Iron Man, La serie animada

Everything here lists this as being shown in the 90's--I think it was recycled from an earlier show. I am almost positive that I watched this show in the 80's--there is no other cartoon I can find with these characters from Saturday mornings when I was growing up--and I know I watched Iron Man then! Plus, the animation (at least for that listed as season 1) is not on par with other shows from the 90's. I think they recycled a program (at least Iron Man) and reused it here. The updated computer animation does not blend well with the older animation. The references to the sudden "improvement" in animation also leads me to believe they ran out of the old footage--or got funding for new animation!! I had a crush on Robert Hays, and to me, he was always Tony Stark!

In the mid-90s there was a string of cartoons based on Marvel comics, from the wildly successful Spider-Man and X-Men to the lesser ones such as The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four and this show, Iron Man. FF and Iron Man both started as part of the Marvel Action Hour with debut seasons of 13 episodes each. They were both rubbish. Choppy animation, lame out of place CGI and inconsistent voice acting didn't help the stories, which ranged from limp and mediocre to indecipherable (one episode about a plane being stolen through some sort of time displacement makes absolutely no sense).

Despite this, Iron Man got a second season and managed to prove itself as a good show. The glut of regular characters was cut down. The Mandarin being reduced to appearing in minuscule vignettes at the end of each episode while hislackeys disappeared almost completely, allowing for a fresh batch of villains such as Firebrand and AIM to appear. The Force Works team also broke up, with Century and (the terribly accented) Scarlet Witch being cut almost entirely and Hawkeye reduced to a handful of appearances. War Machine and Spider-Woman were keep along and both managed to grow more as interesting characters in their own right, helped by War Machine finally getting a consistent voice artist in Dorian Harewood. Robert Hays stayed on as the best interpretation of Iron Man yet; smart and funny, yet able to convey action and drama well. He was joined by his armour's new AI Homer, who added some nice comic relief. The show improved in the second season visually as well. The art became more detailed and moodier, the animation much smoother and the mind-numbing opening credits of the MAH season were replaced with a fairly cool rock theme. If you can catch it in repeats, the second season of Iron Man is well worth watching, with engaging and entertaining super-hero stories (many of which are adaptations of stories from the comics, such as the Armour Wars two-parter). Just try and avoid the first season.

The first season of "Iron Man" was written for the most part by Ron Friedman, who would be better known to most animation fans as the writer of "Transformers: The Movie." And, quite frankly, the first season of "Iron Man" sucked.

The overlarge cast of characters did not help Friedman's meandering scripts, which were usually needless complex (the first episode, "And The Sea Shall Give Up It's Dead," is a very good example of this) - and not in an intelligent way, more of a lurching, stumbling way. Crammed to the gills with awful pseudo-science which didn't make a lick of sense, bizarre, out-of-left-field dialogue (the title of this review is one such example, which Tony spontaneously recites while briefing his teammates), and ill-fitting humour that, for the most part, just wasn't funny, about the only thing this show had going for it was the animation, and even that was weaker than other shows on TV at the time. "Iron Man" season one was entirely too 80's to stack up against it's fellow Marvel shows, such as "X-Men" and "Spider-Man."

It's bizarre, because Friedman also wrote the first season of "Iron Man"'s sister show on the Marvel Action Hour, "Fantastic Four," and it was much better. The pseudo-science and humour WORKED on that show, sounding just right coming out of Mr. Fantastic and the Thing - Friedman seems to be a better hand at dealing with outer space fantasy than with the business-and-espionage world of Iron Man. Regrettably, FF was hampered by truly, truly appalling animation, which could have stepped right out of the 70's. To me, however, "Iron Man" was just the show I had to sit through before I could watch "Fantastic Four."

The SECOND season of "Iron Man," however, saw Marvel Productions switch animation houses, and the whole series got a makeover. Gone was Friedman - gone were the bad humour, oversized cast and stupid plots. The show started to make *sense.* Some of the changes were a little sudden, yes, and could have done with a little exposition to help them (Iron Man's new armour, the sudden appearance of HOMER), and it'd be lying to say that the shift in voice actors for the bulk of the cast wasn't jarring. Ultimately, though, the performances on the show were better in the second season, the animation was modernised, and there was finally a sense of arced plot, as we watched the Mandarin reclaim his rings.

You can bet your booties that if an "Iron Man" motion picture is produced, then some old episodes of this series will see a DVD/video re-release - hopefully they'll elect to go with the vastly superior second season.

Well my last review on this show was negative, but now that I have watched the whole series that has changed. Just like everyone else has stated that season one was terrible and i agree with them . As, I felt that every single episode of that season had the same formula, the same villains, the same plots and just the same everything. This was pretty obvious to know how each episode would end. Also, the terrible CGI did not help.

But season, came along and changed things up a bit, by actually adding new villains, having this home computer called H.O.M.M.E.R who is in J.A.R.V.I.S. I especially like how episode 7 s2 was handled.

The voice actors was good but season 1 felt it was lacking, Robert Hayes is a pretty underrated voice actor in my opinion.

I wish they explained though how he got H.O.M.M.E.R, I also wish they did more crossover episode that would have debuted Spider-Man, Captain America, The Fantastic Four and the X-Men but other then that it was a decent iron man cartoon.

Following the success of 1992's "X-men" animated series, Marvel returned to daytime TV entertainment with "Iron Man The Animated series" as part of the "Marvel Action hour". Any discerning viewer would be able to pin point the exact purpose of this animated series, and that is to sell toys to children. As a result, whatever complexities about the character that were inherent in the comics, including his womanizing nature and his alcohol addiction, were discarded in favor of a more child friendly premise. And what could be more child-friendly than "heroic good guy team versus dastardly bad guy team".

Much of the show's first season was a dismal disappointment. It was easily a cut and paste rehash of G I Joe or the cheesy 1980s He-Man cartoon with Iron Man leading his "Force Works" team against the evil Mandarin and his cronies. Every episode was largely the same as the last: The Mandarin attempts another goofy world domination plot or to steal a new Stark invention, there is some dissension caused within Iron Man's team, evil plot seems to succeed but Iron Man's team settle their differences in time to save the day.

Formulaic, bland and actually boring at times, season 1 also featured some horrendous animation. It was not just bad in terms of 1990s standards, but bad even when compared to animated series of the 1980s or late 1970s. Artwork would constantly go "off model" and character movements were strictly twelve frames per second. Furthermore in order to save costs, the animation company would use a lot of stock footage from past episodes in subsequent ones with no effort made to cover the cost cutting measure.

A year later, Marvel re-vamped the Iron Man series by hiring a new creative team and animation company. The results were a drastic improvement. The show took a darker turn in season 2 where the Force works team is disbanded after Tony Stark betrays their trust. Now working alone with occasional help from James Rhodes Aka War Machine, Stark must fend off his competitor Justin Hammer while dealing with new threats despite the disappearance of the Mandarin.

Season 2 largely discards the formulaic style, choosing to directly adapt popular story-lines from the Iron Man comics while having more character centered episodes that deal with common themes that anyone can relate to such as phobias, trust, the price of beauty and obsession. There is also a greater sense of continuity as the affects of events in one episode carry over into the next. Koko Enterprises, known for their work on the award winning Batman The Animated series give the animation in Iron Man's second season a much needed bump in the right direction. Character movements are smoother, art detail is better and the color scheme loses that bright cheery look of season one, replacing it with heavier blacks and more angular designs.

After twenty six episodes, Iron Man the animated series remains a very mixed bag. Blame for this shows disappointing quality can be attributed to constrictions placed upon the writers to feature as many Iron Man suits as possible in each episode as free publicity for the toys. On the bright side, it got better, allowing the audience at least 13 episodes of decent animated entertainment.

2/10 for season 1 7/10 for season 2.

Average to 4.5/10 round up to 5/10