“New Avengers” Assemble! [Review]

In the newest episode of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes! a new team must pick up the slack after the Avnegers are scattered across time! Click “More” to read our review!

S2, Episode 22: New Avengers

When battling Kang, who’s turned an arc reactor into a time machine, he lashes out to send the Avengers through time. A little while earlier, Iron Man discovers there’s a massive amount of chronal energy concentrating around the imprisoned Kang. When met with other versions of himself, he’s told that the Avengers present a threat that makes the entire timeline dangerous. They free Kang who heads straight for Stark Tower. When the Avengers are scattered, a new team of Avengers consisting of Spider-Man, Wolverine, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Thing, and War Machine. As time displaced things come through portals to attack New York, this new team starts to form and heads to Stark Tower to take on Kang. They seriously underestimate Kang at first, but Spidey rallies the troops to stop Kang from bringing his future to the present. When Spider-Man begins shutting down the machine, the time displaced things were transported back and the Avengers returned as well to put a stop to Kang.

This episode had a lot of little cool things about it that came together to make a pretty solid episode as a whole. First, I can’t help but to point out writer Christopher Yost pulling from an era in comics when a little one-and-done story like this would have happened. How many times did the Fantastic Four get replaced by other heroes while they were zapped off-world or trapped in the Negative Zone? In a lot of ways, this felt like an even more classic Marvel tradition that has gone away over the years – the Assistant Editor Month style of story. Those stories often featured more unbelievable types of stories that were much more in lighthearted in style than the usual monthly story or arc that would take up the rest of the year in each series. The entire episode had that feel to it with the new Avengers woefully unprepared for their fight against Kang and their personalities clashing at every turn. It was a particularly well written episode from a character aspect.

A few more cool elements were at play in this episode as well. I just mentioned the characterization at use here. Each character seemed to perfectly embody the characters. Spidey was a jokester, Wolverine was cranky, Luke Cage just wanted a paycheck for saving the world, the Thing was loveable as always, and so on. There are more than a few chuckles in this episode just coming from these six very different characters alone.

An Easter egg for fans of the comics also popped up. When the time displaced creatures and people came through the portal, a police officer is one of the first to come under direct attack. That officer’s name was “Bendis” and full on reference to long time Avengers scribe Brian Michael Bendis. Of course there were other more direct character references used like the Thing using his “It’s Clobberin’ Time!” catchphrase and Wolverine battling Kang through a fastball special.

While the episode was certainly very light in tone and something that should delight younger viewers, long time Marvel readers, as they probably have throughout the entire run of the series, will definitely get a kick out of this episode and many would likely place it as a sentimental favorite thanks to how much like a comic this episode really plays out as.

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