So far on this site I've written about a 'Man of Action' show and a 'DC' show. I know it's early days, and I'm planning on covering a lot more shows, but this amuses me because I've always been one of those 'Make Mine Marvel!' kind of guys.
There's something about Marvel's line up of heroes and the Universe that draws me to it over DC's. DC truly does have a Pantheon, the JLU a veritable roster of gods. Marvel always felt a little more accessible. I love the pulp sci-fi of the Fantastic Four, the action packed soap opera that is X-Men, loony-tunes like Deadpool, just about everything about Spider-Man.
So I've always found it bittersweet that their animated projects tend to be a little lacking. The sweet comes from me being able to balance my superhero intake with some DC via their animated universe. Marvel for comics and movies and DC for animation. This keeps things nice and simple.
But then we got Spectacular Spider-Man,
and Wolverine & The X-Men.
Two awesome series cut down in their prime.
Then 'The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes' was announced, and I was keenly awaiting footage. I enjoyed watching the micro episodes online, but then the pilot aired and I watched it on a television... I just couldn't get over how cheap the show looked, how choppy the animation was, how generic the boarding was, how often characters went off model etc etc.
Yes, the scale of action is quite epic. Yes, the animation is serviceable, but look at those backgrounds. They're all so flat. After watching Wolverine & the X-Men with it's lovingly detailed BG art, and more recently with Young Justice, it all felt too much like a Ben 10 episode.
(EDIT: I just looked up the directors of Avengers and was not surprised to see that one of them was a director on Ben 10. One of the others directed for 'The Batman', which used the same awful texture style for background art)
Then there are the character designs. Ick. 'Spectacular Spider-Man' had very stylised characters, including big characters like Rhino and Venom, but they all looked so much better in motion. The fight scenes in that show (see above) are excellently staged to show off the fantastic nature of the scenario, beat after beat after beat. In nearly 20 episodes, 'The Avengers' seems happy to offer maybe 1-2 minutes per episode of quality visual ideas.
Fortunately for 'The Avengers', Christopher Yost is in the writers room, and while I feel the Disney animation aesthetic is killing the show, the story lines are fantastic!
So I'm torn. I'm probably being way to harsh on the visual qualities of this show, but it's hard not to be a little let down after 'Spectacular Spider-Man' and 'Wolverine & The X-Men' seemed to be taking things in the right direction. With 'Young Justice' also on the air right now looks like I'll be getting my quality animation fix via DC while relegating Marvel to guilty pleasure. Hopefully things turn around.
Fingers crossed for 'Ultimate Spider-Man', also coming out of Disney.
Luckily, I'll have a new contributor to the site soon, and he'll be taking on 'The Avengers', so I can just relax and try to enjoy it. Later on down the line there may be a few more entries to do with comics, and we'll see if we can't encompass all avenues of superhero media.
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