Slick’s Hits: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

Hey true believers, prepare to be utterly underwhelmed once again by Marvel’s latest half-assed animation offering. Ever since the classic Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons of the ‘90s, Marvel has really been phoning it in when it comes to cartoons. I am not calling the offerings terrible, but something is always missing: decent art, decent animation (often both), decent story or following the source material. Just looking at the ad for the new Avengers show gives you an idea of what I mean. Iron Man looks like Bumblebee from Transformers: Animated. Wasp looks like she got her outfit from the set of Madonna’s “Vogue” video, and Ant Man looks like Krang from the 80s TMNT cartoon with a funny hat. The story and action in this one are not bad at all. The Hulk is easily my favorite character thus far and I hope they explore different versions of him (c’mon Savage Hulk and Grey Hulk). I highly recommend giving this show a chance even though the art is only a step above Cartoon Network’s Super Hero Squad Show. The violence level is what sets this apart from that train wreck. With IM’s Omega beam coming down on Graviton from space like a satellite laser and Hulk coming down on him like a nuclear bomb, expect to see some vicious fights as this one goes on. Let’s just hope that a) they hire better artists and b) Marvel doesn’t do what they always do and just forget about this show after two seasons.