Double Episode Review: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes : Episode 22 & 23 : "Ultron 5" & "Ultron Imperative"

Ultron 5 & The Ultron Imperative back to back is the culmination of almost a season's worth of foreshadowing in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Peppered throughout previous episodes of the series have been glimpses of Ant-Man's Ultron Synthezoid constructs, with the Avengers recently using them to defend against Kang the Conqueror's invasion in an earlier arc. To fans of the comics seeing that familiar robot around confirmed the show would soon be introducing one of the team's best villains into the cartoon's continuity. I've never had a chance to read the original Ultron saga in comic form, so the chance of seeing an animated retelling has been high on my want-to-see list since I first heard this series was starting. I'm not surprised they waited until the end towards the end of the first season to bring in Ultron either, as his cold, artificial intelligence brings just the right amount evil robot-cliche conflict to the show. Hey, I happen to love evil robot cliches!

The Avenger's Earths Mightiest Heroes: An epic introduction to the series from our new reviewer!

Welcome to my first posting here on Jung Justice, of what will be an on-going look at Marvel's latest cartoon: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Published now for nearly 50 years, the Avengers comic has always been the perfect showcase for seeing Marvel's most enduring characters in action. Now that they’ll be appearing in animation, I'll be reviewing the series regularly here on the site mainly for fun, but also to fill a void in the surprising lack of in-depth reviews of the show on the net. So just before I get stuck into it, I'd like to do an overview of the series which I'll kick off now with a quote from Christopher Yost, the story editor and 'showrunner' for this new Avengers cartoon venture:

"It’s the Avengers. And it’s not crazy armored Avengers. Or it’s not Teen Avengers. It’s the Avengers you know and love and have always wanted to see. It’s Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant Man, Wasp, Captain America, Hawkeye. It’s the Avengers. The premise of the show is literally, Avengers, go. There isn’t any crazy twist like they’re in an alternate reality or in the Negative Zone or some bizarre thing. There is 40 years worth of Avengers’ stories, start telling them."
- Source: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=20785 April 13th, 2009

Now this quote, taken from one of Chris Yost's first interviews while the show was still in production, clearly is a huge mission statement. Yost immediately heads off any fears that Marvel's characters will be mishandled, which to a Marvel fan like myself is incredibly reassuring, considering that the Avengers as a franchise has never succeeded outside the realm of Comics. Sure there's been a couple of moderately successful Direct-to-DVD animated features and live-action Hollywood blockbuster on the horizon, but there's only been one real attempt by Saban to bring the characters to TV. Thankfully, the hilarious '90s ‘Avengers: United They Stand’ lasted all of one season and are those 'crazy armored Avengers' mentioned above by Yost. As a fan it's really been a shame that all those classic Avengers tales have never been told in any other medium before, at least not successfully.

'The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes' reviews coming soon (with new reviewer) / My thoughts on Marvel animation

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,