What was that? You didn't know there were other Marvel Comics based animation on Disney+ than the four iconic series shown above?
While you're racing to revisit X-Men: The Animated Series, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, and some of the other iconic cartoons from Marvel Comics' early animation efforts on Disney+ since it's official launch on November 12, 2019, I wanted to take a moment to point out these other often forgotten Marvel Comics-based series are also available on the platform for streaming.
Spider-Woman
When I saw this listed on Disney+, I had a legit gasp of surprise. I haven't seen this in any capacity since renting it when I was a kid and it ended up being eaten by the VCR at the time.
According to the title sequence, Jessica Drew (voiced by Joan Van Ark) was bitten by a venomous spider as a child; her father saved her life by injecting her with an experimental "spider serum," which also granted her superhuman powers. As an adult, Jessica is editor of Justice Magazine, with two other employees featured; photographer Jeff Hunt (a cowardly braggart who nonetheless fancied himself as a quick-witted and resourceful crime-stopper) and Jessica's teenage nephew Billy. When trouble arises, Jessica slips away to change into her secret identity of Spider-Woman.
The Spider-Woman cartoon should not be confused with Web Woman, a Filmation superheroine cartoon launched at around the same time, which reportedly prompted Marvel Comics into creating a Spider-Woman character to secure the copyright.
This version of Spider-Woman took a lot of liberties with her powers for the sake of animation and make her more comparable to Peter Parker/Spider-Man. He would appear in this series voiced by Paul Soles who previously voiced him in the 1960s Spider-Man series. The Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman would appear later in the Iron Man animated series in the 1990s, who was more comparable to her comic book counterpart.
Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends
This was a guilty pleasure of mine since it used to air in reruns on Disney XD when Disney first purchased Marvel. I remember watching this briefly when I was a kid, but I grew to appreciate the campiness of it all, much like the DC Comics' Superfriends era stuff that this was obviously inspired by.
Originally broadcast on NBC as a Saturday morning cartoon, the series ran first-run original episodes for three seasons, from 1981 to 1983, then aired repeats for an additional two years (from 1984 to 1986). Alongside the 1981 Spider-Man animated series, Amazing Friends was later re-aired in the late 1980s as part of the 90 minute Marvel Action Universe (not to be confused with 1977's The Marvel Action Universe).
Peter Parker (Spider-Man), Bobby Drake (Iceman), and Angelica Jones (Firestar) are all college students at Empire State University. After working together to defeat the Beetle and recovering the "Power Booster" he stole from Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) the trio decide to team-up permanently as the "Spider-Friends". They live together in Peter's aunt's home with her and a pet dog, Ms. Lion (adopted from Firestar), a Lhasa Apso. Together, the superheroes battle various supervillains.
Some stories featured team-ups with other characters from the Marvel Universe, including Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Sunfire, and the mid-1970s X-Men. This is one of the only series that comes to mind that has an animated appearance of Shanna the She-Devil to this day.
Angelica Jones / Firestar is one of four characters exclusively created for this cartoon who would later be introduced into the comic book continuity, much like DC Comics' Harley Quinn following her inclusion in Batman: The Animated Series.
Spider-Man: Unlimited
Often regarded as the "unofficial" sequel to Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man Unlimited sees Peter Parker journey to Counter-Earth to rescue the estranged John Jameson from the tyranny of the High Evolutionary and his race of Bestials. This series provides a lot of interesting twists and redesigns on classic Spider-Man villains and allies, including the Green Goblin, Venom, Carnage, Man-Wolf, and Electro. It's only limited to 13 episodes and ends on a high stakes cliffhanger. Despite that, I'm still fond of this series for a lot of reasons. I like to mention that the Unlimited costume stands up there as one of my favorite Spider-Man costume re-designs of all-time.
I'm still pretty salty that we never saw that included in the PlayStation 4 exclusive Marvel's Spider-Man video game. Was that too much to ask? Like c'mon!
Iron Man: Armored Adventures
I never mentioned this show much at the time of it's release as it was honestly a guilty pleasure of mine. It aired originally on Nickelodeon's Nicktoons network, featuring a teenage reimagining of Tony Stark and his Ironman lore. As someone who grew up reading Ironman's early works, this was an interesting experiment. While I wasn't too crazy about the high school element - such as how hyperactive Pepper Potts is in this iteration (think Mako in KILL la KILL), Rhodey just the token black dude at their high school, Happy Hogan is a dumb jock, and so on - but I did love the re-designs to classic Ironman villains. The villains, along with Ironman's armor(s) that Tony constantly develops and improves upon throughout the series, get to shine in this computer-generated artstyle. One major, yet controversial change in this series is that the Mandarian is one of Tony's classmates, Gene Khan, who ends up with the fateful Makluan Rings after betraying Tony and his friends to get them.
The first season adapts the Makluan Rings saga in its own spin while featuring the introduction of Madame Masque too following Tony's feud with Obadiah Stane over control of his father's company.
The second season covers the Armor Wars saga and its own version of the Stane International story arc while following Gene's journey to obtain the remaining 5 Makluan Rings. By the end of this season, both Pepper and Rhodey have joined Tony as his partners in their own armors as Rescue and War Machine respectively.
The series features some guest appearances by the Hulk, Rick Jones, Thunderbolt Ross, Black Panther, Magneto, Professor, Jean Grey, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Avengers: United We Stand
As much as I have knocked this show in this past, I do want to state that there was some good in this show. The series features a team broadly based on the roster for the 1984 Avengers spin-off series The West Coast Avengers, composed of the Wasp, Wonder Man, Tigra, Hawkeye, and Scarlet Witch (Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch were also both in the Iron Man animated series as members of Force Works), led by Ant-Man/Giant-Man, with the Falcon and the Vision joining in the opening two-parter. For undetermined reasons (perhaps due to their rights being tied up in planned movie projects), the Avengers' "Big Three" were not regular fixtures in the series – Captain America and Iron Man made only guest appearances in one episode each, while Thor did not appear outside of the opening titles. Captain America appears in one episode, "Command Decision". The story involves the Masters of Evil and a flashback to Captain America defeating Baron Zemo. Iron Man, meanwhile in the episode "Shooting Stars", helps the Avengers thwart the Zodiac's plan to send a radioactive satellite crashing to Earth.
The series features many of the Avengers' major comic book foes, including Ultron, Kang the Conqueror, Egghead, the Masters of Evil (consisting of Baron Helmut Zemo, Tiger Shark, Absorbing Man, Moonstone, Whirlwind, Boomerang, Cardinal, and Dragonfly), the Grim Reaper (this version wore full body armor and a helmet featuring a skull-like paint job; his ties to Wonder Man remained intact) and the Zodiac, as well as associated characters such as the Swordsman, the Circus of Crime, Namor, Attuma, Agatha Harkness, and the Salem's Seven.
The show made several fan-friendly references to aspects of the characters' comic book history that were otherwise not expanded upon for the uninitiated, such as the Falcon and Captain America's partnership, Hawkeye's partial deafness or Namor's half-breed nature. Beyond this, however, the series bore little in the way of similarity to the comics, mainly due to its wholesale redesign of the cast, characterized by asymmetrical costume design and the most infamous element of the series – Ant-Man, Wasp, Hawkeye and Falcon all wore suits of battle armor, which they donned in Super Sentai-inspired "power-up" sequences. Also in this incarnation, Tigra is an athlete who underwent genetic treatments to give her a competitive edge. These treatments went awry, leaving her with the form and abilities of a cat.
I have raved enough about my fascination for the West Coast Avengers in one of my 30 Things I Like posts. This series plays off some of the issues and storylines present in their source material, such as Vision, Wonder Man, and Scarlet Witch's love triangle better than Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which completely ignored that relationship in most regards as Scarlet Witch wasn't present in that show, and the MCU completely rewrote attributes of it. The Falcon While I wasn't too crazy about the Power Rangers-style armor that they don for their missions, I thought the action was decent enough for the time period too. It's an interesting look at what could have been back before the MCU was a thing currently.
Also, I have to mention that a lot of the voices in this should sound familiar as most of the voice actors were in X-Men: The Animated Series too as a lot of the same team worked on this following the ending of that show. Much like Spider-Man: Unlimited it only lasted 13 episodes before seeing its unfortunate end.
Tentative plans for additional episodes featured Hawkeye's return to the carnival where he grew up, as well as an episode exploring how the Scarlet Witch discovered her powers were made. Plans also included guest appearances by the X-Men, utilizing the Toronto-based cast from the 1990s series as a few of them already worked on this show. Other proposed episode plots include Bruce Banner appearing to help the team when Ant-Man fell ill to gamma radiation exposure during a fight with the villain Egghead, Thor and his brother Loki in a two-part episode (there was even a Thor toy made for the show's line of action figures). However, all plans were scrapped when the show had stopped production.
Silver Surfer
As a fan of the old Jack Kirby run of Silver Surfer comics, I really appreciated this cartoon for the rare gem that it was back at the time. It has only gotten better over time and I think it's a tragedy that Marvel Studios nor anyone else has done anything with this character after all of these years. If you're looking for a much different take at Thanos before his MCU iteration, then look no further than this one.
Blending cel and computer animation, the series is rendered in the style of Silver Surfer co-creator Jack Kirby.
While inspired by various Silver Surfer comic book stories, the series alters the original mythos in some key ways. The most notable change is the removal of the Fantastic Four from The Galactus Trilogy, the story that serves as the foundation for the first three episodes of the series. In this version, the Silver Surfer, who has had the memories of Norrin Radd partially restored to him by Thanos, protects Earth from the hunger of Galactus because it reminds him of Zenn-La.
Many other characters from Marvel's cosmic stable appear in the series, including The Watcher, Ego the Living Planet, Pip the Troll, Drax the Destroyer, and Adam Warlock. Most of the characters featured in the series differ from their printed-page incarnations. For instance, Adam Warlock is an alien supersoldier designed to fight the Kree and, due to Fox broadcast standards, Thanos serves Lady Chaos rather than Death.
The series utilizes a serialized storytelling approach. As with many Silver Surfer comic book stories, episodes tackle a range of social and political issues, including imperialism, slavery, non-violence, and environmental degradation.
The series was cancelled after one season. Eight episodes were written for the second season before production was shut down. According to series creator Larry Brody, the cancellation was the result of a legal dispute between Marvel and Saban Entertainment.
Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes
This is the only series on this list that I honestly haven't seen in its entirety (mainly the last 5-6 episodes) and looking forwards to seeing to its conclusion.
In the United States, the show had an erratic airing schedule on Cartoon Network, having premiered as part of Toonami on September 2, 2006. It ran for only eight of the season's 26 episodes before being pulled. It subsequently returned to the network starting June 9, 2007, shortly before the release of the film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The second launch of the show aired only nine episodes, leaving nine installments not televised in the USA. The show aired on Boomerang for a brief time before moving to Nicktoons in 2009 for the final episodes.
Unlike the 1994 Fantastic Four animated series, this series didn't directly adapt (or slightly modify) any classic storylines from the comics. Instead, it offered its own unique spin on the Fantastic Four's adventures. Ben, Johnny, and Reed are mostly unchanged character-wise, but Susan doesn't come off as completely useless or pathetic in this iteration, so that's a major plus.
There's a lot of cameos in this series, including appearances from Ant-Man, Ironman, She-Hulk, Hulk, Namor, Peter Parker, and even Squirrel Girl. She-Hulk's lone appearance alone is worth the viewing for me along with the episode where Dr. Doom gained control of the entire armory of Ironman armors.
After all of these years, I never found out exactly why this series was cancelled, but I have no doubt that the erratic schedule across multiple television networks didn't help either in the ratings department.
X-Men: Evolution
I have a love and hate relationship with X-Men: Evolution as I felt that it was poor follow-up to X-Men: The Animated Series. At the time, I gave it a fair chance with the revising of the X-Men characters in a high school setting as it SHOULD work easily given the topics that those comics deal with but ultimately in a lot of ways it just doesn't click. I like to blame it to the early 2000s growing obsessed with teenage superhero narratives, ranging from Batman Beyond to Teen Titans. It felt like almost every other property was toying with the idea of the team of super-powered teens.
The first two seasons deal with more teen angst than traditional drama that the X-Men lore is known for while establishing the teams of both the X-Men and Brotherhood (and later Magneto's Acolytes) over the course of those episodes, with Mystique posing as the principal of their high school. In season two's finale, the existence of mutants is exposed to the world during a battle against a Sentinel that both the X-Men and Brotherhood are forced to work together to defeat. In the third season, the show notably begins to take a much more serious tone. After the battle with the Sentinel, the mutants are no longer a secret and public reaction is one of hostility. The show is brought into more traditional X-Men lore, dealing with themes of prejudice, public misconception, and larger threats. At this point, that's where I felt that it felt like a traditional X-Men show where a lot of moments before this point were cringe-worthy. It's final season dealt with the confrontation of dealing with the threat of Apocalypse, with the X-Men working together with every ally at their disposal to defeat Apocalypse and his Four Horsemen.
As a fun bit of trivia though, most people aren't aware that majority of the voices used in this series were the same voice actors used for Inuyasha, Vision of Escaflowne, Zoids: Future Century Zero, and New Mobile Report Gundam Wing that were all airing on Cartoon Network's Toonami block or on Fox Kids at the time. Most of those voice actors were based out of Canada for a lot of English-dubbed anime and cartoons, so there was a lot of overlapping with voice acting talent in the early years of anime becoming popularized in the United States.
Wolverine & The X-Men
This series was the successor to X-Men: Evolution that came out a few years prior, but set in its own continuity.
What is interesting about this series is that during it's 26 episode season, it deals with two parallel narratives in both the present day timeline and the chaotic future timeline overrun by Sentinels.
The plot goes a bit like this... A mysterious huge explosion destroys the X-Mansion at the moment that Wolverine was leaving following an argument with Rogue. In the aftermath, Professor X and Jean Grey are mysteriously missing, and perhaps gone for good, causing the X-Men to disband. One year later, the task of reuniting the X-Men to take on the new threat of the MRD (Mutant Response Division) is left on Wolverine's reluctant shoulders since no one else is willing to take the leadership role following Xavier's disappearance. Without too much spoilers, Xavier is found shortly in a comatose condition with his mind communicating to the reunited X-Men from the future, urging them to do everything in their power to prevent the future being overrun by Sentinels and the MRD. It's an interesting twist to see Wolverine in the leadership role (at least at the time) instead of Xavier, Cyclops (who is still distraught over Jean Grey's disappearance), or Storm (who is commonly understood as the X-Men's second-in-command in the comics continuity) while this series juggles a time travel plot similar to the popular Days of Future Past storyline.
While the X-Men don't sport their iconic costumes inspired by Jim Lee and Chris Claremont's period working on the X-Men comics for Marvel Comics like in X-Men: The Animated Series, all of the characters in this series are inspired by their appearances in the Astonishing X-Men comics. Looking back at this series, I still fondly prefer this style over what came before it in X-Men: Evolution.
One more thing to note about this series is that the voice acting cast assembled for this series still regularly voices the X-Men in just about all of their modern animated and video game appearances following the cancellation of this series, from those characters' appearances in the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Marvel Anime: X-Men, and Black Panther animated series along with the characters' appearing in the X-Men: Destiny, Marvel Heroes, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 video games.
Steve Blum, Tom Kane, Kate Higgins, and Kiam O'Brien reprise their respective roles as Wolverine, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, and Nightcrawler in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. Fred Tatasciore also reprises his roles as Hulk and Beast in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order.
While the original X-Men: The Animated Series voice cast will always be the definitive voices of those characters when I'm reading X-Men comics or lore in my head, this entourage of voice talent aren't bad at all.
On November 4, 2008, a second season, consisting of 26 episodes was confirmed as being in production by Toonz Entertainment and Marvel Animation. During Comic Con 2009, images of season 2 were shown, consisting of Bastion, Cable, Colossus, Deadpool, Havok, Jubilee, and Magik. It was announced that these characters were to appear in season 2. Colossus was set to receive a reintroductory storyline and would have been a regular character in season 2. Joshua Fine also revealed that Holocaust, Sunfire, and Unus The Untouchable would have made appearances in season 2.
On April 13, 2010, Comics Continuum reported that (according to an inside source) a second season seemed very unlikely. On April 15, 2010, Marvel Animation Age confirmed the recent report that Wolverine and the X-Men would not be returning for a second season. The reason for this was due to financial problems with their financing partner due to Disney purchasing Marvel while Fox owned the movie rights to the X-Men.
Marvel's Ant-Man (Shorts)
These six episodes premiered on Disney XD back in June 2017 and pretty much flew underneath the radar for most people. They manage to capture the old school feel of the classic Ant-Man & The Wasp comics while adding charm found in the MCU version. I think it was a darn shame we didn't more episodes than just the initial six episodes.
Josh Keaton voiced Ant-Man and Melissa Rauch voiced The Wasp.
Surprising Omissions on Disney+
Note: I stand corrected on some of these entries as they could be hidden/tucked away or I'm just getting bad results from the in-app search client.- Black Panther (BET aired this series and produced it actually)
- Dr. Strange (animated film)
- Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles (Shows up as Season 3 of Gargoyles actually...)
- Iron Man (animated film)
- Marvel Anime: Blade
- Marvel Anime: Iron Man
- Marvel Anime: Wolverine
- Marvel Anime: X-Men
- Spectacular Spider-Man
- Spider-Man: The New Animated Series
- The Pryde of the X-Men (just a pilot episode but still...)
- Thor: God of Thunder (animated film)
- Ultimate Avengers
- Ultimate Avengers 2
I think a lot of these series are locked up behind continued legal woes between Disney's current acquisitions following the Fox buyout and they still don't have the rights to everything, such as the Hanna-Barbera made 1967 Fantastic Four animated series that strangely enough, DC Comics owns the rights to since they own the studio that produced it. At the same time, I understand that Disney can't give us literally EVERYTHING with this thing and have to hold back something to keep in rotation to keep people interested and to continue investing in this service.
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