth guy is being killed by the girder.
I suppose the caption let’s you know the joke is specifically in the going from 5 to 4 as opposed to something else but if you are that unfamiliar with the fantastic four I don’t think that would help much.
I confess that I had to look at it for a while before noticing the snapped cable. I kept thinking we should know who #5 was. Wonder what his powers were? Obviously didn’t help.
Earth is the Thing, Fire is the human torch, Water is flexible like Mr Fantastic, Sue can be invisible but powerful like air. Dave is just meeting his fate and joining the etheral plane.
No caption needed, but it doesn’t hurt, either.
Much funnier without the caption, IMO.
Caption, but not THAT caption.
A caption that has nothing to do with what’s happening now; some tangential thing. The ‘ Say “Cheese” ‘ is okay.
I think every person who knows the Fantastic Four would want to know why the fifth member was wearing a mask. (……….. or WAS he?)
Under normal circumstances that caption would just be “unnecessary”, the detail that turns it into “objectionable” and “hideous” is the “Up Style” typography. If the cartoonist wants to clutter up his work with superfluous junk, then only the first three words should be capitalized, the rest needs to be in lower case.
@ Fluffy Bunny Slippers: The fifth member is, of course, Heart. Which I guess is a Whippersnappers reference.
Caption is redundant and, since it is the last thing you see (assuming you’re reading from the top down, looking at the image first), irrelevant. The art is…not so good, so it makes it hard to decipher at a glance, especially given there is a lot of reading in the panel too.
@ Kevin A: That’s not a mask. They are thick, horn-rim glasses. That’s Myopic Fanboy. After he was squashed, The Thing quipped “He nevah saw it comin’.”
Downpuppy, how are they on people getting crushed by safes or pianos?
The best one I remember was being impervious to the 13th bullet.
The first Marvel “What If?” had Spiderman joining the Fantastic Four, with a rather lame costume change reveal. They’ve also rotated a few characters (She-Hulk was in for a while), but someone always left, so the uniforms could stay the same.
Nothing prevents them from imitating The Firehouse Five Plus Two, that Dixieland Band. If they gain a member, The Fantastic Four Plus One.
To me, “The Fantastic Four Plus One” sounds as though that “one” isn’t fantastic.
Maybe the Fantastic Four are like the Three Musketeers.
Arthur: Then how about “The Fantastic (Four Plus One)”?
Olivier: one of my favorite trivia questions is: “Name any four of the Three Stooges”
(not that it’s technically a question..)
For some reason, this whole conversation keeps reminding me of Crosby, Stills & Nash & Young. Can’t imagine why.
As for the caption, I appreciated it, because it made the comic make sense to me, who doesn’t know anything about the Fantastic HoweverMany.
I agree, caption-wise.
I know too much about the FF, so my first thoughts were “well, this has to be after issue #3, since they didn’t get uniforms until then, and is that supposed to be The Baxter Building under construction, or is this much later in their career and they’re planning to move out of the Baxter Building? Maybe the little guy is son Franklin?” But then, this almost has to be a scene from one of the (many/infinite) alternative universes anyway. . . or maybe a spin-off of the Ultimate universe version, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe version?” and I was pondering so hard that I didn’t even notice the falling beam until I read the caption.
Maybe it’s a bunch of Skrulls masquerading as our heroes, with the intent of convincing the populace that they’ve Gone Bad? An old plot, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be reused again and again. Or some of Dr. Doom’s dombots, with the same evil plan? Or The Impossible Man playing some sort of tricks? Or. . . ?
This is actually the Fantastic Four we know — but after the accident, they removed all records of their fifth member, rewrote their history, and doctored all their photos, the same way the Soviets erased all traces of Cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko in 1961, after he was killed in a training accident.
And remember, the Fantastic Four was created in… 1961.
Coincidence? I think not.
Bah. Naming just four is no challenge.
Right. You should be able to list at least the stage names for all six. Emil Sitka was scheduled to become the seventh Stooge, but it never happened.
Better trivia is all the original names of the Stooges. There I have some trouble. I know Moses Horwitz, Jerome Horwitz, and Joe Besser. Others I’d have to look up.
It’s not for the actual trivia that I like that question, it’s just the absurdity of the form it comes in.
Comics I Don't Understand 
1) Caption needed; 2) wearing a hard hat wouldn’t saved whoever that guy on the right is.
No caption needed. What does the caption add? Either way you have to know the normal real world is Fantastic Four and the fifth guy is the joke. And either way you have to surmise the fifth guy is being killed by the girder.
I suppose the caption let’s you know the joke is specifically in the going from 5 to 4 as opposed to something else but if you are that unfamiliar with the fantastic four I don’t think that would help much.
I confess that I had to look at it for a while before noticing the snapped cable. I kept thinking we should know who #5 was. Wonder what his powers were? Obviously didn’t help.
Earth is the Thing, Fire is the human torch, Water is flexible like Mr Fantastic, Sue can be invisible but powerful like air. Dave is just meeting his fate and joining the etheral plane.
No caption needed, but it doesn’t hurt, either.
Much funnier without the caption, IMO.
Caption, but not THAT caption.
A caption that has nothing to do with what’s happening now; some tangential thing. The ‘ Say “Cheese” ‘ is okay.
I think every person who knows the Fantastic Four would want to know why the fifth member was wearing a mask. (……….. or WAS he?)
Under normal circumstances that caption would just be “unnecessary”, the detail that turns it into “objectionable” and “hideous” is the “Up Style” typography. If the cartoonist wants to clutter up his work with superfluous junk, then only the first three words should be capitalized, the rest needs to be in lower case.
Newspaper Spiderman spent a couple weeks in March, 2014 dealing with a girder falling on a busy street>
Marvel New York is pretty relaxed about loosely hanging girders.
http://horrorthon.blogspot.com/2014/03/daily-spider-man-more-like-look-girders.html
@ Fluffy Bunny Slippers: The fifth member is, of course, Heart. Which I guess is a Whippersnappers reference.
Caption is redundant and, since it is the last thing you see (assuming you’re reading from the top down, looking at the image first), irrelevant. The art is…not so good, so it makes it hard to decipher at a glance, especially given there is a lot of reading in the panel too.
@ Kevin A: That’s not a mask. They are thick, horn-rim glasses. That’s Myopic Fanboy. After he was squashed, The Thing quipped “He nevah saw it comin’.”
Downpuppy, how are they on people getting crushed by safes or pianos?
@Singapore Bill: :-)
I used to read Superuseless Superpowers regularly, here: http://superuseless.blogspot.com/
The best one I remember was being impervious to the 13th bullet.
The first Marvel “What If?” had Spiderman joining the Fantastic Four, with a rather lame costume change reveal. They’ve also rotated a few characters (She-Hulk was in for a while), but someone always left, so the uniforms could stay the same.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/What_If%3F_Vol_1_1
Nothing prevents them from imitating The Firehouse Five Plus Two, that Dixieland Band. If they gain a member, The Fantastic Four Plus One.
To me, “The Fantastic Four Plus One” sounds as though that “one” isn’t fantastic.
Maybe the Fantastic Four are like the Three Musketeers.
Arthur: Then how about “The Fantastic (Four Plus One)”?
Olivier: one of my favorite trivia questions is: “Name any four of the Three Stooges”
(not that it’s technically a question..)
For some reason, this whole conversation keeps reminding me of Crosby, Stills & Nash & Young. Can’t imagine why.
As for the caption, I appreciated it, because it made the comic make sense to me, who doesn’t know anything about the Fantastic HoweverMany.
I agree, caption-wise.
I know too much about the FF, so my first thoughts were “well, this has to be after issue #3, since they didn’t get uniforms until then, and is that supposed to be The Baxter Building under construction, or is this much later in their career and they’re planning to move out of the Baxter Building? Maybe the little guy is son Franklin?” But then, this almost has to be a scene from one of the (many/infinite) alternative universes anyway. . . or maybe a spin-off of the Ultimate universe version, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe version?” and I was pondering so hard that I didn’t even notice the falling beam until I read the caption.
Maybe it’s a bunch of Skrulls masquerading as our heroes, with the intent of convincing the populace that they’ve Gone Bad? An old plot, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be reused again and again. Or some of Dr. Doom’s dombots, with the same evil plan? Or The Impossible Man playing some sort of tricks? Or. . . ?
This is actually the Fantastic Four we know — but after the accident, they removed all records of their fifth member, rewrote their history, and doctored all their photos, the same way the Soviets erased all traces of Cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko in 1961, after he was killed in a training accident.
And remember, the Fantastic Four was created in… 1961.
Coincidence? I think not.
Bah. Naming just four is no challenge.
Right. You should be able to list at least the stage names for all six. Emil Sitka was scheduled to become the seventh Stooge, but it never happened.
Better trivia is all the original names of the Stooges. There I have some trouble. I know Moses Horwitz, Jerome Horwitz, and Joe Besser. Others I’d have to look up.
It’s not for the actual trivia that I like that question, it’s just the absurdity of the form it comes in.