Early footage of the new animated Avengers cartoon is now online at http://disney.go.com/xd/avengers/cds/

There are two quite long sequences, each around five minutes. One focusses on Banner and the Absorbing Man. The other is Iron Man vs HYDRA.

My early impression is cautiously optimistic. The animation is appropriate and has clearly been tailored to catch the Marvel movie-going crowd. Visuals and story are in line with the characters and situations presented in the Iron Man and Hulk movies. Pepper, Rhodey, and Ross all resemble a good compromise between their movie selves and their comics incarnations. Jarvis remains merely a voice (not clear if it's still Tony's computer or a real person speaking over a comm-line) but does manage to convey far more character than the movie version.

Action scenes are quite well storyboarded. Layouts and backgrounds are detailed and well chosen. This is definitely one-up on the previous animated Avengers effort. It feels closer to the original X-Men animated series in terms of look and ethos.

From the snippets provided we get a glimpse at the kind of characterisation level we might be seeing in the series. Banner is definitely in Bill Bixby mode - a great line at the diner was "Definitely decaf". Stark was perfectly captured a la Downey's version - smartass, brilliant, arrogant and charismatic. His line to Rhodey was also good: "The giant robot was more fun than you."

All to the good. But as a purist I found the minor, and at the moment reasonless, changes to continuity grated. Absorbing Man is now a gamma-powered villain rather than a Norn-powered one. According to the website, Ultron is now the combined produce of Stark and Pym work. There had better be good reasons for these kind of alterations.

Anyhow, it looks like this series will be worth a watch. So far the terrible Turkey-Man has not appeared.

Apparently, they added Ant-man vs. Klaw since then... perhaps there will be one for all the Founders before long.





I found the clips entertaining, although not as strong as some other superhero cartoon entries. It's a solid effort, and you're definitely right, it's far, far beyond the last Avengers cartoon.

I found the art direction to be a little generic for my tastes... there's really no mood to the visuals, just straight-up cheery colors, so that's a disappointment. I did like Ant-man's chest design flooding with Kirby Dots when his Pym Particles are activated, though.

Oh, and I thought computer Jarvis was pretty much the same as in the movies... he had something of an exasperated wit in the films as well.





I thought they did a decent job with Pym as well. The brief bit of Jan that we see in his short is more stereotypical teen-age girl (right down to "Ew") in an absolutely hideous costume... but I suppose that's not exactly unusual for Jan either.





The Absorbing Man reasoning may have simply been his inclusion in the first "Hulk" film, where he too was a gamma-powered monster (although they thankfully jettisoned the idea that he was Bruce's father.)

As for Ultron, it makes a certain kind of sense that, after introducing Stark to the world as "that robot guy", if anyone on the Avengers was going to be building a robot it would be him... I'd actually be perfectly fine with this change if they establish Stark as the hardware guy and Pym as the A.I. developer. Still, it does share responsibility between the two, which would likely undercut the degree to which Ultron should haunt Pym.

My main concern is probably the line up, as I've never found the founders to be the most interesting characters on the team. I gather many other Avengers will be appearing over the course of the show, but I expect that they'll be guest stars on individual episodes rather than part of an evolving line-up. I'll wait and see how it actually plays out, however... Assuming it's ever on a channel I can actually watch.

Well, it's actually at the link below. He really looks the part, in my opinion.


http://captainamericafilmingmanchester.co.uk/

The list of online, mini-episodes coming before the regular show launches:

1     "Iron Man is Born!"
2     "The Coming of the Hulk"
3     "The Man in the Ant Hill"
4     "Hydra Lives!"
5     "Thor the Mighty"
6     "Behold, the Mandroids!"
7     "Hulk Versus the World"
8     "The Siege of Asgard"
9     "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."
10     "This Monster, This Hero"
11     "My Brother, My Enemy"
12     "The Isle of Silence"
13     "Enter the Whirlwind"
14     "Meet Captain America"
15     "The Red Skull Strikes!"
16     "If This Be Doomsday!"
17     "Welcome to Wakanda"
18     "Lo, There Shall Come a Conqueror"
19     "Beware the Widow's Bite"
20     "The Big House"

Then on October 20th, the television series begins with a two-part episode entitled "The Breakout".

Scott NIGHT CHILDREN: THE BLOG. Come see!

Its such an obvious question among fans, but nobody ever seems to put it to rest in interviews. The best guess is that, as you say, Wanda and Pietro are locked up with the X-Men at Fox. That might not apply to television appearances like this cartoon, but Marvel might not want to confuse a broader audience by using characters that couldn't later be used in an Avengers film.

There also might be the possibility of using them in an Avengers movie after all... Nobody seems to be willing to say for sure.

On another Avengers cartoon tangent, I hate that they've created a Nick Fury that looks nothing like either the classic or the Ultimate version. He's now an eye-patch wearing black man with a full head of hair and a soul patch. What's the point of that?

In a conversation a while back with a senior executive at Marvel I was told that the movie and animated rights to ALL mutant characters who were around at the time of the first X-Men movie have been licensed with the X-Franchise, and the deal is that they stay that way until there's some specified number of years passed without them being used. There was a long actual list naming all the characters, perhaps running to hundreds of names.

Wanda and Pietro are on that list, which makes their appearance in the Avengers movies and cartoons that much less likely. However, the case for Wanda is slightly more optomistic because she was also a cartoon property in the United We Stand series and there may be leeway for arguing the toss. Or a financial deal might be done to license or buy back rights if the Avengers movie goes down well and Whedon wants the Scarlet Witch for a sequel.

One of the reasons Marvel is promoting the Avengers comics line so heavily now relative to the Spidey and X-teams is that the Avengers/heroes line is the one they retain direct movie control over and is therefore their most lucrative potential cash cow. But Wolverine, Spidey, Wanda, Pietro, Firestar, and Justice won't be assembling in any motion picture form without some clever legal work or large cash transfers.

What's NOT clear is whether the Sub-Mariner is on the mutants list. It's suddenly become relevant with rumours of the Invaders appearing in the Captain America movie. Toro was retrospectively revealed to be a mutant too.

That's largely what I've heard before. However, it's interesting to note that the currently being filmed X-Men First Class has actors cast as mutant characters that had not been created yet at the time of the original X-men deal, including the black, female Angel, Nightcrawler's demonic father and retroactively added early X-Man Darwin... So the deal obviously has some room to evolve, so to speak.





It's this kind of thing that makes the lack of a simple, straight answer on these two characters interesting. Combine that with the fact that Fox has dug up all sorts of obscure mutants over the course of 4 X-men films but haven't used either of Magneto's most famous children for so much as a cameo, and still apparently aren't putting them into a film about the earlier lives of Prof X and Magneto.

They've been common elements of the more recent X-Men cartoons, but the cartoon deals are different than the film deals, I know. (Hence Super Hero Squad can use Wolverine, or Cap and Hulk can appear in X-Men cartoons.) regardless of their movie rights, I would think they likewise could be used in the Avengers cartoon, at least as guests if not cast members... But again, Marvel might not want to promote them if they're still a Fox property.

As for Namor, they had been trying to set him up in his own film at Universal a few years ago, so I assume he's not tied up with the X-men mutants. However, Kevin Fiege has come out and admitted he misspoke when he said the Invaders would be appearing in Captain America. He apparently meant The Howling Commandos would be appearing instead.




Hatty and I discussed how Marvels film rights might be affecting their publishing strategies a while back, when we noticed that non-mutants were being announced as X-Men cast members, Fantastic Four members being Avengers, and other cast mash-ups were coming. I suggested that Marvel was more willing to put some focus on non-Avengers books if their entire line was less segregated, so that a push for X-men or the FF still increased reader interest in characters linked to the Avengers.

...so it sounds like they're really going all-in on the grittiness of the Dark Knight when adapting their properties.

I'm even happier at Whedon's comments on the direction of The Avengers now.

Marvel has the animated rights to Wanda and Pietro since they are both recurring characters in the "Wolverine and the X-Men" series, which is made by Marvel Animation.

While it would make sense to me that they might keep the X-characters out of the Avengers cartoon to make it clear they are separate universes (obviously Superhero Squad doesn't have this problem), Wolverine and the X-Men hasn't been renewed for a second season, leaving the X-characters in animation limbo for now. So depending on Marvel's animation plans for the X-characters, the odds of Wanda and Pietro appearing have increased I'd say.

That being said though, since Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes is clearly based on the movie universe, that probably hurts their chances since there is no way to put them in the films.

~Hat~

That was actually a clever way to meet the two versions halfway. I wish they'd do that with Jackson now.