#3 Marvel's Avengers Assemble

Today I review Marvel’s Avengers Assemble.

While I realise that it has its flaws the sceptre-ex-machina for example, it’s… Oh, wait, oh boy… Today I’ll be reviewing Marvel’s Avengers Assemble

A poster pose designed to look like a film poster

Really, can you blame me for not being able to tell the difference, not only is its title the same as the UK release title of the film, it's a copy-paste job of the logo too (although different images have had different interpretations of the logo)

Marvel’s animated works have been of variable, but overall decent quality. Sony’s Spectacular Spider-man was great series that had every character pegged and relatable (even J Jonah Jamerson, if you believe that’s possible) but as the show reached the end of its second season. Disney, then owner of Marvel, gained the animation rights for Spider-man back. With it they started a new Spider-man series: Ultimate Spider-Man. I was introduced to this series before I had watched Spectacular, but at least for its 1st season, it sucked. Genuine humour was replaced with 4^th wall jokes and scenes that take you out of the action. Unlike when Teen Titans used this gimmick, it was not used sparingly. And the Peter Parker element was almost entirely ignored. The second season offered some improvement, but still suffered similar problems.

 

Ultimate Spider-man, for all it's flaws still a show I'd rather be watching than this one

What does this show have to do with the Avengers? You ask. Well, Marvel had a show called Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. It was a show with great characters, great story, great dialogue, and encompassed most of the Marvel Universe. However whilst this show was airing its second seasons, Ultimate Spider-man also debuted versions of these characters. Things got more confusing when Spider-man turned up in Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes. Only in this version he was a 17 year old, but voiced by the same actor (originally intended to be Josh Keaton, who did the voice in Spectacular Spider-man.) As its second season came to a close, a new series was announced. Avengers Assemble. There was a confusion of what it was supposed to be, whether it was supposed to be a continuation of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, or a series connected to the Ultimate Spider-man series. Sadly, it proved to be the latter. And now I’m about to rage, making plenty of comparisons to its predecessor.

 

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Definitely a show I'd much rather watch than this one

 Before I do, a possible criticism a lot of people could bestow upon me for reviewing this is ‘it’s a kids show’ and it is. But it’s also a comic book adaptation. As a comic book adaptation, it should appeal to people who read comic books, ages for comic-book readers vary; it’s definitely not just kids that read them.

With that out of the way: THIS SHOW SUCKS!!!

Wanting to cash in on the movie franchise, the show titular characters are those from the movie, with the Falcon added as a relatable new character (nothing like his movie counterpart, I note) except they seem to have no clue what to do with Black Widow (the only female character on the roster) so she’s absent for quite a lot of episodes.

Black Widow, what part of bad-ass Russian Super-spy do they not understand?

So, a small synopsis for the series:

When the Red Skull teams up with MODOK and “kills” Captain America, Iron Man, who had creepily been keeping an eye on every Avenger reforms the team to avenge (pun intended) their fallen comrade.

This is an interesting premise. But given the new Marvel Universes stance against overreaching story arcs, you know it isn’t gonna last.

Indeed Captain America is revealed to be alive by the end of the first episode! So, the Avengers reformed, the Red Skull, now equipped with Iron Man armour assembles a Cabal of villains including Hyperion, Dracula and Attuma. These are good choices of villains, none of which had previously appeared in Earth’s mightiest heroes. You could argue that this is their overreaching story arc, but aside episodes that actually feature them, it’s not even referenced. As a result a lot of the stories feel like filler. Particularly during the latter half of the series, which is frustrating as it was just when the cabal was getting good.

 

The Cabal, before the addition of Hyperion

I’ll get into some of the stories later on, but first the animation and design. It’s nice, it’s fluid, but the colour pallet seems a lot darker in this series. One of the better things about Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes it’s bright colour-pallet. It certainly helped to differentiate it from the darker Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series (both of which I think are brilliant.) The darker colours I guess were to make them look more like their movie counterparts.

Comparison: Hulk from Avenger's Assemble (left) vs Earth's mightiest heroes (right) 

Voice acting, *sighs* I don’t particularly like the choices of voice actors for this series, again they were taken immediately from the Ultimate Spider-man Series. And I can understand that, for the most part they didn’t want to use the same voice actors as in the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes counterparts (although this makes changing Josh Keaton to Drake Bell in EMH even more confusing to me) none of them come of well compared to their counterpart from said show. Adrian Pasdar is not as good as Eric Loomis (when you consider they want to be like the movies, Eric Loomis sounds remarkably like Robert Downey Junior) Roger Craig Smith can’t do the man out of time routine the way Brian Bloom could. Laura Bailey does a terrible Black Widow (take note Marvel) she doesn’t sound remotely Russian (not that they ever bring that up) and she’s not good in comparison to Vanessa Marshel’s take. Travis Willingham does a decent job as Thor, given the character that was written for him. I honestly prefer Rick D. Wasserman’s take on the character. Troy Baker makes an OK Hawkeye, again given the role he was given, again I prefer Chris Cox’s voice for Hawkeye.

Hyperion: Marvel's answer to Superman. If the question was can they make a less iconic, villain, Superman?

So: characterisation and story; Iron Man is the over-confident leader, Captain America is the smart-ass, Black Widow is the bad-ass, shake your head at the men, kinda woman, Thor has an ego, Hawkeye has an ego, the Hulk has an ego, and Falcon is the naïve new recruit. And yes, the characters are that bland. Character development episodes do not have any ramifications that actually develop the characters, usually it explorers an element of the character’s personality, and expands upon it, and often the results are terrible. Also, while I don’t mind the team having disagreements, fights often come about over cookies and pickles!

 

Modok in a Super-adaptoid. Nothing to do with characterisation...

Briefly going through the stories: There’s an episode where Thor believes he must sacrifice himself to defeat the Mittgard serpent, everyone else convinces him he doesn’t. There’s an episode where Black Widow is tasked to find a weakness of the Hulk to exploit. Hawkeye and Black Widow are sent to do a mission without informing the team, the team experience a life of being the Hulk, the Impossible Man wants to make Falcon a star, Odin wants Thor to return to Asgard, the team follow a day in the life of the Hulk, they discover Hawkeye’s circus origin, they battle Galactus with the Guardians of the Galaxy (after they’ve stopped fighting the Guardians of the Galaxy), they spend time on the Savage Lands, Hawkeye and the Hulk are forced to fight in an arena and (shock horror) they discover that Falcon’s mother is visiting! These are all rather weak episodes.

The Guardians of the Galaxy appear, it's not in any way memorable

Doctor Doom is probably the greatest character in the show, outside of the Cabal (yeah, you know a show’s in trouble when it’s villains are far more interesting than his heroes) while the voice of Lex Lang I’d say was better, Maurice LaMarche does a pretty decent job. Some of his schemes seem a little head-scratching, but his character is there. My only problem is he seems to lose too often. This is not a trait I really associate with Doctor Doom.

 

Doctor Doom's appearance make for some really interesting stories, even if I prefer his more better than thou approach from Earth's Mightiest Heroes

The show does give a little insight into the wider Marvel Universe: Spider-man, the Thing, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Glorian are featured. It also has an episode featuring Ant-man (who is just as bland a character as any other, so…) It doesn’t really match the tone of the movies, like it intended to. The humour is incredibly forced at times (the dialogue is not very good) but the movies knew when to get serious, this show often doesn’t.

THIS SHOW GIVES ME RAGE ISSUES!

The show has some potential, but it needs to stop thinking character development can be a done-in-one type episode. Actions have consequences, and not everything is short term. While it doesn’t need to have long story arcs, it would help to have a few shorter ones to give characters time to shine. But the biggest issue is that it replaced Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and is in almost no ways better than its predecessor.

Rage rating: 74/100

Next: Batman Annual #1 (The New 52)

Disclaimer: Avengers and all related Characters are property of Marvel. Marvel is owned by Disney. Images used in this review are subject to fair use

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