March 27, 2012

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes!

Carolyn and I practically tore through the 26 Episodes of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! on Netflix.

There have been a lot of cartoon superhero shows available on Netflix, and I haven't liked a single one of them.  I'm not talking about Anime, but traditional American comic book superheros with animated shows.  This is the first show that I've liked.


Each show runs about 22 minutes long and much of the first season is dedicated to simply giving the origin back-story of the Avengers. I think this is what I really liked about the show.  The first few episodes were dedicated to a single Avenger's story and even when the main team was assembled those stories were not finished.  It wasn't a thrown-together group of heroes that could now go on to fight the bad guys.  The characters have conflict with the bad guys, sure, but they also have internal conflicts, less than "buddy-buddy" interactions with members of their team, and some open hostility towards what are supposed to be the "good guys".

The producers and animators do a good job in telling a larger story that would appeal to kids and not put their comic-book loving parents to sleep.  Aspects of each character are pulled from the complete Marvel catalog and tweak such that even if you have read everything you might think you have a clue what was going on, but if you aren't following the show you will miss out on what is actually happening.  For example, Nick Fury is shown rather youthful and it is later revealed that he is the son of (I hope I remember this correctly) James Fury, who was a Howling Commando that worked with Captain America in World War II.  He later gets aged and sports the grey hair which is explained, but I'm not sure how he came about the eye patch.

In the first season I've only noticed one gaffe.  There is a scene in one of the later shows where an Avenger's weapon gets destroyed and they show it complete later.  I figured it just got fixed, but they later show it in pieces.

If you don't have Netflix, the series is out on DVD and you can watch five minute micro-episodes on Youtube.

No comments: