Meet the Fanatic Four: ICE Man, Tattooed Can’t Watch Porn Man, the Human Torch, and Good Jeans Woman!

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

Despite repeated attempts to bring together the disparate worlds of the European Union and the MCU (that’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not a Microprocessor Unit, for any semiconductor lovers out there), my screenplay for a reboot of the Fantastic Four featuring senior EU figures has received no response from Hollywood. Apparently, Pedro Pascal makes a better leading man than Manfred Weber!

Undaunted (and at least in part because I’m bored, as the EU Quarter of Brussels is emptier than Donald Trump’s fruit bowl), I’ve been looking to put together a new group of crime fighters. Of course, the crux of any good action movie is to bring out the superhero in even the most misunderstood or outright controversial figure, so please meet … the Fanatic Four!

First there’s ICE Man, played by an actual superhero, Dean Cain (who portrayed Superman in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” in the 1990s). Cain revealed that he has joined US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (better known as ICE) to support Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. Cain recently made headlines for calling the latest Superman film “woke,” after its director described the character as an immigrant. Superman was of course born on the planet Krypton and his birth name was Kal-El, so he’d be exactly the sort of person ICE would be looking to deport.

Next to join the group is poor old Matthew Whelan, who is now officially known as “The King Of Ink Land King Body Art The Extreme Ink-Ite” — which makes that time Prince changed his name into a symbol seem as adventurous as calling your child Olivia or David. He is the U.K.’s most-tattooed man (and if you’ve been to the British coast when the temperature has topped 15 degrees in the past couple of years, you’ll know that’s quite the claim).

Anyway, the King Of Ink Land (etc etc) is having terrible trouble accessing online porn (do they make non-online porn these days? Answers on a postcard) because the facial recognition technology some sites use, thanks to the U.K.’s new digital rules, mistakes his heavily tattooed face for a mask.

The King Of (yada-yada-yada) was also once refused a passport because of his inappropriate name. Government departments get a lot of flak, yet that seems like an excellent decision — but it does surely provide the King (and so forth) with the requisite chip on the shoulder to make him part of the Fanatic Four.

Now, this group clearly needs an element of mystery, so step forward the man who lit his cigarette at the Unknown Soldier War Memorial in Paris! So incensed was Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau at footage of the Moroccan-born man lighting his cigarette on the flame of the memorial, which is under the Arc de Triomphe, that he promised to strip him of his French residency permit.

The addition of this rule-breaking human torch is clearly going to create inter-group tension with ICE Man (and that’s tension within a group, not those weird intergroups in the European Parliament! Side-note: There used to be a kangaroo intergroup in the Parliament, set up to deal with free movement in the EU rather than marsupials).

Finally, there’s actor Sydney Sweeney, whose advert for denim descended into a left/right fight that saw claims that it promotes eugenics, the belief that certain traits are more desirable and people should selectively reproduce to prioritize these genetics, and an intervention from Captain Culture War himself, Donald Trump. “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the HOTTEST ad out there,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Go get ‘em Sydney!” Perhaps the weirdest thing of all is that Trump deleted that post twice and reposted it three times in order to fix typos. Nature is healing!

Now those four sound ideal for a new MCU franchise. We can even add in a cuddly character for the kids. I suggest Buoy, a blue-haired troll who is the mascot of ice hockey team the Seattle Kraken. Buoy was filmed this week in knee-deep water in Alaska when he was chased by a brown bear, who presumably supports another team.

My DMs are open, Hollywood execs.

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“The poor guy still believes his true king’s name is Charles.“

by Gustavo Szulansky