REVIEW -- Avengers Assemble - Episode 4: The Serpent of Doom

After last week's horrible episode, "Ghost of a Chance," I could not believe that I was still going to give this show a fair chance. That is until I saw in the preview trailers that everyone's favorite Marvel villain, Doctor Doom, was to be featured in this week's episode, dubbed "The Serpent of Doom."

The Plot: 

Thor believes he must sacrifice himself to save the world from Doctor Doom when he summons the Midgard Serpent using a powerful Asgardian weapon that was brought to Earth by his nemesis, Ulik.

The Avengers race to stop both Doctor Doom and the Midgard Serpent before the creature devours the entire planet.

The Verdict: 

Right out of the bat, I will say that this episode has been the best one of this season thus far. There wasn't the overuse of the forced banter and wise cracks like Ultimate Spider-Man, but it felt more like an episode of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, where the focus is on the large scale battle. There were jokes to be made here, but they were all suiting for the situation, such as Doom getting squashed by the Serpent during one of his egotistical boasts.

First things first, I love that they started the episode with Thor clashing with Ulik, a lesser known Marvel villain from the Asgardian side of their universe, who looks a lot like Kalibak from DC Comics. That shouldn't be too surprising as both Marvel and DC 'borrowed' a lot of ideas from each other when it comes to the cosmic-oriented realms of both of their universes, due to artists and writers bouncing between the two companies back in the day. The whole ordeal with the Midgard Serpent seemed to be an amalgam of the MANY interpretations from the comics, which I'm perfectly fine with them modifying for the sake of simplicity on a kids' cartoon.

Secondly, we get to see a continuation to the Cabal plot that was teased at the end of Episode 2. I figured Doom would blow off Red Skull's invitation to join the Cabal. Doom's not a team player, especially with that ego of his and would not join unless he saw some kind of personal benefit from the alliance as it's obvious that Doctor Doom has more resources and an intellect rivaling Stark's to boot. Of course, Doom does join the Cabal in the comics, so I'm guessing that they come to some sort of agreement since Doom finds himself trapped in Asgard at the end of the episode. Speaking of that, if you think Doom is dead meat, think again. Doctor Doom has been stranded in space and in other dimensions after defeat more times than you can count. His armor capabilities are far beyond the means of Iron Man's armors and can all him to survive in any environment and allows him to challenge roughly anyone in Marvel Universe to hold his own in battle. Simply put, Doom's harder to kill than a damn cockroach.

Black Widow is absent in this episode, but that can be forgiven since Hawkeye and Captain America were both pretty useless in the fight with the Midgard Serpent, save for dealing with crowd control and protecting civilians during the battle. Her stinger darts and pistols would have pretty useless in a fight against Doctor Doom anyway. It makes you think that it was a really stupid idea to model this series' roster exactly like the live action film's own. Ms. Marvel and Wasp would have been a big asset in this battle of heavy-hitters.

It was good to see that The Falcon isn't fumbling around like an amateur rookie in battle now as he was holding his own as a member of the team finally. It still doesn't discount that he's the lamest member on this team though.

I don't know what happened to their animation, but the quality really suffered on this episode. When the action gets this intense, this is where they should pull out all of the stops to impress their audience with visuals, not on those lame duck first few episodes. Most of the action looks a bit bland and lackluster as a result.

In terms of voice acting, Maurice LaMarche comes off a bit stale as Doctor Doom for my taste, as I'm still pretty fond of Paul Dobson's take for him in the latest Fantastic Four cartoon, even though most people will recognize him as the current voice for Dr. Doom in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. It will do I guess as if I'm honest, I'm not too fond of a LOT of the voices in this cartoon compared to the voice talents in EMH. Don't get me wrong - I'm not discrediting the talented voice actors on this show. It's just feels like the wrong people are playing the wrong parts.

The Serpent of Doom was a step in the right direction if Disney XD and Marvel hope to keep this series going for the long haul. It was definitely their best episode so far and shows that great episodes like EMH can be found in this series as well. I'm giving this one a 3 out of 5.