Avengers: United They Stand

So with the Avengers haven gotten a lot of spotlight both in and out of comics, I thought I'd talk a little about the first attempt to bring the team into the general public's view the animated series Avengers: United They Stand.

I remember watching the first ep of this show and being intrigued by it but looking back it hasn't aged well. I daresay it's aged far worse than the Fox Spider-Man and X-Men series. The animation looks cheap and stilted, the voice acting ranges from bored to over the top, the story lines lack flair and interest and the Super Sentai inspired transformation sequences are so blatant in their purpose for merchandising, it makes Transformers and Power Ranger look subtle. But the area that this show really fails in is the team. I wasn't bothered by the fact that the "Big Three" wasn't present in this. Pretty much every adaptation of super hero teams from the Big Two had changed the roster. And I always admire trying to get B/C-list characters into the mainstream.

The problem is that instead of trying to show what made the Avengers unique, the writers pretty much took the traits and dynamic shown in the X-Men cartoon and slapped them unto the Avengers:

Ant-Man is the straight-laced, stoic leader ala Scott Summers

His girlfriend, the Wasp, serves the same role as the useless red-headed girl like Jean Grey (yeah, the writers copied even the bad parts of X-Men)

Scarlet Witch invokes mystical forces in battles like Storm and is just as hammy

Tigra is the boisterous, Southern gal who loves to fight just like Rogue

Falcon serves the role as the audience surrogate like Jubilee did in the X-Men series

Hawkeye is the loud, temperamental rebel like Wolverine

Wonder Man gets captured in the opening episodes just like Morph

The show ran for 13 episodes before being cancelled. Plans for a second season included Hawkeye returning to the carnival he grew up in and the origin of Scarlet Witch's powers. There were also plans for a crossover with the X-Men animated series.

The theme song is a blast to listen to though.

https://youtu.be/VLD1yq7eVoY

edited 1st Oct '15 5:35:01 PM by windleopard

Agree with all your points. The good thing about this show is the fact it introduced me to the Avengers (wish to say it was the video game Captan America and the Avengers, but alas it was this show).

All the characters were indeed generic templates for X-Men characters, which really suck as those characters have solid personalities of their own. The animation are cheaply done to the point where it is easy to spot. And the villains aren't as interesting; seriously, Kang became a generic doomsday villain, the Masters of Evil are treated as a one episode threat rather then multiple and Ultron is completely Cobra Commander level of cartoonish.

And let's not forget the dramatic echos-chos-chos-chos-chos.

Compare to its successor, it wasn't that good of an adaption for the Avengers.

"Tigra is the boisterous, Southern gal who loves to fight just like Rogue."

Both voiced by Lenore Zann.

This was the first cartoon where I realized as a kid that shows could suck.

This was not a show I found myself caring about, I agree.