Avengers Assemble and Please Try Not To Stink!

Have you seen the new Avengers cartoon? Earth's Mightiest Heroes? You know what? It's not entirely terrible. It's leaps-and-bounds better than that horrible, awful Avengers cartoon they put out in the late 90s. Normally, I'd put a link here so you'd know what I'm referencing, but I refuse to put you through the torture of watching even a small clip from that horrible cartoon. Now, let's never speak of it again.

So I've been watching the new Avengers cartoon lately and actually enjoying it. They seem to be sticking pretty close to the accepted history of the characters, so that oughta please the fanboys (he says, sitting beneath the 15-inch Spiderman action figure posed heroically on the shelf above his art table). I might not like it as much as that old Justice League Unlimited cartoon, but maybe that's just my slight preference for Superman and Batman over Captain America and Iron Man.

Anyway, I was watching the Avengers cartoon and remembered how much I used to like Captain American when I was a kid (I was so patriotic back then). I used to draw Cap all the time in my school notebooks. So I decided to try a sketch. I have to admit, after months and months of drawing puppies and bunnies and little girls with flowers I'm a little rusty with the superhero stuff. So let's just call this well-deserved practice. Not to mention I'm still working out the kinks of inking digitally. I'll probably end up doing a few more of these things just to get comfortable with it. The work-in-progress steps are posted below, but the whole thing was really just an illustration exercise, so there's not much going on here.

But speaking of superheroes, if you happen to be off work Friday you have a veritable cornucopia of choices for animated action. If you're a fan of Cap, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk, I think Disney XD is running an Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes marathon, starting at 3, and culminating at 830 with an hour long "Gamma World" special where the Leader turns everyone on Earth into some kind of Hulk-monster (yikes!). And if you prefer DC's heroes, Robin, Kid-Flash, Superboy and the rest of the Teen Titans are premiering their new Young Justice series with an hour-long pilot on the Cartoon Network at 7. It's Christmas come early for comic book geeks. And you can bet a mountain of Vibranium I'll be watching. Hope you have a nice holiday. -v