Iron Man: Armored Adventures 1 [DVD] [2008] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Unlike the DC Animated Universe (DCAU) DVD releases, Marvel properties have all pretty much suffered from the same issue in that it isn't easy to discern exactly which animated incarnation of the franchise in question you're actually buying. I speak from experience as through the animated X-Men collections I happened upon when hoping for a release of The Animated Series (which is actually officially titled The Comic Book Collection).

That said, this much-anticipated DVD collection represents the latest series airing on NickToons in the USA and TeleToon up in Canada. Genius Entertainment is the company behind the Iron Man: Armored Adventures - Volume 1 release on both DVD and Blu-ray.

While many fans of the 1994 Iron Man the Animated Series were hoping for an official Marvel release due to the popularity of the 2008 live action feature film, it was this NickToons version of the franchise that was spawned to meet the demand. It should also be noted that while the Iron Man - The Complete Animated Series is for sale in its entirety here at Amazon, it is not an official Region 1 release.

Additionally this program is in no way affiliated with the 2007 animated feature The Invincible Iron Man from Lion's Gate.

Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions of the Armored Adventures, Volume 1 arrive on a single disc collection on October 20th (or 27th, depending on who you ask) with a total runtime of 132 minutes for the first 6 episodes of the animated show.

This represents the first official release of the latest version of the Iron Man franchise.

The source material is kept pretty well in tact with the classic comic book legend converted into a story that shows Tony Stark inventing the Iron Man suit during his teenage years as opposed to his older persona of the films.

No sooner does teen wunderkind Tony Stark complete his greatest invention: the Iron Man does his whole world unravel.

His father and home are gone and in a flash Tony is left picking up the pieces of a shattered life. With help from sidekicks Rhodey and Pepper, he begins to unravel the mystery surrounding the attack on his old man.

And as Iron Man, Tony Stark turns creativity and knowledge into the path of becoming a superhero.

In all a fun show that has wasted little time in getting the DVD treatment. Now here's hoping the success of this series will spur someone into stepping up to the plate to release an official Region 1 box set of Iron Man the 1994 Animated Series.

"Iron Man: Armoured Adventures" did NOT fill me with confidence when it first came to light. After the huge success of the live-action movie, the news that the series would be presenting Tony Stark as a teenager seemed an unnecessary storytelling device (the movie didn't need to make the character younger in order to sell him to a younger audience, why should the cartoon?), and compounding that was the fact that it harkened back to a very unpopular period from the character's history in the mid-90s, when he was replaced with a teenage version of himself. After all, by removing the adult Stark from the equation, you remove the opportunity to tell some of his greatest stories, like the seminal, alcohol-fuelled "Demon in a Bottle", or his many tales of loves lost and won. The concurrent age-regression of many of his supporting cast like James Rhodes, Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan was a rude accompanying shock, albeit a neeeded one to make the ensemble work. The discovery that his arch-enemy, the Mandarin, recieved the same treatment, however, was very nearly the last straw for me, as this just wasn't *necessary* the way it was with his friends and allies. What was next, I wondered? The Melter, science geek who creates a raygun in the shcool lab? Whiplash, sports jock famed for his locker-room rat-tails? Fin Fang Foom, cabin boy of an alien spacecraft, able only to breathe flame when he sneezed? Top it all off with some flat-out ugly cel-shaded CGI animation, and redesigns of supervillains that made them look nothing like themselves, and I resolved that "Armored Adventures" was not the show for me.

And then... it... got... GOOD. Barrelling through all of my greivances, the show began juggling multiple ongoing plotlines (Tony's struggle to reclaim his company from Obadaiah Stane, Tony and the Mandarin's quest for the Makluan rings, the war between the Mandarin's Tong and the criminal Maggia, the terrorists of AIM working on their MODOK project...), brought in guest characters from all over the Marvel universe, forging all the character relationships I expected and *wanted* to see (Pepper's crush on Tony, Tony and Rhodey's strained relationship over Tony's lying and manipulation), and made the absolute *most* it possibly could of Iron Man's admittedly limp rogue's gallery (you've got the Mandarin, and everyone after that is C-level at best), refraining from de-age-ing any characters save for Madame Masque, and eventually even refining their design process so that characters like the Ghost, the Black Knight and the Black Panther *looked like* their comic-book selves, where Mandarin, Blizzard, Whiplash and Crimson Dynamo had been unrecognizable, uninspired jumbles of indistinct armor. Breaking down every barrier that stood in its way, even those very barriers that were built into the show's basic concept, "Armored Adventures" has absolutely succeeded in being a worthy version of Iron Man, and a great superhero cartoon that easily outstrips its contemporary, "Wolverine and the X-Men," in my book. It's not quite "The Spectacular Spider-Man", but it's a country mile better than some of the other animated offerings Marvel has given us over the years.

So, if you have any of the hang-ups about the show that I did when it began that have kept you from watching it, do yourself a favour and give it another try. The two-part pilot throws a lot of the concepts that you may have trouble with at you all at once, but it's all uphill from there. Definitely reccommended!

Thanks mostly to Robert Downey, Jr. and Jon Favreau, Iron Man has been elevated to top tier superhero status. And since this kind of unexpected success simply cries out for an animated TV show, sho 'nuff, we get one. Thing is, one pretty important change was implemented. And, so, if you can get past Tony Stark being reinterpreted as a teenager, then you may find this to be a dang watchable series - but that's a big if. IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES Vol. 1 collects the first six episodes of Season One, and my 3 star rating reflects the sheer suckability of the powers-that-be once again dishing out meager servings as opposed to releasing the entire season in one package. I'd say the show itself is worth a 4-star rating. But that's 'cause I pretty quickly got over Tony Stark's age reduction.

Maybe that's because I wasn't ever that big a fan of Tony Stark. Until Robert Downey, Jr. got his mitts on the character, I saw Stark as a smug, egotistical genius industrialist/superhero. In the comic books, I feel he got what he deserved in the aftermath of the Skrully Secret Invasion. Still, I can appreciate that what made Stark so interesting is what's been stripped away in this cartoon series. The adult Stark trotted out several weaknesses which humanized him to his readers. First, Iron Man's roots go back to a near-fatal injury. When Stark was kidnapped during an explosion in Stan Lee's original story, a shrapnel had penetrated his flesh, threatening to puncture his heart. A magnetic device was implanted in his chest to keep this shrapnel at bay, and this device became the first component in the Iron Man armor. Stan Lee gave us an irresistible dichotomy: on the outside, an invincible warrior encased in a hi-tech exoskeleton; except that this armor in fact housed a man with a severely weak heart. Young Tony Stark shares this same ailment (he has a heart implant that regularly requires charging), but, although it's come up in several situations, this vulnerability has yet to be truly explored and translated into a compelling story.

Gone also is Tony's mammoth guilt over being a weapons merchant. It's Stane who's weaponizing each of the Starks' inventions. And, with Tony being a teen and this being a kid's show, there's no chance the show will ever introduce Tony's other albatross, his crippling alcoholism. So what we're left with is this sixteen-year-old engineering prodigy who had designed his armor not out of sheer desperate necessity but because he was trying to outdo his inventor father. When his father dies, Tony decides to don the armor and fight crime, easy as pie. You can see how this origin doesn't resonate quite as deeply as Stan Lee's take. Young Tony Stark comes off as Peter Parker-lite (the SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN incarnation, that is). Which, okay, isn't a bad thing.

Also getting the teen treatment are Tony's friends Rhodey and energetic chatterbox Pepper Potts, as well as Happy Hogan, now rendered a dimwitted jock. Thankfully, Obadiah Stane remains a bald-domed adult, still very calculating and sinister. With the passing of his father, Tony inherits the family business and would like to get more involved in it, except that CEO Stane isn't about to let him get a whiff of running the vast Stark International empire. Enmity, established.

Gene Khan is introduced early on, and he's not exactly your typical teen. He manages to befriend Tony Stark. To backtrack a bit, Tony's dad had been obsessed with the fabled Chinese Makluan rings, which supposedly contain great mystical power. Gene Khan means to collect these rings and believes the diary of Tony's father to be a means to this goal. So, yeah, he buddies up to Tony. The pursuit of the Makluan rings becomes a running plot element in Season One.

Like Peter in SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, Tony juggles high school and crimefighting, and we've seen all this before, including the bit about Tony's missing or cutting classes, or as Pepper remarks to Rhodey: "I know I just met Tony, but he's been in the bathroom... a really long time." There's an interesting twist, too, in that Tony before had only had private tutors, so public schooling is something that's very new and sometimes cryptic to him.

The big draw for me was in checking out the young shellhead going up against his hi-tech rogue's gallery. Iron Man's cast of bad guy heavy hitters pops up (Stane, Mandarin, Crimson Dynamo), and these cats have recurring roles. CGI-wise, IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES reminds me of past shows like MAX STEEL, Roughnecks - The Starship Troopers Chronicles - The Complete Campaigns, and MTV's Spider-Man The New Animated Series: Season One. It's cool animation, but there are a few times when the graphics go wonky, as if the onscreen product were actually some unfinished, preliminary-staged work. Sometimes, it feels like there's no depth or weight to what we're seeing. But the CGI shines whenever Iron Man is doing his thing, and the action is always explosive and kinetic. The designs on Iron Man and his supervillains really look great (Whiplash, Blizzard, the Crimson Dynamo, and my favorite looks: Killer Shrike and Unicorn). So, again, if you can get past Tony as a teen - and I remember that it didn't go over well years ago in the comic book, either - and if you can forgive the at times (but not too often) shady animation, then this may be your huckleberry. The storytelling is sharp. The dialogue is believable and will occasionally crack you up. There's good continuity to the thing, a feel that the overarching story is being advanced. Another cool thing is that, like WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN, there are 26 episodes in this Season One. So we have these to look forward to in upcoming episodes: Black Panther, Nick Fury & S.H.I.E.L.D., the Hulk, and one pretty intriguing development: Tony's friendship with Whitney Stane, the daughter of Obadiah Stane. And in Season One's final episode: War Machine. So cue Black Sabbath... Or not.

Here are the six episodes on this DVD (but I'm still personally holding out for the full season release):

- Episodes 1 & 2 - "Iron Forged in Fire, Parts 1 & 2" - The origin story which goes into the murder of Tony's father, Obadiah Stane's usurping of Stark International, and the genesis of Iron Man. Also, Tony meets Pepper Potts.
- Episode 3 - "Secrets and Lies" - When the Maggia abducts the step-son of a Chinese importer, Tony and Pepper also get taken.
- Episode 4 - "Cold War" - Iron Man partners up with Blizzard to take down common foe Obadiah Stane. But it doesn't take Tony too long to realize that Blizzard is seriously wackadoo.
- Episode 5 - "Whiplash" - Investigating the assault on her hospitalized FBI dad, Pepper bites off more than she can chew and runs into the deadly Whiplash.
- Episode 6 - "Iron Man Vs. the Crimson Dynamo" - Two years ago, the Russian cosmonaut codenamed the Crimson Dynamo was abandoned while out on a space mission. Today, he's back on Earth, and he's sort of miffed.

Predictably, the DVD Special Features ain't much: 4 Suit Profiles which break down the Iron Man armor's tech and weaponry; the music video of Rooney's IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES theme song; and trailers for IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES, WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN, the All-New SUPER HERO SQUAD SHOW music video, and the promo for an Iron Man online game on [...].