Shorts Series Review: Marvel’s Avengers Secret Wars

It’s actually not as bad as it seems.

Whenever Disney XD-Marvel tries to adapt its comic book characters for animation, more often than not it comes out as a steaming pile. Ultimate Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Hulk: Agents of S.M.A.S.H are all examples of Disney XD just fist-fucking source material in exchange for cheap knock-offs of their MCU complete with shitty storylines, awful looking characters, and the worst yet…terrible voice actors.

Enter, Disney XD’s Avengers Assemble, and its incoming newest season entitled “Secret Wars” that sees nobody from the Avengers present due to the fact that they are missing. As a result, a new team is recruited consisting of Black Panther, Vision, Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man, and Wasp. To help introduce each of the characters, Disney XD released a series of shorts to introduce probably bandwagon fans of the Marvel franchise that give a little bit of background and help provide important details as to why this whacky cast of characters became heroes in the first place.

Don’t worry, animated takes on the popular MCU characters of Vision, Black Panther, Cap Marvel, and Ant-Man are alive and well, but because we don’t have movies with either the Wasp or Ms. Marvel in them yet, the producers have decided to reach into either the Earth-616 alternative timeline OR their own insane imaginations to try and come up with the characters. Take Captain Marvel, for instance, she’s been around for a bit in animated form, but could we not rid ourselves of the ridiculous looking mask/mohawk combo that looks like a rejected Batman Beyond alternate outfit? And Vision is just voiced terribly, like, there’s not even an attempt at a British accent here.

I was kind of hoping to see Mick Wingert’s take as Iron Man as he takes over for the awful Adrian Pasdar-take on the character, but that doesn’t happen in any of the six-part shorts. What we DO get is a rather strong take on Ms. Marvel which gives me hope for the show’s fourth season. Similar to Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors, the shorts series kicks off with Kamala Khan’s crazy life balance of being an Avenger and somehow being a school student, only without the grating nails on a chalkboard that is Mr. DUI himself Drake Bell, and instead getting a deliverable cadence that is soothing and entertaining to play along with as we meet the other heroes.

All in all, the Secret Wars may be the best season yet of a Marvel animated series. Guardians of the Galaxy Season Two is already a shitstorm, so it couldn’t be much worse, but for the most part, I like the cast of characters. What I didn’t like in these shorts were the lame antagonists that were presented to us in each of the short. For Ant-Man? A sprinkler system. For Ms. Marvel? A bullfrog. For Captain Marvel? I don’t remember because that mohawk is terrible to look at. For this show to have a chance, we need to keep anything related to the Hulk OUT of the series and have interesting and terrifying villains for us to look forward to. Otherwise, Disney XD’s gonna have to reboot yet another venerable animated franchise to appease its audience’s action fix.

 

SCORE
7/10