The first season was one of the worst cartoons I'd ever seen in my life; the second season was one of the best.
The first season had bad animation, bad character designs, unbelievably stupid dialogue, bad stories, and a general disregard for the source material. As an example they had both the Thing and the Human Torch rapping (!) And not even in the same episode!!!
All of this I attribute to one Ron Friedman, who treated this show as though he had lost a bet. Numerous examples of his incompetence abound in this series and both the show and fans of the Fantastic Four comic suffered for it.
The second season was a godsend. The animation, while still similar to 1st season, had improved, mostly in the character designs, and the stories and dialogue had improved a thousandfold. I attribute the success of this season to Tom Tataranowicz (taking over for the mercifully s#it-canned Friedman). The producers (I assume Tataranowicz was behind this) made the smart move of adapting scripts directly from the old comics and, in some cases, even improving upon them! It was a real pleasure seeing Jack Kirby's vision finally done justice.
It's such a shame that the big stories (the Galactus trilogy, for instance) had already been butchered by Friedman and friends. It's also a shame that the later success of the show couldn't help it into a third season. But, hey, at least we got cool FF toys out of the deal!
