Highlights - Earth's Mightiest Moments

In my attempt to fill out the release schedule of posts but also to add variety, here’s a new post series I want to start doing. It’s like a mixture of Reloading and Majestic 12, and we’re calling it Highlights. Unlike a full review, I’m just going over moments of a particular game, movie, book, show, or comic that stand out to me. These are moments that are fun, memorable, weird, interesting, or have some significance to me and why. And it’s listed out, but we won’t have twelve different items (that’d be too much).

To kick things off with the inaugural episode and to get ready for Avengers: Age of Ultron, let’s kick things off with Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. You expected me to do the movie instead, didn’t you? 

Gamma World Arc

At this point in the series, the Hulk had removed himself from the Avengers and most fans were wondering if the TV show would follow the source material and leave Hulk as a lone agent and not a permanent member of the Avengers. And while that idea certainly would have been fine, you can’t really do that when Hulk was, surprisingly enough, one of the most popular characters of the show, made only more popular with the following live-action film. So, yeah, the writers had to find a way to bring Hulk back and what better way to do that than to save the Avengers from his Gamma-irradiated arch enemies like Absorbing Man, Abomination, and The Leader?

What made this story arc fun was that it also introduced Hawkeye to the Avengers team, giving us nearly the full roster. Plus the dynamic duo of Hawkeye and Hulk (a pair that seems to do more harm than good) being the ones to pull off a rescue makes for some great times. But Thor is also a part of the rescue operation (sort of). And he has a brilliant moment in which Absorbing Man absorbs the metal that makes up Mjolnir with some not surprising, but spectacular results. My background on Hulk lore is very limited, but getting to see a collection of his enemies team up against the Hulk and the Avengers to unite them back together is a fun little adventure that I’m glad we got to see.

Dr. Doom Fights the Avengers

This only happens in one episode. After that, the good doctor makes only one more appearance to both aide and mock Tony Stark before hiding away to eventually be replaced by an inferior version of Dr. Doom in Avengers Assemble. But this one episode had a lot of nice little Easter Eggs for fans of the Marvel movies and comics. It also has a really nice fight scene. And it brings us the Fantastic Four in a fun an interesting way we don’t get to see often since most Marvel shows fail to last longer than a season or two anymore.

In this episode, Dr. Doom kidnaps both Janet Van Dyne (Wasp) and Susan Storm/Richards (Invisible Woman). The reason, we find out, is because he was scanning to see which of them was replaced by one of the Skrull aliens that have been invading Earth and hiding within the population. But the Avengers and the Fantastic Four just assume Doom is up to some evil scheme. As such, a fight ensues where Dr. Doom single-handedly tosses the Avengers and the Fantastic Four aside like they are nothing to him. Even the Hulk gets thrown aside during the fray, which was surprising given Dr. Doom is basically just an evil Iron Man (yes, another one).

Despite having the upper hand, Dr. Doom surrenders and lets the heroes walk away. Iron Man, wanting to rub his “victory” in Doom’s face, decides to blow up Doom’s scanning machine on the way out the door. Of course, Iron Man feels like a right git later on for eventually learning about the Skrull and their invasion after the fact. But seeing this as the first episode building up to the Secret Invasion Story arc and seeing it start off with such a smash was phenomenal. This also gave me a larger love and respect for Dr. Doom as one of my favorite comic-villains alongside Joker and Magneto.

Ultron’s Imperative

Part of the reason I’m excited for the new Age of Ultron film is because I think James Spader is kind of a genius who I expect to play this villain perfect. The other reason is because the Ultron episodes are among the best episodes in the series giving us some chilling moments, beautiful character revelations, and some of the most impressive fights Avengers: EMH has to offer. If I could recommend any episodes to see (aside from all of them) these would be where I’d start.

So what are some of the big moments? First, we see Ultron “kill” Thor. Thor doesn’t really die, but when Thor disappears after getting hit with Ultron’s laser, everything looks as if Thor is gone and all that remains is his hammer no one can pick up (not even Hulk). This is haunting because Thor seemed invincible and this showed the level of brutality and strength in this machine both Hank Pym and Tony Stark made. This “death” is all the more interesting when Thor returns in the follow-up episode reading to unleash his full wrath on the machine that nearly killed him. And Thor doesn’t slow down for an instant.

This also begins Hank Pym’s descent into depression, self-hatred and self-doubt, and causes him to have a massive personality shift. In the comics, Ultron was the cause of this as well and this led to him changing costumes, changing identities, changing powers, beating his wife, quitting the team, rejoining the team, getting addicted to crap, and so on. Creating a machine with AI based on your mind and then seeing it nearly wipe out humanity sounds something truly bone-chilling and horrifying. I can understand why Hank goes through all these changes and we see a fraction of that in the cartoon and it all starts with this. And this takes place just as Hank was planning on leaving the Avengers because he wanted to continue being a pacifist.

Lastly, the season-two episode where Ultron returns wasn’t quite as good, but seeing him make a copy of the Avengers (as robots) was interesting. And the Avengers needing to destroy this updated version of Ultron without the aid of Hank was all the more intense. But newcomers Vision and Ms. Marvel stepped up to the plate to get things resolved and that kept things fairly interesting. All-in-all, these episodes make me glad Ultron is our next villain instead of Thanos.

Thor and Wasp and MODOK

Do you know what MODOK is? Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. Long story short, a scientist destroyed his body to a point where he basically was more machine than man and became MODOK. A giant floating head with a weird voice and psionic powers that commands the Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) organization. And while this villain is almost as weird in design as Mojo from X-Men, there is one scene in particular where Thor and Wasp break into an AIM headquarters during an experiment. When they encounter MODOK for the first time, they are both taken aback by MODOK’s appearance and the ensuing dialogue is comedy gold.

There are plenty of other great moments, scenes, and ideas from Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. But I don’t want to spoil all of it because then you’d have no reason to watch it. This is a great series cancelled way too early and replaced by something to utterly terrible (which I reviewed HERE). I was more than happy to share some highlights with you and I look forward to seeing you again for more Highlights. If you enjoyed this and want to see more content like it, please be sure to like, share, comment, and subscribe. See ya next time!