The Avengers – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Volume 2 – Captain America Reborn!

Animé and Toons
The Avengers – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Volume 2 – Captain America Reborn!
By Hervé St-Louis
May 10, 2011 - 23:36

Studios: Walt Disney Video
$19.99 US
Starring: Rick D. Wasserman, Brian Bloom, Fred Tatasciore, Wally Wingert, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Phil Lamarr
Running Time: 135 minutes
Release Date: April 26, 2011

In the second series of episode collected in this second volume of the Avengers’ animated series, the founding Avengers discover the frozen body of Captain America who was unearthed by the Hulk. But Hydra, the new Masters of Evil and a bunch of gamma-powered villains are out to get the Avengers. Will Captain America’s membership be enough to tip the scale in favour of the heroes?

Now in motion the series seems to be inspired even more by the comic book chronology of the Avengers. I like how the directors try to keep it as similar as original stories while updating the stories for the present. For example, Hawkeye becomes one of the first recruit after Captain America and the Hulk does leave the team, at least for a few episodes. I also like how the Hulk replaced Prince Namor as the anti-villain responsible for the unearthing of Captain America’s body from a block of ice. One major difference between this series and the official history of the Avengers in comic books is the absence of Quicksilver and twin sister the Scarlet Witch who were featured enormously in the Wolverine and the X-Men animated series. This is a part of the Avengers’ history with real villains becoming heroes that is not yet present in this series. Now I haven’t watched the rest of the episodes of this series on television, so I have no idea what’s going on next. But right now the bigger conspiracy with the Masters of Evil is quite interesting.

I didn’t like how Ant-man wasn’t a part of the two-parts Gamma World storyline and how Thor’s absence from the Black Panther’s story wasn’t really explained or contributed, apparently nothing to the ongoing progression of subplots in the series.

The animation continues to be good, reminding me a lot of the Justice League series in design and tone. I’ll say this series has little of the Disney house style although the animators who worked on the series overseas probably have worked on many Disney cartoon series in the past. I’ll continue to recommend this collected edition for any fan who might have missed the originals on television or who just want to watch them again. The DVD does have a few extra features, but nothing extraordinary. There are some previews of the next season, but nothing about the following two volumes that should complete the first year of this series.
Rating: 8.5/10