Here's how the 'Fantastic Four' cast looks compared to their comic-book counterparts

"Fantastic Four" is a strange comic book movie, one that's very shy on the actual superheroics. This could have been one of the film's great strengths, but ultimately served to cripple it in the long run. But how much of it comes from the source material?

Quite a bit, it turns out.

If there's any direct comic book parallel to the story in "Fantastic Four," it's in the comic book series "Ultimate Fantastic Four," a 2003 comic book series that rebooted Marvel's First Family in a 21st century context.

While "Ultimate Fantastic Four" was probably pitched as a radical reinvention, it really just ended up making the characters younger (they're adults in the mainstream "Fantastic Four" comics that kicked off in the '60s) and updated their origin a bit (from "spaceship bombarded with cosmic rays" to "interdimensional teleportation accident").

This worked out just fine, though, since - barring maybe the final few installments of its impressive 60-issue run - "Ultimate Fantastic Four" remained very accessible to readers who didn't follow other superhero comics.

Unfortunately, while the new movie takes a lot of cues from the "Ultimate" origins, much of the comics' spirit (read: fun) was left out. But how about the look?

Let's compare: