APEX EXPRESS

I refuse to watch this because in comics or films the timeline is when Tony Stark is a man not a boy. So this really is a bastardization of the original story. Tony Stark as a teen doesnt interest me. In the true stories he is just a rich kid that can appreciate resposibility and that he learns that as an adult; NOT a teen. I will buy the older series as it is true to the storyline. I was interested in this series when I heard about it, but didnt realize later after reviewing that this is the only Iron Man story that conflicts with all others and claims that he had Iron Man armor as a boy. What a load of manure. Especially since it is the only of its kind. The movies are terrific and mention that the FIRST Iron Man armor is created when he is injured as an adult.
Rating: 1 / 5

Honest. I have no idea why the people in charge or producing the DVD product don’t present the show in the way they were made. Transformers Animated? Created in 16:9 widescreen, the DVD? 4:3. Iron Man: Armored Adventures created in 16:9 and the DVD? 4:3. The product description even says WIDESCREEN and I was pissed to actually put it in my player to see it in 4:3.

My one star is a reflection of this product only. As far as the show itself goes, I would give it 5 stars but this 4:3 version of the show totally removes from the awesome visual experience I got addicted to watching it on Netflix Instant Stream.
Rating: 1 / 5

- Pepper Potts, grousing: “I’ve got homework and finals and chores and my dad and. . . Team Iron Man. Research! Reconnaisance! Support! We’re stuck doing all the work and Tony gets to do all the fun stuff!”
- Rhodey: “He almost got killed last week!”
- Pepper: “See?!”

What?! All 26 episodes of Season One in one DVD collection? After deploying several six-episode DVD releases for IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES, the corporate powers-that-be get with the program, and, oh, me so likee! Iron Man sits on top of the world right now, having repulsor-rayed the wallcrawler and the Dark Knight off the head of the table. Robert Downey, Jr. gets mucho credit. Jon Favreau gets leftover credit. Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca, on the comic book side of things, are handling their business. And this cartoon is not at all shabby. But have you gotten over the animated show’s reinterpretation of Tony Stark as a teenager yet? I got over it in ten seconds.

On one hand, we miss out on Stark’s legendary carousing. This Tony brings the acne much more than he brings the sexy. On the other hand, some things sort of remain the same. Teen Tony still grapples with that heart ailment, although this time he incurs it when the jet plane he and his dad were on got exploded. Tony ends up with a heart implant that regularly requires charging.

Gone also is Tony’s mammoth guilt over being a weapons merchant. It’s Obadiah 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, Stane remains a baldy-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, and MTV’s SPIDER-MAN: THE NEW ANIMATED SERIES. 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 often crack you up. There’s fantastic 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, most of them pretty damn great. Marvel heroes tend to be neighborly and so Iron Man runs into a number of familiar characters: Black Panther, Nick Fury & S. H. I. E. L. D. , and the Hulk. I’m pretty curious about one intriguing development, which is Tony’s friendship with Whitney Stane, daughter of Obadiah Stane. And, oh yeah, sometime very late in Season One: War Machine. So cue Black Sabbath. . . Or not.

IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES: The Complete First Season comes in four discs. Bonus features are whatever: 4 “Suit Profiles” which detail various properties of the Iron Man armor; Rooney’s music video of the show’s theme song; “A Day in the Life” – a brief TV spot of Iron Man promoting THE SUPERHERO SQUAD SHOW; Storyboard Galleries (“Seeing Red” & “Pepper, Interruted” – these are kinda hard to make out unless you have a gynormous TV screen); Original Sketches of characters, of various Iron Man armors, and of this and that vehicle (the Helicarrier, the A. I. M. tank, etc. ); and trailers for IRON MAN: ARMORED ADVENTURES, WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN, THE SUPERHERO SQUAD SHOW, and MarvelKidsdotcom.

And because I’m thinking this review is still not long enough, here are the episode breakdowns. Some PLOT SPOILERS now:

- 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 and then tries to get a word in.

- Episode 3 – “Secrets and Lies” – When the Maggia abducts Gene Khan, 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 miffed, brother, miffed!

- Episode 7 – “Meltdown” – Tony quits school and decides to expend his energies being Iron Man, 24/7. He runs into the Living Laser.

- Episode 8 – “Field Trip” – Tony skulks into Stark International in an untested prototype armor that then malfunctions, forcing Tony to abandon it. He then must sneak back into the facility to retrieve the faulty suit before Stane finds it. But how to do that? Answer: school field trip? I dig the heist element in which Pepper’s plan totally falls apart, forcing the kids to desperately improvise. First appearance of Whitney Stane, by the way.

- Episode 9 – “Ancient History 101″ – In the quest for the ancient Makhuan Rings, Team Iron Man (and Gene) must pass the test of wisdom. But the stone Dreadknight statues which guard one of the Makhuan Rings come to life and they do not grade on a curve.

- Episode 10 – “Ready, A. I. M. , Fire” – At a school science fair Tony is bamboozled into working for A. I. M. and into developing a mind-to-machine interface technology. What he does is create a new supervillain.

- Episode 11 – “Masquerade” – Iron Man is framed for crimes being committed by the illusion-casting Madame Masque, but her true motives aren’t what Tony expects.

- Episode 12 – “Seeing Red” – The Crimson Dynamo returns as Stane and Project Pegasus team up to capture Iron Man, whose power levels are down to 3%. It’s Rhodey and Pepper (in her own ridiculous “costume”) to the rescue. Tony also creates the virus Technovore which then gains sentience.

- Episode 13 – “Hide and Seek” – When Tony and Gene Khan unearth the third Makluan Ring in a temple in Greenland, Tony undergoes the cryptic Test of Courage, going up against both the Mandarin and the third Ring’s unstoppable guardian, Ultimo. Meanwhile, Rhodey is super-ticked off that he and Pepper were left out of the loop again.

- Episode 14 – “Man and Iron Man” – Mister Fix, still up to nefarious tricks. His superpowered henchman, an upgraded Whiplash, introduces a virus in Tony’s armor which begins to eff it up from the inside out. The corrupted and suddenly self-aware Iron Man programming soon regards Rhodey and Pepper as threats.

- Episode 15 – “Panther’s Prey” – In pursuit of an international criminal Iron Man runs afoul of the elegant but prickly Black Panther who desires neither team-up nor even some moments to share anecdotes. The monarch of Wakanda has set his eyes on Iron Man’s prey and young Shellhead had better step back. Now that’s just rude.

- Episode 16 – “Fun with Lasers” – The Living Laser holds the world hostage with a destructive space weapon and all dude wants is a rematch with Iron Man. Also, General Nick Fury of S. H. I. E. L. D. throws in his two cents (To quote Rhodey: “Nick Fury’s a jerk!”). Check out Tony’s cool black & gold space armor. And I like that Tony wins the day by resorting to Your Momma insults.

- Episode 17 – “Chasing Ghosts” – The Ghost, all vanishy and untouchable, goes hunting for Tony Stark and instantly becomes one of Iron Man’s toughest foes. I smiled a lot at the way this problem was resolved.

- Episode 18 – “Pepper, Interrupted” – The turf war episode. With the Mandarin so focused on obtaining the Makluan Rings, Maggia is threatening to expand into the Tong’s territory. Pepper and Gene are assigned to work on a report and this, wouldn’t you just know it, soon places Pepper in danger. Can Gene rescue her without revealing his secret identity? What’s up with the hi-tech Black Knight? Plus, detention for everyone.

- Episode 19 – “Technovore” – Tony is tapped to fix the S. H. I. E. L. D. helicarrier’s failing engines, and Pepper is all kinds of ecstatic to be onboard the helicarrier. Meanwhile, Tony’s computer virus creation, called the Technovore – that was supposed to self-destruct a while ago after it took care of Project Pegasus – resurfaces and it exists to consume technology. It’s up to Rhodey (borrowing the Iron Man gauntlet) to save the day.

- Episode 20 – “World on Fire” – Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper locate the fourth Makluan Ring inside a not that dormant volcano, but the Firebrand guardian initiates the Test of Temperance by possessing Rhodey and forcing him to battle Iron Man. Elsewhere, Gene seethes at being left out.

- Episode 21 – “Designed Only For Chaos” – A dying Living Laser is abducted from the S. H. I. E. L. D. helicarrier by A. I. M. and used as a power source for the Mental Organism Designed Only for Conquest (M. O. D. O. C. ). Iron Man finds himself defenseless against MODOC’s mental assault.

- Episode 22- “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” – Happy Hogan finds the Iron Man armor and dons the thing (even though he believes Iron Man to be a robot), and then stumbles onto a sinister Maggia plot that threatens the city. To save the day, Tony pretends to be the armor’s robot voice and tries to talk Happy into effectively using the armor, all the while trying to keep Happy in the dark about his secret identity.

- Episode 23 – “Uncontrollable” – The Controller! Rick Jones! The Hulk! Iron Man! Oh it’s on and poppin’! Two classic comments from the Hulk: “Stupid metal man fight Hulk! Hulk smash metal man!” and “Pepper talk a lot. ”

- Episode 24 – “Best Served Cold” – Wearing the experimental face of Madame Masque results in Whitney falling gravely ill. Tony, asked to help by Obadiah Stane, armors up for a flight to the Arctic for a possible cure. But Blizzard awaits, and he’s still pretty unstable (read: cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs). Check out Iron Man’s arctic armor.

- Episode 25 – “Tales of Suspense: Part One” – Gene’s stepfather, Zheng, having regained control of the Tong, abducts Gene, Tony, and Pepper and forces Tony to disclose the location of the fifth Ring (which happens to be the lost Peruvian city of Machu Piccu). There, Tony and Gene are sent to retrieve the ring and must face the fifth guardian of the Rings, the malevolent ancient Chinese dragon Fin Fang Foom. To save his friends, Rhodey does what we’ve been waiting for all season: he suits up in the War Machine armor.

- Episode 26 – “Tales of Suspense: Part Two” – This is it! An all-out melee with Iron Man and War Machine versus Zheng and the Mandarin!
Rating: 5 / 5