Assorted Cartoon Notes From After the Rapture

So May 21st came and the world didn't end. What did happen was Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes had the episode titled "Hail, Hydra!" Which was the best episode yet. There will be spoilers for the episode, so if you're going to watch it, you might not want to read this first. The episode is about AIM and Hydra fighting over the Cosmic Cube. The Avengers move to stop them, and SHIELD shows up, under the new Director, Maria Hill, and she declares that the Avengers are no longer getting the same pass that Nick Fury had given them while he was running SHIELD. She makes a few comments about them needing to be registered (ugh, Civil War was a pile of shit and I hope it doesn't rear its head in this series again), but there is no real followup in it in this episode. What DID happen is Baron Strucker and Captain America touched the Cosmic Cube at the same time, and it appears as if nothing happened. Until the closing moments, where it's revealed that when Cap touched the Cube, he wished that Bucky didn't die. Obviously we're going to get a Winter Soldier, and this was a far superior way of having Bucky live than what the comics went with (they chose an "Everything You Know Was Wrong" approach rather than give a good reason).




This comes onto the heels of the fact the Guardians of the Galaxy are confirmed to be on the show's second season. It's not the real Guardians, but rather the new version of them, but still it's close enough. The fact that AEMH keeps getting better is real plus for fans of the Avengers, as well as fans of superhero cartoons.

The other big superhero cartoon on television right now, is Young Justice, which still isn't airing new episodes, but the show has been at a very high quality as well. Some of the continuity changes are fantastic additions (Superboy's power level) but the lack of The Kid's personality really breaks my heart. Miss Martian is a great replacement for Secret, and Artemis is a very interesting choice.

I guess we will see which one of these shows ends up being better in the long run (I'd put money on the Avengers though).


In other cartoon news, I recently watched Birdy the Mighty: Decode on Netflix Instant Viewing. It was an excellent anime. It was essentiallty a story about Mar-Vell in the form of an attractive Anime girl. It's a space cop named Birdy, who accidentally kills a teenage boy, and then they end up sharing a body while she searches for an alien weapon named the Ryunka. It's a short show (13 episodes that not counting credits are all about 20 minutes) so there isn't a ton of time investment involved with it. There is a single annoying character, who thankfully isn't in every episode.

Finally, I noticed some Marvel Motion Comics on Netflix Instant Viewing. They seem to be done really well, the Iron Man one is really great, but the Spider-Woman has terrible voice acting. There is also an X-Men one but I haven't watched it yet. Also, the entire Black Panther cartoon is on Netflix Instant Viewing. I put it here because it's animated a little less than the other motion comics. It's quite shameful. It's also just the telling of the terribad Reggie Hudlin origin where everything is about evil white people trying to kill the T'Challa because because he's black royalty. I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone who isn't already a fan of the Black Panther because it's quite disgraceful to the character (much like Hudlin's entire run on the comic book series).