Which Marvel Cartoons Have Not Aged Well?

[TMC1982]

Surprisingly, I lot of the 1990s era Marvel animated TV shows have not held up well in my humble opinion.:
*The 1994-1998 Spider-Man series was pretty revolutionary with its whole serialized, season-long arc formats. However, it's hard to overlook the annoying censorship issues (such as renaming the Sinister Six the "Insidious Six" and Spidey not being alowed to punch anybody) that Fox imposed (thanks in large part to Power Rangers), adapting the notorious clone storyline (if John Semper made a Spidey cartoon today, we might get an adaption of "One More Day";)), being unable to use Sandman (thanks to a proposed James Cameron Spidey movie that never happened), the now primitive CGI for the New York City skyscrapers, etc., etc.

*Spider-Man Unlimited in retrospect, feels like Marvel's way of cashing in on the 1990s trend of making a superhero cartoon have a futuristic-like setting (just like with Phantom: 2040, The Avengers: United They Stand, and Batman Beyond).

*The Avengers: United They Stand - The whole blatantly toyetic, lets give the Avengers Big Bad Bettleborg-type of armor is the most obvious offender (besides of course, the absence of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor).

*The the first seasons of both the 1990s Fantastic Four and Iron Man series. Thankfully, things dramatically improved for each respective season (giving Tony Stark a Captain Hook-like mullet is what holds Iron Man: Season 2 back however).

I think that the 1990s X-Men series surprisingly holds up (to the point in which you can argue that it's the "definitive" media adaptation) outside of the AKOM produced animation (which kind of has a muddy or dirty look). The 1990s Incredible Hulk cartoon holds up pretty well up until UPN started meddling (wanting to "lighten things up") and subsequently ruining it by making She-Hulk a predominate figure in Season 2.

The MTV Spider-Man series I don't think really holds up simply because it was designed to be in the same continuity as the Sam Raimi movies. Because Spider-Man 2 hadn't come out yet, many members of Spidey's familiar rogues gallery (sans the Lizard, who never mutated in the first three movies) couldn't be used. It would've made much more sense to do this type of show have Spider-Man 3 came out.

The one-shot X-Men pilot ("Pryde of the X-Men") from 1989 is a mixed bag. While the Toei produced animation holds up to this day (I wish that Toei had done the animation for the 1992-1997 X-Men series), it fails from the standpoint of writing/direction and voice acting (e.g. Aussie Wolverine). X-Men is for the most part, a decidedly mature comic book franchise (due to its themes regarding prejudice). However, the producers seemed to want to make a campy, "everything is black and white" hybrid of G.I. Joe (with Cyclops filling the Duke role since they both were voiced by Michael Bell) and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

[AlgeaX]

Surprisingly, I lot of the 1990s era Marvel animated TV shows have not held up well in my humble opinion.:
*The 1994-1998 Spider-Man series was pretty revolutionary with its whole serialized, season-long arc formats. However, it's hard to overlook the annoying censorship issues (such as renaming the Sinister Six the "Insidious Six" and Spidey not being alowed to punch anybody) that Fox imposed (thanks in large part to Power Rangers), adapting the notorious clone storyline (if John Semper made a Spidey cartoon today, we might get an adaption of "One More Day";)), being unable to use Sandman (thanks to a proposed James Cameron Spidey movie that never happened), the now primitive CGI for the New York City skyscrapers, etc., etc.

Yeah, while I really liked this show back when it was on, It really doesn't hold up today. Particularly when compared to contemporary shows like Batman: TAS and Gargoyles. Cheap CGI, bad voice acting, shamless abuse of stock footage, idiotic S&P and my personal bugbear, the vampires. Seriously, S&P won't even let you say the word "blood" and what characters do you decide to dedicate huge season spanning story-arcs to? Morbius and Blade!


*Spider-Man Unlimited in retrospect, feels like Marvel's way of cashing in on the 1990s trend of making a superhero cartoon have a futuristic-like setting (just like with Phantom: 2040, The Avengers: United They Stand, and Batman Beyond).

*The Avengers: United They Stand - The whole blatantly toyetic, lets give the Avengers Big Bad Bettleborg-type of armor is the most obvious offender (besides of course, the absence of Iron Man, Captain America and Thor).

I wouldn't say these shows aged badly, that would imply they were enjoyable at the time, which they most certainly were not. On a side note, A:UTS biggest problems were probaly the awful voice acting, awful animation and awful writing. Belive me, even the combind might of the big three wouldn't have been able to save that mess.


*The the first seasons of both the 1990s Fantastic Four and Iron Man series. Thankfully, things dramatically improved for each respective season (giving Tony Stark a Captain Hook-like mullet is what holds Iron Man: Season 2 back however).

I still maintain that Iron Man season two is the best Marvel show of the 90s and single-handedly responsible for making Shellhead my favourite superhero.

[TMC1982]

*The 1960s Marvel Superheroes anthology series is a show that I can't believe that I left out. The extremely limited, "let's literally animated the comics", xerox style animation, bad voice over work, and unoriginal storytelling (like I said, they were practically copying the comic book storylines verbatim) are the biggest drawbacks.

*The 1970s Fantastic Four animated series (AKA, the one with HERBIE the robot filling in for Johnny Storm:sad:). I think that the 1960s F4 show from Hanna-Barbara was actually better (and more sophisticated, ironically) than the 1970s one or the first season of the 1990s F4 show.

*I think that Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends for some odd reason, holds up pretty well (it was really the first Marvel show to feature the whole Marvel universe all at once/at the same time) outside of some bad voice acting and any episode that included Videoman (clearly the show's way of latching on to the Atari 2600/arcade trend from the early '80s).

[GregX]

Most of the shows from the 90's have not aged all that well, sad to say. One exception is most of the second season of "Iron Man," and by most, I mean any episode that didn't deal with the Mandarin (the season finale still felt like the first season). The first season of "The Incredible Hulk" had a lot of strong moments too.

"Spider-Man 5000" from the 80's, while I won't say it's aged well, it still has a charm to it that I enjoy. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say it's my second favorite Spider-Man cartoon ever. Even though he's not a Spidey villain, I enjoyed what they did with Dr. Doom.

[macattack]

X-Men: Evolution is the first Marvel show that has aged anything resembling well, and that's mostly because of good animation and magically the slang and voices still hold up decently (but not perfectly, particularly Shadowcat's dialogue in the first two seasons). However, some sloppy writing hurts it and prevents it from being timeless.

Spectacular Spider-man's complete avoidance of slang and, well, spectacular animation, storytelling, and voice acting will allow it to hold up 10 years from now, if Marvel even wants it to be remembered. I have a sad feeling it will become the new Spider-Man 5000, a red-headed stepchild of Spidey toons, eclipsed by Ultimate Spider-Man the same way 5000 was eclipsed by Amazing Friends.

And I think the new Avengers cartoon will also hold up pretty well too.

The 90's shows just don't hold up. There is some terrible voice direction in a lot of the toons (particularly Spider-Man and Fantastic Four) and animation, thanks to the highly detailed figures, could become stupendously sloppy. The first season of the Incredible Hulk and the second season of Iron Man, as mentioned by GregX, probably hold up the best, but neither of them have a timeless quality to them.

One thing Spider-Man: Unlimited had going for it was stellar BGM. The techno/rock could become pretty damn crazy at times. But that was the only thing the show had going for it.

[Trevor]

Well, before 2004 the 1967 Spider-Man series wasn't looking so good, due to the reuse of old, dirty, torn prints, but since Disney International did its Remastering the series has regained its youthfulness, and will continue to age bettter than the Spider-Man's that aired in the 2000's. Now, if only Disney would release it on Blu-Ray, along with a DVD-reissue.