Saturday, October 31

Marvel Super Hero Squad


I have seen two episodes of Marvel Super Hero Squad, they are based on the toys, of the mini Marvel heroes. Spider-Man is absent from this series, it is for the under 7 set and clearly looks likes. Iron Man is the leader and the roster mainly contains Captain America, Hulk, Falcon, Thor, Silver Surfer and Wolverine. The bad guys are led by Fantastic Four's main villain Doctor Doom, green amphibian Abomination and a squeaky voiced MODOK (giant floating head with little arms and legs). One episode I saw had a young rookie named Reptil (not created for the show--he's one of the latest characters from The Avengers) and the episode was pretty juvenile. There is not a lot of female heroes, they might guest for one episode but not part of the whole roster. In one episode, Mystique (voiced by Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles' own Lena Headey!!!) comes in disguised as Black Widow of S.H.I.E.L.D. and 'mystifies' the boys, except for Silver Surfer and Hulk in order to infiltrate the crew. It was a great episode, it was really smart episode and flipped on its head the 'clone spy' episode with 'femme fatale' episode. The villains also rotate, in this episode Screaming Mimi was present and looked like a clown.

The voices of the main heroes are stereotypical: Thor speaks old school viking, Captain America speaks like a 30's superhero, Hulk smash, and so on. Marvel is known for their strong women characters, it is shame they aren't highlighted in this series. Clearly this series is aimed toward boys. The producers have a lot of Marvel characters at their disposal--from Fantastic Four, X-Men, the Avengers, etc. Some of the characters don't even have toys yet--Enchantress is yet to be released and Screaming Mimi doesn't have one at all, so interesting she is on the show. Some of the guest voices are shown above. Interesting enough, Shawn Ashmore who played Iceman in the X-Men movies will play Iceman's voice on this show. James Marsters (Spike of Buffy) will play Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic and Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn of Buffy) will play Valkyrie in one episode. An annoying part is when they 'Hero up,' it is useless. This show and a couple of other new shows on Cartoon Network make its Saturday Morning line-up very vibrant.