Release date: May 4, 2010
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
MSRP: $29.99
Starring the voices of Robert Hays, James Avery, Dorian Harewood, Casey Defranco
On the heels of success with X-Men on Fox Kids, Marvel was able to air an hour block of Iron Man and the Fantastic Four elsewhere in syndication. While a nice update from the 1960s cartoons, Iron Man ’94 unfortunately took a season to find a winning tone. Reflecting a newly formed team in the comics, Season 1 had Iron Man working with Spider-Woman, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Century, and War Machine as Force Works. The episodes skewed young, with situations that resolved in thirty minutes and dialogue that oddly poked fun at itself.
In Season 2, Force Works disbanded (and I believe the comics soon followed suit), and the plots became more complex and intertwined. Each episode ended with Iron Man’s disgraced nemesis The Mandarin retrieving magic rings that, by series’ end, restored his power for a final showdown.
The series is packaged complete (26 episodes on 3 discs), so you can’t have one season without the other, but it’s really not a bad deal. Of course I would have preferred the series to be solid from the start, but that’s just the fanboy in me talking.
–Gerald So
