TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Season 1 episodes 1-5

With Avengers: Age of Ultron having come out only a few months back, it’s time I think to look at the Avengers cartoon

NO NOT THAT PIECE OF SH*T (Season 2 review coming when season 2 is done)

No, for this retrospective we’ll be looking at the full and complete run of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

Because of the long season lengths and the fact that I have other shows I want to do retrospectives on I will do each series in 5 parts (so 10 overall) so let’s dive into the first 5 episodes of the series.

Iron Man is born

The first few episodes of the season comprise of a collection of mini-episodes aired before the season’s official première.

God, love that opening theme.

We see Iron Man fighting a giant robot because… This is New York, there are always giant monster of some sort attacking.

James Rhodes and Tony Stark have their little talk as Tony heads to work. Pepper is there to greet him. Aww, it’s like the family is back together. Oh and HYDRA attacked the United Nations. S.H.I.E.L.D. are still far enough away that the full assembly could be slaughtered, so it’s up to Iron Man and lots of useless soldiers to do the work.

JARVIS is in this as an AI because they to tie into the Iron Man movie somehow. I do like Eric Loomis as Iron Man, he has the cockiness and the superhero-ness of Tony Stark down, or at least a young version of him (helps that he sounds remarkably like Robert Downey Junior without much effort)

Nick Fury’s at the helm of the Heli-carrier moving in, and this version is a cross between the Samuel L Jackson Nick Fury and the Marvel 616 (or Hasslehoff if you prefer) version. Don’t worry, he’ll go full Samuel in season 2.

So, Tony discovers his tech is being used in the armour and is rightfully p*ssed off. S.H.I.E.L.D. finally arrive and their first initiative is to train their guns on Iron Man, because they’re idiots I guess. Oh and their using Stark tech too. Lovely.  So, HYDRA is captured, Nick Fury is the only smart person in S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently, so time to look at their angle.

The HYDRA agents are taken to S.H.I.E.L.D. prison #1 of 4, the Vault. Holding tech based super-villains and holding several high-profile supervillains including Baron Strucker, who is nothing like the bland thing in age of Ultron.

It turns out that the Grim Reaper (yeah, that’s really his name) had used the attack to smuggle himself into the prison. Nick Fury ultimately takes Strucker and Reaper on and fortunately neither of them have super-strength or anything and we see that Fury has brains as he manages to take both of them down.

It’s a decent start to a fledgling series. Certainly packs a lot in. Manages to showcase Iron Man and develop S.H.I.E.L.D. without them looking too incompetent. My issue is with their aggressiveness, particularly with Maria Hill, was she not even watching the fight?

The animation looks a tad grainy in this one. We’ll have to keep a look out on that as the series progresses.

Rating 7/10

Behold the Mighty Thor

We start at a shipping yard where the wrecking crew are busy, well wrecking things. Jane Foster and her medical team are suffered to deal with injuries related to this attack. Note: Jane Foster is, as she should be, a medic!

Naturally the police are useless against them and Jane’s partner is unwilling to help as the wrecking  crew closes in. Thankfully one hell of a guardian angel is there to help. Thor. The wrecking crew are strong enough to go toe to toe with Thor, but ultimately he prevails. Thor is curious about Jane and how she risks her life despite the odds against her. Before they can finish, Thor is called to Asgard by a not-black Heimdall. (I have no problems with the movie version of Heimdall, just an observation)

Frost giants close on the capital throwing rocks to break through the walls. Note also how they don’t have a massive electro-force-field thing. Leading the charge is Loki, with more scars on his eyes. The warriors 3 begin their charge.

Odin is near the Odin sleep so is vulnerable. Thor charges into battle as Baldar manages to fell a frost giant, and so do the warriors 3, but they’re thrown back leaving Lady Sif to feel the full frontal blast. Thor arrives to save them. Odin is pleased that his son has finally returned home.

As houses are destroyed and frost giants fallen, Thor is trapped in ice by Loki’s magic to prolong the fight a little longer. Thor takes the last frost giants down before facing off against Loki.  Loki does the same sh*t he does in the film, he’s annoyed that Thor was chosen over him and bla bla bla. Thor overpowers him and brings him to Odin who banishes him to the Isle of Silence.

Thor wishes to attend to Midgard whilst Odin is in the sleep but Odin wishes him to stay. Odin and Thor’s conversation gets loud and Thor storms out, taking the bifröst home. But little does he know the Enchantress is watching.

We see that Loki had initiated the Wrecking Crew’s attack and persuaded the frost giants to his cause. He also made sure that Thor would be around using some woman who... What? OK, Thor is a bit of an idiot with this one. How did he not realise that they were too away to see that. Maybe the Enchantress worked some magic. Oh he also disguised himself as Baldar to ignite Odin’s suspicions.

This episode gives you a great look into Thor, we see most of his supporting cast and his major enemies, that’s quite an accomplishment in a single episode. Plus it lays down a lot of groundwork for the season going forward

Animation is still a tad off in places. It’s particular when it holds in one place for too long, or it might just be my DVD

Rating 8/10

Hulk vs the World

This episode introduces 3 big players in the Avengers.

We start with Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk walking through a city when he’s recognised by police and makes a run for it. He manages to give the cop the slip whilst resisting the urge to let out the Hulk. Hulk-buster units lead by General Ross, enter the city

Bruce finds Carl ‘Crusher’ Kreel, a gamma villain which Bruce was able to track. He knows that he was taken to the cube, a prison for gamma villains. Bruce suspects that SHIELD is using gamma experiments to create weapons. Carl punches him out, saying that he knows exactly who Bruce is: The Hulk

Hulkbusters are en-route as the Hulk and absorbing man fight. Hulk smashes him down until he’s knocked back by the Hulkbusters. Clearly they haven’t worked out the sedative works better than bullets with the hulk.

Before Ross can complete his mission he gets a call off order from S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Barton and Romanov. AKA Hawkeye and the Black Widow. Hawkeye is the major player in this series, whilst Black Widow will be taking more of a back-seat role. Ross doesn’t care about the agents and orders them to fire. The Hulk stops his attack to stop the missile, and then uses his only chance to get away to save the S.H.I.E.L.D. ship that was hit. Black widow knocks him out with electricity.

We cut to the cube where Banner and Kreel are being locked up. Barton wants to talk to Banner, passing a few gamma criminals on his way in. Everything they’d been told about the Hulk doesn’t add up.

S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Leonard Samson extracts some blood from the Hulk that will be important later, so will Samson but… Hawkeye spots Black Widow steeling the Hulk’s blood. He accesses her files (after so many password attempts, shouldn’t he be locked out) and finds that she is a spy for HYDRA.

He tries to intercept the exchange of the Hulk’s blood, but she turns the situation around making everyone else think that he is the double agent. And by fighting them off he does a good job of not proving his innocence.

It’s another good episode, that crams a lot into what is really only a short time frame.

Rating 8/10

Meet Captain America

We have 2 primary villains and a primary hero to introduce

We see the origins of Captain America as they always were. He’s a soldier too weak for combat until he gets the perfect steroids to make him become a super-soldier. He’s accompanied by a teenage boy. I repeat, he’s accompanied by a teenaged boy. Hide your kids, folks!

OK, I jest, this is Bucky Barnes (Scott Menville), Marvel’s answer to why kid sidekicks don’t work. They’re raiding a HYDRA base where the Red Skull is up to some sort of top secret project. Oh and possibly Wolverine is there too. At the very least it’s the voice of Steve Blum

Since when did they have sticky grenades in World War II anyway? Red Skull unleashes his monster but Cap defeats it, they enter the lab finding things that would mean big trouble for the allies if unleashed.

They’re surrounded and Cap surrenders to avoid Bucky getting hurt. It seems here that the Red Skull at least at one point served under Baron Zemo. The relationship between the two is complicated in the comics.

Anyway, they’ve tapped into the Bifrost and are bringing specemins from across the 9 realms in, as they’re in the middle of summoning a frost giant Cap breaks free and in the ensuing fight, the captured specimens are released

Bucky fights against Strucker and electrocutes him (why is bucky wearing a mask anyway) they destroy the facility and the Red Skull promises revenge as he makes his escape from the fortress using a rocket. Cap is hot on his tale.

Bucky goes against orders and follows Cap onto the Rocket. The Red skull activates a bomb and escapes in a jet chair. Bucky gets his leg caught and kicks Cap off the rocket so that he wouldn’t die, he’d just be frozen in ice.

Meanwhile Kang, a guy from the future is scrubbing through history. He’s our other villain for this evening. He detects a time disturbance, a force that changed the past is now altering the future. The end result isn’t pretty. For reasons we are yet to discover he blames Captain America for this. He manages to escape, warping into the 21^st century, but his lover, princess Rovana is caught in the disturbance and only barely holds on

It’s once again amazing how much is put into so little. Props to the team of writers that put these minisodes together

The Man in the Ant Hill

3 heroes and 3 heroes to introduce in this one

First off we have Ant-man, in this version a guy who prefers to talk things through than resort to violence, yay! Fortunately we have Ulysees Claw (voiced by Mark Hamill) ready to serve as our first villain as he and his men try to infiltrate the camp and steal the vibranium Ant-man is working on

Fortunately he shrinks them down and subjects them to mass terror as suddenly they’re the size of ants and everything is bigger than them.

The second short focuses on Janet Van Dyne aka the Wasp, Hank’s secretary/girlfriend and we quickly meet our villain, Whirlwind. Janet goes after him, making quips as she proceeds to blast him with her energy blasts

Hank arrives and lends a hand but Janet lays down the final blow. They’re both brought aboard the SHIELD heli-carrier where we see the Raft, a bunch of super-villain cameos (the Raft holds super-powered criminals) Hank is concerned that not many criminals are being rehabilitated and released but Fury brushes that concern off. The world is safer with them not around

Whirlwind, who we soon discover is a mutant, asks the others why none of them even seem to be trying to break out. A villain known as the thinker (who we don’t really see again) reveals that he’s calculated several ways of escape but chooses not to, as the 4 super-villain prisons (how does he know there are 4 when Maria Hill doesn’t) are bound to spring open eventually (foreshadowing!)

Whirlwind stole some sort of sonic cannon, capable of weaponizing the vibranium that was stolen from Hank’s lab.

In our third part we focus on the T’Challa, the soon to be Black Panther as he watches his father battle the Man Ape for championship of Wakanda. T’Chacka is confident at first but his confidence is bursted by the sonic vibrations from Claw’s sonic device.

Man Ape presses his advantage, killing T’Chacka and taking over Wakanda. Of course Claw was involved and wants the vibranium for his payment. T’Challa dawns the Black Panther costume and he will have his vengeance in this life or the next!

Rating 8/10

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Images used in this review are from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Marvel's Avengers Assemble and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use