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It’s Sunday (or whatever day you are reading this), so that means it’s time for another edition of Stay Tooned Sundays! I hope you all had a great week and spent some quality time with your respective mothers last Sunday (RE: Mother’s Day). I also hope you got a chance to make it to the theaters and see Thor like I did. In case you didn’t see it, I highly recommend that you do; it had a good story and was a lot of fun. You can check out what our own movie guy, Andrew Hudson, thought of it here. Incidentally, if you haven’t seen Thor or plan on seeing it again and you would like to support us here at ComicAttack.net (you know you do!), you can purchase tickets for the movie through Fandango using the link found here on our home page, because that would be awesome. Speaking of awesome things involving Thor (like that segue?), I give you this week’s offering of Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Vol. 1!

Title: Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Company: Marvel Animation
Distributed by: Disney XD
US Release Date: April 26, 2011
Length: 161 mins.
Rating: TV Y7
Volume: 1: Heroes Assemble!

If you are a regular follower of  this here column, then chances are you’ve heard me mention how much I love Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. This show is to the Avengers what the 90s X-Men cartoon was to Marvel’s merry mutants, and that is saying something! It’s no surprise that this show is so great with amazing scribe Chris Yost’s creative brilliance behind it, as Story Editor. Volumes 1 & 2 were released on DVD recently, collecting the first half of season one (13 of the 26 episodes). This week we will be looking at Volume 1 “Heroes Assemble,” which features the first 7 episodes of the series. Volume 1 introduces us to each of the Avengers and leads up to the birth of the team.

The first five episodes are mainly devoted to one Avenger in particular. Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, and Ant-Man are each spotlighted in these episodes with Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Wasp sprinkled in as well. Most of these episodes feature Nick Fury and/or S.H.I.E.L.D. in some capacity, and they set up Hydra as the “big bad” for the season. The episodes also have at least a cameo appearance of many of the Avengers’ “rogues,” including Loki, Kang, Red Skull, Absorbing man, Leader, Graviton, and others. If that wasn’t enough, a ton of the Avengers’ friends and supporting cast show up as well, like Bucky, Wolverine, Pepper, and Sharon Carter to name a few.

In the beginning of the story, each of the Avengers is off dealing with their own personal  issues. Iron Man is on the hunt for Stark technology that was stole from him by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra, Thor is torn between his duties on Asgard and his desire to help the people of Earth, Hulk is trying to escape the authorities and find a cure for himself, and Ant-Man and Wasp are busy studying a newly found metal, vibranium. Meanwhile, some decades in the past, Captain America is trying to prevent Hydra from unleashing mythological monsters on the Allies during WWII. This mission directly leads to his eventual ice nap. Finally, in the two-part episode “Breakout,” a massive orchestrated jail break at each of the four supervillain prisons leads to the first team-up of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Thor, and Hulk! The five heroes have no choice but to work together to stop the uber powerful Graviton. During the epic battle, the Shield Helicarrier is destroyed, Thor gets buried at the bottom of the ocean, Manhattan nearly gets uprooted, and it’s up to the Avengers to show the world how truly mighty they really are!

As you can pretty much tell, I think Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is an awesome show, and I am not even a huge Avengers fan. The stories are great and the characters are the idealized versions of themselves. Each episode has plenty of action, adventure, and even some mystery to them that keeps you coming back for more. I think the series works great both as a kids’ show and as something adults can enjoy as well. This is one of those series that anyone can enjoy whether you are a die hard Avengers fan or someone who doesn’t really know much about them at all. If the forthcoming Avengers movie is even half as great as this series, then we are all in for a nice treat.

Nick Zamora
nickz@comicattack.net