Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Featuring the voices of Alex Desert, Phil Lamarr, Brian Bloom
Disney XD
Wednesday Nights
Release Date: October 20th, 2010

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is Marvel’s second crack at the premier superhero team in the animation world. The first series, Avengers: United They Stand, was an honest attempt to make the concept work but that failed quickly, mostly due to the lack of presence from the more popular Avengers. Now, with the Avengers movie just around the corner, Marvel is dead set to make a cartoon worthy of the proposed blockbuster film.

The premise of the series harks back to the original concept of the comic book series. When a threat of epic proportions rears its ugly head, only the Avengers can save the day. In the original comic book, the threat was Thor’s evil brother Loki but in the cartoon, it is the breakout of various super-villains.

It seems an unknown individual has disassembled world police SHIELD’s securities systems and caused their systems to crash. As a result, four super prisons went offline allowing all sorts of villains to escape. Now, it is up Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to capture them all back.

After viewing the first four episodes of the new series, it is safe to say that Marvel Animation has a hit on their hands (at least for the hardcore Avenger fans.) The cartoon has a light and dynamic tone to it, much like the original series penned by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The Avengers fight with villains and each other, and all look great doing it. The storylines mirror those stories from their comic book counterpart but still have an uncharted territory feel to them.

As an added bonus, the original team is present for the cartoon. Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, The Wasp, Hulk, and even Captain America are all here. Even those fan favorites heroes and villains (Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Baron Zemo to name a few) have come along for the ride, with plenty of surprises to come. With Marvel Comics in full control of the character’s animation rights, Marvel Animation was given the chance to use all characters from the Avenger’s history, and no character is left unaddressed.

Characters like Maria Hill, Jarvis, Mockingbird, Absorbing Man, Leader, Bucky, and Red Skull make an appearance in the series. Even the previous week’s episode included Modok and Wonder Man, a sign that if the character was featured in an Avenger‘s comic book, chances are they will eventually appear on the show in some form or another.

The voice acting is tolerable. The actors try their best to imitate or resemble their movie counterparts with satisfactory results. Tony Stark’s voice sounds vaguely like Robert Downey Jr. and this universe’s Nick Fury is a black man. Animation is pretty sound as well with little computer-generated animation involved. Nothing but hand drawn animation here.

The Avengers is barely into their first season, but so far, so good. The tone and action of the series is top notch, and the history of the team is intact. Truly, the fans of the comic series will not be disappointed.