MAYvel Phase 2; The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: The darker side of the MCU

While it's hard to argue against Marvel's dominance at the box office thanks to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men movies and the original Spider-Man trilogy, their endeavours into the small screen have been... mixed at best. While there have been standouts, it's hard to compare those standouts favourably when compared to the competition like Batman the Animated Series, and this is just me comparing the cartoons. However, there was one that many consider equal to the likes of Justice League, and the DC Animated universe, though the problem was a restructure of the plan, to bring the shows more in line with the MCU.

It should be said that this show doesn't have a strong overarching plot. The main reason for this being its cancellation. The plot was going to be that someone or something has broken all the villains out of all of Shield's prisons, with the Avengers forming to try and capture them all again. Originally, the team consisted of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and The Wasp, with Black Panther, Hawkeye, Mrs Marvel (the Kree one, not the Inhuman one) and The Vision eventually joining the team, and several other heroes appearing in later episodes as emergency members or fun cameos, and helping make the show feel very lively. Though it doesn't have a strong overarching theme, there is a lot of good foreshadowing throughout the story, from things like Ultron guarding the prison known as The Big House, and eventually joining the Avengers until he goes rogue, to Captain Mar Vel's first episode not only setting up a Kree Invasion story but also teasing the Skrull and Mrs Marvel. The show's story is very faithful to the comics, even to the point of being more faithful than the MCU at times. Things like Captain America not being a member right away is a callback to the original Avengers comics, where he wasn't a founding member, but was in the team within a few issues of the run.

Comic accuracy also goes into the style of the show as well. Visually, this looks like it's a moving comic book, with many of the character designs, while being original takes, were instantly recognizable representations of the characters. These are stylized greatly, with characters like Thor, Hulk, and even Captain America looking like they've been hitting the steroids a bit, but it's nothing I haven't seen in other shows, both western and Japanese. The score and soundtrack are overall basics, with the exception of the introduction theme, Fight as One, the score doesn't stand out very much. If that's a bad thing or not is up to you.

While I cannot verify it, many believe that the reason the show was cancelled was to make a series of shows that were more closely aligned to the movies. If that's true, then it's quite ironic because this could have easily been the start of that. The show does have an MCU feel to it, but due to not needing to balance itself around multiple movies, could conform to the comics more closely when it came to characters like Ultron. I get the feeling a large part of it was its use of the Fantastic Four, X-Men and Spider-Man, which at the time, Marvel didn't own the rights to make movies for, and I think this was around the time when they began to lower their importance in the comics (except for Spider-man). This definitely had potential to it, especially with the wide variety of characters they hadn't even touched in the show, characters that, to jump ahead to when I'll eventually review the shows that replaced it, I don't see the current shows tackling again (they kinda burned through Thanos pretty quickly). Would I want it to get the same treatment as Young Justice, and be given a new home on Disney Plus? Not really, as continuations of long ended shows can be hit or miss. Would I watch it if it did? Yeah, but I'm not going to be trying to get them to bring it back. It's worth a watch if you are a fan of Marvel at least. Besides, you'll have time after Far From Home comes out.