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Fanboy rages aren’t always justified. Sometimes they’re ugly and sexist (“Gal Gadot is a bad choice for Wonder Woman because she doesn’t have boobs!”), or racist (“Michael B. Jordan can’t be Johnny Storm because that character has always been white!”), but every so often they’re on point, as is the case here. Why has Iron Man been given the Spider-Man makeover?
It’s jarring to see a character so closely tied with alcoholism, womanizing, aggrandizement, and running a multi-billion dollar corporation as a nearly legal teenager. And frankly, the series frequently strains too hard to shove in various characters from the comics into the series new locale. Happy Hogan is now a dim-bulb jock, Pepper Potts is an annoyingly motor-mouthed and infinitely curious sidekick, James Rhodes is a major supporting player (as it should be), and Gene Khan is the Mandarin. Yes, Tony Stark now goes to school with every single major player from the books.
The fact that none of them (aside from Pepper or Rhodes) bother to notice that Stark is constantly taking “bathroom breaks” pretty much strains the credibility of the show. And once Madame Masque and other villains start popping up in the school, it becomes harder and harder to just go with this premise. It would be so much easier if they were all adults and so much of their personalities weren’t changed around.
But there’s still a lot to like on display here. If any character lends themselves easily to CG animated action sequences, it’s Iron Man. And this show doesn’t disappoint in that respect. The new designs for many of the villains are fresh, interesting, and make logical sense within this world’s technology. Granted, animating facial movements and expressions is limited, but the show knows that its bread-and-butter is in big explosions and scenes of Iron Man, War Machine and Rescue battling it out with M.O.D.O.K., Ultimo, Grey Gargoyle, Living Laser.
The show also does a great job of expanding out and including various characters from across the Marvel universe. Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D., Professor X, Jean Grey, Black Panther, and a few others all make appearances in one or more episodes. And practically every major villain from Iron Man’s comic books appear, even if some of their appearances are less than thrilling it’s still nice to see the creators make an effort to include as many of them as possible and try to spin them in a different way.
But it’s that “teen Tony” approach that really hinders the series. The makeover gives his origin story too many parallels to Spider-Man, and at times it feels more like a Spider-Man show with Iron Man having been substituted in. It’s a mixed result, but I think there’s enough done well to give it at least a handful of episodes a chance, and the second season really develops into something more mature and deeper. It still seems that while Marvel has DC cornered on the live action market, DC still has more classic animated versions of their characters than Marvel does. Iron Man: Armored Adventures isn’t a classic, but it’s never downright awful either.
