An Ordinary Incredible Fantastic Family

ABC sci-fi drama No Ordinary Family owes a big debt to The Incredibles and especially The Fantastic Four.

To fans of superhero lore, the premise of the ABC sci-fi drama No Ordinary Family will sound familiar:

A family of four misfits struggles to master freakish powers that may be more curse than blessing. The members of this superhuman quartet must balance the challenge of crime fighting with the grind of family life, discovering in the process that their love for one another is the greatest power of all.

Anyone who has any appreciation for comic-book history will recognize the storyline. That’s because it was the template for Pixar’s 2004 animated hit The Incredibles.

Like The Incredibles, No Ordinary Family features a suburban foursome moonlighting as superheroes. And as with The Incredibles, half the fun of No Ordinary Family is watching each week as the members of the clan cope with their unwanted abilities; the other half is watching a standard domestic melodrama.

Ordinary father Jim Powell has superstrength. His wife, Julie, is the fastest-moving person on the planet, while daughter Daphne is a telepath. The youngest member of the family, son J.J., has vast intelligence. Although the origins of their powers are still shrouded in mystery, we know they have something to do with a plane crash in Brazil.

Compare that to The Incredibles: Patriarch Bob Parr has virtually the same powers as Jim Powell. Parr’s wife, Helen, has a stretchable body that can be shaped into any form. Their daughter, Violet, can turn invisible and project force fields. Son Dash is the speedster character in this scenario.

But wait, what’s that? You say there’s an even earlier precedent for No Ordinary Family? Oh, right ... The Fantastic Four. Those guys.

In keeping with almost every idea involving modern superheroes, the original concept for both No Ordinary Family and The Incredibles can be traced back to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s work for Marvel Comics. It was in 1961 that Lee and Kirby launched the first issue of The Fantastic Four.

The monthly book was based on a revolutionary idea – Reed Richards (the stretchy one with unlimited brain power), his wife Sue (the invisible one with force-field powers), her brother Johnny (the fiery one), and family friend Ben Grimm (the invulnerable one who looks like a pile of orange rocks, nicknamed the Thing) did not have secret identities. The general public recognized them, and they were exactly what they appeared to be: a family of adventurers and inventors.

Lee and Kirby established the foundation, handing it down to a new generation of young comic creators in the 1970s and '80s, guys like George Perez and John Byrne. That’s when the kids of the original fans — including yours truly — discovered the series. It’s a testament to Lee’s imagination and Kirby’s vision that Fantastic Four spinoffs are being generated to this day, though some may be unofficial knockoffs from ABC and Pixar.

Then there are the official adaptions, the latest being the big-screen adaptations – tellingly, actor Michael Chiklis stars in both No Ordinary Family and the FF movies of 2007 and 2005. Could he be so at home playing Jim Powell because the character is just another version of the Thing?

As well, the plane crash that kicked off No Ordinary Family is an obvious homage to the failed space mission that gave the FF their powers back in issue No. 1.

But what’s really interesting is that all these versions of the FF come at a time when the Fantastic Four comic is undergoing a major transformation. According to the bigwigs at Marvel, one of the main characters will die in a story arc later this year. Fans are treating the impending development like business as usual – death in the Marvel Universe is never permanent.

And just in case you’re wondering about the legal implications, don’t worry – no one is going to get sued for all this theft of intellectual property. That’s because Walt Disney now owns ABC, Pixar, and Marvel.

If you ask me, it’s just the necessary preliminary step before a single globe-spanning multinational owns every other company on the planet. Even the brilliant Lee and Kirby didn’t see that one coming.

The article was originally published in the London Free Press.