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The Invincible Iron Man This installment of Marvel Comics cartoons features the invincible Iron Man. In "The Death of Tony Stark," a laser beam emitted from a mysterious satellite orbiting the Earth destroys the home of wealthy industrialist Tony Stark. Iron Man's alter ego has obviously dodged the strike, but cannot disprove the rumor that Stark is dead until he confronts the culprit, the Mandarin. In "The Crimson Dynamo," Iron Man faces Soviet electrical genius Professor Vanko, who has designed his own suit of crimson armor in order to defeat Iron Man as the first step to destroying the ultimate capitalist, Stark Enterprises. These stories, rather dated in their cold-war depiction of the Chinese and the Soviets, are each divided into three six-minute serial-type segments. The animation is minimal, restricted mostly to camera zooms and moving limbs and mouths, punctuated by Batman-style sound effects ("Wham!").
--David Horiuchi The Incredible Hulk
There was some amazing, classic animation done for superhero cartoons as far back as Max & Dave Fleisher's Superman series of the early 1940s (echoes of which can be found in Batman: The Animated Series). Those were done for the big screen; by the mid-1960s, superhero cartoons were being brought to television, and some of Marvel Comics' biggest heroes--Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Incredible Hulk--were the stars. Unfortunately, television didn't have much in terms of cachet--or production values--at the time, and all four heroes suffer for it.
The Hulk gets short shrift here; the interesting thing about the character has always been twofold: the misunderstood misfit trying to make a quiet life for himself, and the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde duality of the Hulk and his alter ego, Dr. Bruce Banner. On the two episodes here--"The Power of Dr. Banner" and "The Origin of the Hulk"--the animation is minimal and barely serves to capture a single facet of either character's personality. It looks as if only a couple dozen pictures of the main characters were drawn; for the most part, this is a series of stationary illustrations with voice-overs and plenty of narration. --Randy Silver
Captain America
Captain America comes across fine, if only because he's long suffered from the same wooden boy-scout image that Superman is often given--if nothing else, these cartoons excel at capturing a one-dimensional personality. On the two episodes here--the self-explanatory "Origin of Captain America" and "Fantastic Origin of the Red Skull" (why does the Skull's origin rate higher than Cap's?)--the animation is minimal. It looks as if only a couple dozen pictures of the main characters were drawn; for the most part, this is a series of stationary illustrations with voice-overs and plenty of narration. --Randy Silver
