Iron Man

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.

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!

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

Iron Man was a great Marvel cartoon series. Just as good as Spider-Man and X-Men. The series focused on the super hero team formed by Iron Man, Force Works. The team consisted of Iron Man, War Machine, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Century. They fought Mandarin and his group of super villians. The series was good from start to finish, but the last season left something to be desired.

I didn't watch Iron Man on Sky Digital. Instead, I watched every Iron Man episode (26 episodes) at a hospital when I was a boy. Iron Man was shown on the this tv channel - Fox Kids. It belonged over there. So did other ones such as The Incredible Hulk, Silver Surfur, and the Fantastic Four. Neither was as popular as Spider-Man and the X-Men on Fox Kids, however, among the children. If I could reverse back-the-clock, I would've made an effort to see every episode or season of Iron Man (26 episodes), Spider-Man (65 episodes), The Incredible Hulk (21 episodes), Fantastic Four (26 episodes) and Silver Surfur (13 episodes). Not the X-Men (76 episodes) however though it was deemed too long. I didn't mind if for example X-Men had over a 100 episodes even, but I still wouldn't watch it. Realism I presume. If the Spider-Man had over a 100 episodes, I still would've made an effort to watch these 100 or so episodes of this spectacular show ;) I'm glad for 65 episodes in the end ;) I liked how Iron Man looked in this animated series ;) I even liked how Tony Stark looked in this Iron Man series ;) Yet I would've preferred had Tony Stark looked different completely to the one we usually know or see ;) Not some man. If you want to see the Mandarin, see this tv series. Iron Man 3 will disappoint you. 8/10.