Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

Jared and I have been watching the new Avengers animated series, Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I enjoy it more than I expected I would, not being a huge fan of the Marvel characters. The representations of all the characters feel reasonably authentic, and they are doing a good job of balancing how things worked and went in the comics with the restrictions inherent in translating it all to a half-hour kids' television show. The art is in general very good, especially on the men. They have managed to accurately represent the characters and keep their physical dimensions imposing and powerful without verging into Liefeld territory. Tony's design is excellent, and I really like how they've depicted Steve, Hank, and Nick Fury as well. (I think the rarely-seen Bruce Banner looks like a cancer patient with a mullet, but I'm okay with that.) The women look good too, I guess, but I'm slightly irked by how they all look alike to me, lots of tall thin modelesque creatures with different hair and color palettes. At least Wasp, the most prominent female character in the series, is a little distinctive. The animation quality is high, and even the most complicated fight scenes are well-choreographed and visually well-expressed. The voice acting is solid if not necessarily fantastic; I don't like the guy they have playing Iron Man though not for really any good reason, and I'm not sure if they mean Thor's guy to be as hilarious as I find him, but Cap's guy sounds exactly like I always imagined Cap sounding in my head. So all in all, a well-put-together piece of television that I am enjoying watching.

The only real problem I have with the show is that while they've got all this high-quality production stuff going on, the show is about ninety percent fight scene and only ten percent character anything. I guess that's to be expected in a modern kids' action show about superheroes (read: aimed at little boys), and don't me wrong, I enjoy battle scenes too, particularly ones as well done as they have... but frankly I find that stuff less interesting than character development and there's precious little of it happening there. I wanted to see Tony's cavalier, self-centered confidence get him into trouble with the people who care about him, and watch Steve struggle to adapt to a society with completely different social mores than the 40's had. I know, I know, I'm such a woman. ;-) But I feel other superhero shows, like our favorites from the nineties, were better at striking the balance between cool action and real character. I guess modern sensibilities don't expect kids to want that stuff, which makes me sad. My favorite shows from when I was a kid (like Gargoyles, TaleSpin, and Batman: The Animated Series) still hold up for me to enjoy as a twenty-four-year-old, with genuine investment and not just nostalgia, because they nail that stuff. So it makes me a little sad that a show that seems capable of delivering good storytelling can't quite hit the most important part for me.