Iron Man

As the first half of the Marvel Action Hour, Iron Man could be seen as the overall vision of things to come (both during the hour and in the subsequent seasons). The first season is mind-numbingly awful, appropriately devoid of any character development or investing you in any kind of intriguing plot or dynamic storytelling.

In fact, the first season is overloaded with supporting characters that don’t contribute much to the main thrust of the plot. The Hero Works-styled superhero team is both underdeveloped and over-used. Characters like Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch bare little-to-no resemblance to their comic book counterparts, despite looking exactly like them from the time period, and undercooked. Spider-Woman and War Machine fare a tiny bit better, but still don’t do much and never really developed beyond their introductory expositions.

And the first season is also overrune with villains who become a cacophony of outrageously outfitted megalomaniacs who are wildly incompetent. Sure M.O.D.O.K. and the Mandarin are given at least some semblance of a backstory and development, but characters like Grey Gargoyle and Crimson Dynamo drift in and out with little impact. This is to say nothing of the half-baked animation, cringe-inducing and improbable plot twists, hit-or-miss vocal work and distinct lack of direction or scope.

Luckily, the second season corrected many of these problems and provided an actual storyline for the season to wrap its episodes around. The animation greatly improved, many of the unnecessary secondary characters are removed, and we’re finally given some meat and reasons to care about the characters and their predicaments.

While it never really developed into a great or classic animated superhero show, it showed some promise. And it was nice to see a character like Iron Man get some attention after the big guns Spider-Man and X-Men hogged all the glory for years. He deserved better, but at least he wasn’t in Avengers: United They Stand.