Animated Avengers Assemble!

Audiences and comic book geeks everywhere may have to wait another two years before we get to see Joss Whedon’s live-action Avengers movie up on the big screen, but luckily for us Disney XD has the opening act. Back in September Disney XD started airing 5-minute mini-episodes to set up their new show, The Avengers: Earth’s Mightest Heroes. This introduced its audience to the heroes of Marvel, who they are, where they’ve been, and what troubles they have to overcome soon. The animated series started with a one-hour special Wednesday, October 20, on Disney XD and I dare say it may become an animated classic like the 90’s Batman or X-Men cartoons.

Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and the Wasp are all superheroes who have spent their time collecting super villains and delivering them to S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep captive. One of which is housing Dr. Bruce Banner, otherwise known as the Hulk. When a mass prison break occurs almost a hundred super villains escape, one of which being Graviton. Graviton is out to kill S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury for keeping him locked up all those years. Can these lone heroes ban together to stop the world’s greatest threat? Catch the rerun on Disney XD or on their website to find out.

Last week I started watching the mini-episodes and couldn’t stop. The show is rated Y-7, but I was surprised how well the story editor, Christopher Yost, created serious and in-depth story lines so that anyone over 10-years-old can enjoy the show. Yost has been with Marvel for a while now, and has been recently writing one of my favorite comics, X-Force. In the mini-episodes you can see each characters problem and see it all build to the series premiere.

 The first episode introduced Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Hulk, which were all founding member of the Avengers back in 1963. During the 20 mini-episodes we also saw Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. None of these character appeared in the first full-length episode aside from a Hawkeye briefly. This also leads me to hope the crew at Marvel already have their 52 episodes they’re contracted to do all mapped out.

I thought the voice acting wasn't the greatest, but maybe I’m just used to hearing other voices come out of these characters. If you want to think of this as just a kids superhero cartoon then fine. But I think that this will show children that there are more superheroes out there than just Batman and Spider-Man. It’s a show that adults can enjoy with their children and comic book readers can remember the good things that Marvel Studio has done, and what is yet to come. I've already started hunting down the theme song to use as my ringtone!