Yes, Kids, That Raccoon and Tree Can Talk and Kick Butt [Review]
“Michael Korvac” comes to Earth looking for protection against a group of interstellar guardians in the newest episode of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! Click “More” to read our review!
S2, Episode 6: Michael Korvac
A scared man falls from the sky begging for help against something that is following him. Two police officers bring the man to Avengers Mansion. The man introduces himself as Michael Korvac and, at first mistakes the Wasp for a woman named Carina. He tells her about his abduction. The Avengers split up to look into what’s going on with his story. However, they all start to have their doubts about this man. While they are out, a group known as the Guardians of the Galaxy (Star-Lord, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Adam Warlock, and Quasar) arrive on Earth searching for Korvac. The Guardians interrupt a happy reunion between Korvac and Carina and it turns ugly when the two teams misunderstand each other’s intentions. Eventually, Star-Lord is able to get through to explain that Korvac is an intergalactic criminal. Korvac’s cosmic power finally shows itself off knocking out both teams in order to escape. The teams wake up in an ever-shifting environment created by Warlock’s soul gem. The Guardians give the Avengers all they know about Korvac while Ms. Marvel engages the criminal in the real world. Both teams surround Korvac to try to pull him into the soul gem, but he overpowers all of them. When Carina calls Michael a monster and admits being scared of him, he leaves this plane of existence and mourns Carina’s fear of him alone in space.
Historically speaking, Michael Korvac is perhaps the one villain the Avengers could never really stop. In fact, in one of the greatest of Avengers stories, he managed to actually kill the entire team. While it always appeared that he killed himself to restore the Avengers realizing that he’s become a monster, his powers had actually preserved him through time and space. He’s come back a few times through the years and disappeared without ever really being brought down. So, to have him appear in this series, especially at this time, is a pretty cool idea. While he and the Guardians help continue to build this Marvel Universe around the Avengers, the bigger story of the coming Kree-Skull War that will wreak havoc for the team and the planet is even further reaching. The Kree are messing about with humans. The Skrulls are already here (with Captain America already replaced and off doing things the team isn’t aware of). Now, the Guardians of the Galaxy are recognizing Earth as a place where things are going on.
And speaking of the Guardians, they are a set of characters that are specifically tied to Marvel’s cosmic side and, for all intents and purposes, exactly what Tony Stark labeled them as – space Avengers. They deal with things that are not only bizarre but quite majorly big. They have a long history and have ridden waves of popularity over the decades, but have always been a cool group. I mean come on, they have a gun toting raccoon and a tree creature who can only introduce himself whenever he speaks. While not a weird concept to grasp as to what they are, they’ve always had really interesting characters making up the team. To the exception of the female Quasar character, these characters have histories dating back to the 70s with Groot actually pre-dating the Fantastic Four.
I love how this series is doing that. It seems way too easy to just keep pumping in recognizable character after recognizable character into the series en masse. Instead, the series isn’t relying on that. They aren’t tossing X-Men into the series or Spider-Man. Heck, they don’t even use Captain America, Thor, or Iron Man every episode. What we have in this series is a truly full perspective of the Marvel Universe. It plays like comic books do over time. Characters come and go, new ones are introduced, and the series ties itself to a larger world or universe. It’s a series like this that could ultimately help kids want to know more about all these characters and possibly even (gasp!) want to read comics as well to satisfy curiosity over who these characters are and where they come from. It’s satisfying on levels that reaches both adults and kids.
That’s exactly why this series is so good and deserves all the accolades viewers are giving it.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATING
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Cool to add a long standing Avengers threat as Korvac and even cooler to have the Guardians of the Galaxy show up in what is surely their first appearance of any kind beyond print. | A little too quick of an ending. Not bad, but Korvac would be great to see in a two or three part story. |
| Rating |
1 Comment
I enjoyed this episode a lot (always great to see the Guardians) but I think it really should have been a 2 parter. One episode of the teams clashing and then the second them working together to fight Korvac. The whole thing felt a bit rushed. I will not be able to get the image of Rocket Raccon saying “He’s the Starlord, respect him.” out of my mind ever. It was great.