Movies THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (Passes $500 Million Globally; Dragonlord's Review, post #1)

If you have seen THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS, how would you rate it?


  • Total voters
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Youre not gonna win this one. "Actual hardcore Fantastic Four fans...". Brah, I was literally just at San Diego Comic con and large group of us went to the movie. Nobody wanted this change and one of the big complaints was how hardcore Surfer fans have never actually gotten to see Norrin Radd in anything except 1 crap movie. Shalla Bal as SS is a completely meaningless character that existed for like 10 panels 40 years ago, in a story that wasnt even about her. Shes practically a "What if...." character. A cameo appearance at best.

I give me buddy crap all the time because hes literally the biggest SS fan I know and I think hes kind of a stupid character. Dont even get him started on how much better Norrin Radd would be.

Also, there were no less than half a dozen Silver Surfer cosplays that I saw throughout the weekend. SS generally isnt one of the more popular costumes. Literally zero of them were Shall-bal. C'mon, man. This was a gender swap just because. If they wanted to go with the "love angle" via Human Torch, it would have made far more sense to have it be Nova (the fire version).

Gotta think about the long game. This take would make more sense if this was a one off movie and we didn't have an MCU.
They have been talking about and planning how to introduce the F4, Galactus, SS, and all the cosmic stuff for years now.
Setting up the story in this way does have purpose because it only adds to Norrin's eventual storyline, making him a deeper character without having to do a whole bunch of exposition on camera about what it means to be a herald of Galactus. I could foresee some kind of storyline where Shalla goes back to her home planet in the 616 universe, finds Norrin, falls in love, and then Galactus shows up to punish her by making Norrin the new SS. Whatever they do going forward is going to feed into his story.
Marvel is clearly planning on being here for the long haul so there is no rush to bring every major player out in one movie. Shalla Bal is a nothing character in the comics, but she fit in perfectly for this movie.
 
Here's a video about 2005 F4 from one of my very favorite YouTubers. It's fun.




If the video is showing up as unavailable, just search for this:

Fantastic Four 2005: The Funtastic Failure
 
I already won, you just can't see it. The fact you guys complain about "gender swaps" even with characters you think are stupid in a movie you say you aren't interested in makes me sad.
Youre misunderstanding. FF and SS were never my thing, and I think SS is kind of a dumb character anyway. My complaint is the eye-rolling "whatever, guys" type of complaint. But the people super invested in FF and/or SS are not just "fine with it". Appealing to her actual appearing in the comics doesnt really mean much when her appearance as SS was basically a throw away for a few pages and never thought of again. You might as well say that Thanos could have been defeated by being arrested, put in handcuffs and put in the back of a squad car because that actually happened in the comics.

When I say it was stupid, I mean from a perspective of appealing to an existing fanbase and probably even finanically. I dont think its far fetched to say that literally zero FF or SS fans were clamoring for a Shalla Ball appearance in a FF movie, especially in whats considered a classic storyline. There are people that didnt want this and are less invested in the movie now, I spent the weekend with many of them. Dismissing them as not being "actual hardcore fans" of FF isnt accurate at all, and to be fair this was always a BS line of reasoning for swapping Radd for Bal. Like I said, this character is essentially a cameo appearance. SS might be sort of a d tier character in terms of popularity, but he does have his fans. None of them are pumping their fist for Shall Ball. Meanwhile, theres an actual fanbase of Norrin Radd, many of whom are like "Man, fuck you guys".

Like it or not, these sort of swaps instantly put off a segment of people, regardless of whether thyere fans. You can argue whether theyre feelings are valid or not. Thats not what Im saying and its not a discussion Im looking for. But I am saying that these people exist and at this point theres even sort of a hyper reaction to stuff like this. On top of that, theres lots of actual fans of FF and SS that youre dismissing by insinuating that they arent "actual hardcore" fans.
Just do an image search for silver surfer cosplay to see how popular the female version has always been. Even here on a karate forum she's getting pretty overwhelming praise, which speaks volumes.
I didnt say there were no female cosplays. What I mean, until this year, there was basically literally one dude that ever cosplayed as SS. It was just him for several years in a row. Yeah, I probably missed a couple here and there. But he was sort of a SDCC mainstay. This year there were actually multiple SS cosplays and I hadnt seen that before. But literally zero of them were Shala Ball. The popularity of this character in the comcis was probably 0.0 on any scale.

What Im saying is, its fine if somebody likes her in the movie. Its a dumb move for reasons Ive already stated but it isnt like they were screwing with one of my favorite characters or something. But for many people, they did screw with it and they arent just fine with that because she appeared as a throwaway character 40 years ago.

Are you familiar with who Nova actually is? Fitting her into this film would have required Olympic level script gymnastics and an extra 30-60 minutes of screen time to make sense. Do you know how she got her powers?
Like they didnt truncate SS and Galactus'origin for this movie or anything? I mean, its MCU, they play kind of fast and loose sometimes with these things. You could swap at Nova and just give a few hints here and there and you dont need to go into full exposition back story, because they didnt even really do that for this one as far as SS or Galactus go. Just a few tidbits and it was done. Theres no reason they couldnt have done the same thing for Nova and filled in the blanks later.
 
Gotta think about the long game. This take would make more sense if this was a one off movie and we didn't have an MCU.
They have been talking about and planning how to introduce the F4, Galactus, SS, and all the cosmic stuff for years now.
Setting up the story in this way does have purpose because it only adds to Norrin's eventual storyline, making him a deeper character without having to do a whole bunch of exposition on camera about what it means to be a herald of Galactus. I could foresee some kind of storyline where Shalla goes back to her home planet in the 616 universe, finds Norrin, falls in love, and then Galactus shows up to punish her by making Norrin the new SS. Whatever they do going forward is going to feed into his story.
Marvel is clearly planning on being here for the long haul so there is no rush to bring every major player out in one movie. Shalla Bal is a nothing character in the comics, but she fit in perfectly for this movie.
Youre thinking theyre gonna put in Radd in a future FF movie? I dunno, maybe.
 
Youre misunderstanding. FF and SS were never my thing, and I think SS is kind of a dumb character anyway. My complaint is the eye-rolling "whatever, guys" type of complaint. But the people super invested in FF and/or SS are not just "fine with it". Appealing to her actual appearing in the comics doesnt really mean much when her appearance as SS was basically a throw away for a few pages and never thought of again. You might as well say that Thanos could have been defeated by being arrested, put in handcuffs and put in the back of a squad car because that actually happened in the comics.

When I say it was stupid, I mean from a perspective of appealing to an existing fanbase and probably even finanically. I dont think its far fetched to say that literally zero FF or SS fans were clamoring for a Shalla Ball appearance in a FF movie, especially in whats considered a classic storyline. There are people that didnt want this and are less invested in the movie now, I spent the weekend with many of them. Dismissing them as not being "actual hardcore fans" of FF isnt accurate at all, and to be fair this was always a BS line of reasoning for swapping Radd for Bal. Like I said, this character is essentially a cameo appearance. SS might be sort of a d tier character in terms of popularity, but he does have his fans. None of them are pumping their fist for Shall Ball. Meanwhile, theres an actual fanbase of Norrin Radd, many of whom are like "Man, fuck you guys".

Like it or not, these sort of swaps instantly put off a segment of people, regardless of whether thyere fans. You can argue whether theyre feelings are valid or not. Thats not what Im saying and its not a discussion Im looking for. But I am saying that these people exist and at this point theres even sort of a hyper reaction to stuff like this. On top of that, theres lots of actual fans of FF and SS that youre dismissing by insinuating that they arent "actual hardcore" fans.

I didnt say there were no female cosplays. What I mean, until this year, there was basically literally one dude that ever cosplayed as SS. It was just him for several years in a row. Yeah, I probably missed a couple here and there. But he was sort of a SDCC mainstay. This year there were actually multiple SS cosplays and I hadnt seen that before. But literally zero of them were Shala Ball. The popularity of this character in the comcis was probably 0.0 on any scale.

What Im saying is, its fine if somebody likes her in the movie. Its a dumb move for reasons Ive already stated but it isnt like they were screwing with one of my favorite characters or something. But for many people, they did screw with it and they arent just fine with that because she appeared as a throwaway character 40 years ago.


Like they didnt truncate SS and Galactus'origin for this movie or anything? I mean, its MCU, they play kind of fast and loose sometimes with these things. You could swap at Nova and just give a few hints here and there and you dont need to go into full exposition back story, because they didnt even really do that for this one as far as SS or Galactus go. Just a few tidbits and it was done. Theres no reason they couldnt have done the same thing for Nova and filled in the blanks later.

Dragonlord, Anung and I have been super invested in this story for decades and we loved this Silver Surfer, who has gotten almost exclusively positive reviews in this thread. The one criticism here was cup size.

Your point was that this was stupid and nobody wanted it, and you are absolutely, undeniably wrong. The fact people are arguing with you is proof of that.

Did this piss off some people? Of course, changing race or sex always pisses off certain people for a variety of reasons, even though that didn't happen here. Norrin Radd is also incredibly popular so I get that some were disappointed he wasn't this Surfer. It pissed me off that Tilda Swinton was cast as The Ancient One, even though I love her and she was great in the role. I got over it quickly because she was really good, but I still have no idea why they made such a radical change.

So, I disagree that this was stupid, and in my opinion it worked really well in the story. Would I also have liked Radd? Probably, I love that character, but that doesn't make the change stupid.
 
7-7.5/10 for me.

The first act was BEAUTIFUL! Dang near perfect. Then they MCU'd the movie towards the end of the second act and all of third act. After introducing their powerful being in Galactus, they dumbed down his powers and intellect for the sake of the movie. A shame too because like I said, the first act was *chef's kiss* Felt like there's about 20ish minutes on the cutting room floor somewhere that they should've kept in the movie.
 
Box office update:

First Steps earned a solid $10.4 million on Monday at the U.S. box office.
 
@Loiosh Yes, I really liked Shalla-Bal as Silver Surfer and the change added a nice dynamic between her and Johnny. But from a business standpoint, this was not a wise move by Marvel Studios to gender swap the character, especially a very well-known character. We're currently living in a politically-charged environment in the fandom and it would have been safer to just not give more ammunition to the hate. I'm sure the vitriol has significantly died down now that people have seen the movie and a lot have grown to like the new version, but the movie could have spared themselves a year of online criticisms and badwill prior to the film's release.

I agree with @Bob Gray that If they wanted a female herald, they could have used Nova (or Stardust). It doesn't matter if her comic book origin is that she's Frankie Raye, a human from Earth or Johnny's girlfriend, they can just retcon her to whatever they want, to make her an alien being that sacrificed herself to become a herald to save her home planet. Just like Drax the Destroyer, Mantis and Adam Warlock, they completely changed their origin stories in the MCU.

On the other hand, if they used Nova instead of a female Silver Surfer, we would have missed out on those cool intergalactic wave-riding surfer moves with the board which was one of the highlights of her character in the film. So there's that.

Gw9C0b4bsAAswzn


@SmilinDesperado I don't want to dampen people's hopes to seeing Norrin Radd in the MCU but in my honest opinion, I'm not sure we will. Shalla Bal for the most part is a hit with the audience. It's going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle. So if there's going to be a future appearance by a Silver Surfer, my money is it's going to be Shalla Bal from this film. Plus, if they're going to bring back Galactus in the future, I think they are going to get Ralph Ineson again which killed it as the Devourer of Worlds. And I don't foresee them recasting Galactus. So if you bring back Ineson's Galactus, Julia Garner's Silver Surfer would have to come back as well.

Shalla Bal as SS is a completely meaningless character that existed for like 10 panels 40 years ago, in a story that wasnt even about her.

Appealing to her actual appearing in the comics doesnt really mean much when her appearance as SS was basically a throw away for a few pages and never thought of again.

I'm not a Shalla Bal comic book fan or anything like that, but if you're referring to Shalla Bal only appearing on the first issue of the Silver Surfer comic in 1968, the character did appear in a lot of key Silver Surfer stories over the years, mostly as a hostage and pawn lol. She was abducted by Mephisto and Doctor Doom a couple of times. Then she became empress of her homeworld of Zenn-la in the mid 80s. But overall, she was an insignificant character and mainly served as Norrin's muse and motivation for his actions.
 
Dragonlord, Anung and I have been super invested in this story for decades and we loved this Silver Surfer, who has gotten almost exclusively positive reviews in this thread. The one criticism here was cup size.

Your point was that this was stupid and nobody wanted it, and you are absolutely, undeniably wrong. The fact people are arguing with you is proof of that.

Did this piss off some people? Of course, changing race or sex always pisses off certain people for a variety of reasons, even though that didn't happen here. Norrin Radd is also incredibly popular so I get that some were disappointed he wasn't this Surfer. It pissed me off that Tilda Swinton was cast as The Ancient One, even though I love her and she was great in the role. I got over it quickly because she was really good, but I still have no idea why they made such a radical change.

So, I disagree that this was stupid, and in my opinion it worked really well in the story. Would I also have liked Radd? Probably, I love that character, but that doesn't make the change stupid.
Great. I didnt say nobody could like it.

When I say its stupid, Im saying the studio alienates a portion of the fanbase and potential ticket buyers outright. Im not arguing those people are wrong or right. Im saying they exist. There are people that now wont see this movie because of the decision. Petty? Sure. But thats the reality. And theres theres another portion of the audience that are just fed up with decisions like this in general. Again, Im not arguing that theyre right. Im saying they exist. And what is the gain? Pretty much nothing.

Thats why the decision is stupid. They alienate potential fanbase and audience goers to appeal to a fanbase that doesnt exist. I get that you liked her, and thats fine. But I doubt if it had been Norrin Radd you would have said "Damn, this would be WAY better if they replaced SS with some character that appeared one time in a few pages 40 years that no one remembers." Point being, you would have enjoyed it regardless, where as other people now enjoy it less.

And again, you're dismissing the opinions of people when you say stuff like "that didnt happen here". Yes, it did happen. It happened with many people. or saying that "True hardcore fans....", etc. Its nonsense. I agree that for many people its not a big deal, and thats perfectly fine. But for some, many of them "hardcore FF fans", it was a big deal.
 
I'm not a Shalla Bal comic book fan or anything like that, but if you're referring to Shalla Bal only appearing on the first issue of the Silver Surfer comic in 1968, the character did appear in a lot of key Silver Surfer stories over the years, mostly as a hostage and pawn lol. She was abducted by Mephisto and Doctor Doom a couple of times. Then she became empress of her homeworld of Zenn-la in the mid 80s. But overall, she was an insignificant character and mainly served as Norrin's muse and motivation for his actions.
I just mean Shalla Bal as SS, not the character in general. Like I said, I have no issue with people liking her in the movie. I like the actress, even though I cant remember her name for the life of me. But I do admit when hear stuff like "This is comic accurate" or "comic book fans understand" I just kinda roll my eyes because that one version of the character is just basically non existent, and I do think the change was probably politically motivated as opposed to anyone thought the story would actually be improved by the swap. But who knows, maybe if they do end up with some Radd encounter/crossover/storyline the end game for their storyline will make sense.
 
@Loiosh Yes, I really liked Shalla-Bal as Silver Surfer and the change added a nice dynamic between her and Johnny. But from a business standpoint, this was not a wise move by Marvel Studios to gender swap the character, especially a very well-known character. We're currently living in a politically-charged environment in the fandom and it would have been safer to just not give more ammunition to the hate. I'm sure the vitriol has significantly died down now that people have seen the movie and a lot have grown to like the new version, but the movie could have spared themselves a year of online criticisms and badwill prior to the film's release.

I agree with @Bob Gray that If they wanted a female herald, they could have used Nova (or Stardust). It doesn't matter if her comic book origin is that she's Frankie Raye, a human from Earth or Johnny's girlfriend, they can just retcon her to whatever they want, to make her an alien being that sacrificed herself to become a herald to save her home planet. Just like Drax the Destroyer, Mantis and Adam Warlock, they completely changed their origin stories in the MCU.

On the other hand, if they used Nova instead of a female Silver Surfer, we would have missed out on those cool intergalactic wave-riding surfer moves with the board which was one of the highlights of her character in the film. So there's that.

Gw9C0b4bsAAswzn


@SmilinDesperado I don't want to dampen people's hopes to seeing Norrin Radd in the MCU but in my honest opinion, I'm not sure we will. Shalla Bal for the most part is a hit with the audience. It's going to be hard to put the genie back in the bottle. So if there's going to be a future appearance by a Silver Surfer, my money is it's going to be Shalla Bal from this film. Plus, if they're going to bring back Galactus in the future, I think they are going to get Ralph Ineson again which killed it as the Devourer of Worlds. And I don't foresee them recasting Galactus. So if you bring back Ineson's Galactus, Julia Garner's Silver Surfer would have to come back as well.





I'm not a Shalla Bal comic book fan or anything like that, but if you're referring to Shalla Bal only appearing on the first issue of the Silver Surfer comic in 1968, the character did appear in a lot of key Silver Surfer stories over the years, mostly as a hostage and pawn lol. She was abducted by Mephisto and Doctor Doom a couple of times. Then she became empress of her homeworld of Zenn-la in the mid 80s. But overall, she was an insignificant character and mainly served as Norrin's muse and motivation for his actions.
I do have to admit one thing. I did think a few times, that if this were Radd and they found the right person and voice, he could have been very intimidating in a way that this character simply was not. The scene were Johnny grabs the board and her face just peers over slowly. I couldnt help but think that that could have been a really tense moment. A voice like....I dunno, Stephen McHattie or something. Keith David? Just off the top of my head. I dunno who it could have been exactly, but her voice just....meh. Maybe not deep, but sort of clinically detached. like....er....Jason Isaacs? I think Lance Reddick would have killed it, but R.I.P.
 
I do have to admit one thing. I did think a few times, that if this were Radd and they found the right person and voice, he could have been very intimidating in a way that this character simply was not. The scene were Johnny grabs the board and her face just peers over slowly. I couldnt help but think that that could have been a really tense moment. A voice like....I dunno, Stephen McHattie or something. Keith David? Just off the top of my head. I dunno who it could have been exactly, but her voice just....meh. Maybe not deep, but sort of clinically detached. like....er....Jason Isaacs? I think Lance Reddick would have killed it, but R.I.P.

Lee Pace would be my choice to voice Norrin Radd. The actor has a rich, soothing, commanding voice with a deep baritone quality. Although he already portrayed Ronan the Accuser in the MCU, his voice was darker and exaggerated. For the Silver Surfer, he can just use his normal voice, modulated for a slightly resonant metallic effect. Just watch an episode of Foundation, Halt and Catch Fire or Pushing Daisies and his voice will win you over.

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Just seen it

I liked it quite a bit. Vanessa Kirby isn’t just a smoke show, she can act her ass off. Pedro Pascal too. I know folks are getting tired of seeing him but I’ve been a fan of his acting since Game of Thrones.

Galactus was terrifying

Silver Surfer’s gender didn’t really matter that much which was a relief.

Finally got a great F4 movie and cast. Jessica Alba will always be fine but she can’t act like Kirby can.

8/10
 
@Bob Gray I mentioned my reasons why the gender swap was not a good move from a business standpoint. I will make an argument on why it sort of made sense from a creative and storytelling perspective.

There's a trend in the CBM world, popularized by Marvel Studios, to never let the audience see the same thing twice if they can help it. So that means skipping the origin story if it's a remake or reboot. The same principle applies to some characters to make them fresh and not just copy-paste from the previous versions. Let's just say that there's mandate for this and we have to work with these parameters.

Silver Surfer appeared in the 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and was for the most part, a near-perfect live-action adaptation of the character. He was portrayed as a stoic, emotionless, guilt-ridden character. If you bring the same Norrin Radd in First Steps with the same apathetic, impassive personality and knowing the limited scope of Shalla Bal's role in the film, there's a chance audience would have been underwhelmed and left with an impression that they've seen it all before. There was nothing new with the character especially if you compare the 2007 and 2025 ending arc for both Surfers.

How to make Norrin Rad fresh? One way is to drastically change his personality or appearance. That would have been a terrible direction to go in. So that's a non-starter.

If Norrin Radd was in First Steps, Sue Storm would have been the more logical choice for one of the F4 characters that he will connect with. And we've already seen this relationship before in the 2007 movie. Plus if they paired Sue and Norrin, this would have offset the delicate balance of the team and the movie, inadvertently giving Sue an even more bigger role in the film and therefore inviting a lot of criticisms from haters.

Who else can they pair Norrin with? Ben Grimm? Mmm, maybe they can relate to each other because of their respective deformity but aside from that, I don't see much chemistry between the two. What about Reed Richards? Maybe they can connect on an intellectual or philosophical level but not much else. So that leaves Johnny Storm. Johnny is the only member that can fly and can keep up with the Surfer. But then it would get awkward when Johnny keeps on pestering to talk to the Surfer and audience would no doubt question Johnny's sexual orientation, which will lead to even bigger criticisms.

So from a storytelling perspective, Shalla Bal made sense because Johnny was the only option left for which F4 character to be linked with. This also gave Johnny a bigger role in the film and sort of a romantic interest in the film.

Not trying to win you over, just trying to let you see it from a different angle.
 
@Bob Gray I mentioned my reasons why the gender swap was not a good move from a business standpoint. I will make an argument on why it sort of made sense from a creative and storytelling perspective.

There's a trend in the CBM world, popularized by Marvel Studios, to never let the audience see the same thing twice if they can help it. So that means skipping the origin story if it's remake or reboot. The same principle applies to some characters to make them fresh and not just copy-paste from the previous versions. Let's just say that there's mandate for this and we have to work with these parameters.

Silver Surfer appeared in the 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and was for the most part, a near-perfect live-action adaptation of the character. He was portrayed as a stoic, emotionless, guilt-ridden character. If you bring the same Norrin Radd in First Steps with the same apathetic, impassive personality and knowing the limited scope of Shalla Bal's role in the film, there's a chance audience would have been underwhelmed and left with an impression that they've seen it all before. There was nothing new with the character.

How to make Norrin Rad fresh? One way is to drastically change his personality or appearance. That would have been a terrible direction to go in. So that's a non-starter.

If Norrin Radd was in First Steps, Sue Storm would have been the more logical choice for one of the F4 characters that he will connect with. And we've already seen this relationship before in the 2007 movie. Plus if they paired Sue and Norrin, this would have offset the delicate balance of the team and the movie, inadvertently giving Sue an even more bigger role in the film and therefore inviting a lot of criticisms from haters.

Who else can they pair Norrin with? Ben Grimm? Mmm, maybe they can relate to each other because of their respective deformity but aside from that, I don't see much chemistry between the two. What about Reed Richards? Maybe they can connect on an intellectual or philosophical level but not much else. So that leaves Johnny Storm. Johnny is the only member that can fly and can keep up with the Surfer. But then it would get awkward when Johnny keeps on pestering to talk to the Surfer and audience would no doubt question Johnny's sexual orientation, which will lead to even bigger criticisms.

So from a storytelling perspective, Shalla Bal made sense because Johnny was the only option left for which F4 character to be linked with. This also gave Johnny a bigger role in the film and sort of a romantic interest in the film.

Not trying to win you over, just trying to let you see it from a different angle.
Fair enough, you've given the only really worthwhile argument I've heard as to how it could have been a legitimate narrative choice. Honestly, I dont think that was the reasoning behind their decision, but I suppose we'll never know. Like I said, I thought fiery Nova would have made more sense as some sort of intrinsic hook for Johnny. I didnt really buy this angle where hes kind of into her.
 
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Fair enough, you've given the only really legitimate argument I've heard as to how it could have been a legitimate narrative choice. Honestly, I dont think that was the reasoning behind their decision, but I suppose we'll never know. Like I said, I thought fiery Nova would have made more sense as some sort of intrinsic hook for Johnny. I didnt really buy this angle where hes kind of into her.

As they mentioned in the movie, Johnny is big time into space and girls. So Shalla Bal was the perfect dream girl for him. ;)
 
I kind of suspect they offered the Silver Surfer role to Keanu Reeves the way it was always rumored, and he turned it down. And when he did, they said, "Listen, you Canadian bastard. If you don't take the roll, we're gonna cut surfers dick off." But John Wick didn't care because he's all balls and he said fine just do it. And they did it. Because Disney doesn't fuck around either.

So we have what we have. Johnny Storm gonna try to hook up with Norrin's wife. Way she goes. Silver Surfer goin be cucked by the human torch. I'm a Green Lantern fan and they have basically erased Kyle Rayner from existence even though he's the best Lantern, so I feel the surfer fans pain, but at some point, we have to give up on what we loved as kids and turn the stories over to the new kids. Since we're grown up now and life sucks for us anyways.
 
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