Earth's Mightiest Heroes

The first season debuted on Disney XD and online in the fall of 2010. The second season was one of the inaugural shows of the Marvel Universe programming block alongside Ultimate Spider-Man.

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Genre	Action Adventure Superhero Science fantasy
Based on	Avengers by Stan Lee Jack Kirby
Developed by	Ciro Nieli Joshua Fine Christopher Yost
Voices of	Brian Bloom Chris Cox Jennifer Hale Peter Jessop Phil LaMarr Eric Loomis James C. Mathis III Colleen O'Shaughnessey Fred Tatasciore Rick D. Wasserman Wally Wingert
Narrated by	Alex Désert (opening narration; season 2)
Theme music composer	Guy Erez David Ari Leon
Opening theme	"Fight As One" by Bad City
Ending theme	"Fight As One" (instrumental)
Composer	Guy Michelmore
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	52 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Alan Fine Eric S. Rollman Dan Buckley Simon Phillips (season 1) Jeph Loeb (season 2) Joe Quesada Stan Lee
Producer	Dana C. Booton
Editors	Jonathan Polk Steve Ingram George Rizkallah Robert Walz
Running time	22 minutes (TV episodes) 5 minutes (micro episodes)
Production companies	Film Roman Ingenious Media (episodes 14–26) Marvel Studios
Original release
Network	Disney XD
Release	September 22, 2010 (2010-09-22) – November 11, 2012 (2012-11-11)
Related
The Avengers: United They Stand Avengers Assemble

The series originally features a team based on the roster for the original Avengers, composed of Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp. The team is later joined by Captain America, Black Panther, and Hawkeye in the first season, and Ms. Marvel and the Vision in the second season. In terms of overall tone and style, the series is based principally on the original stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The series also uses material from all eras of the comic's run as well as other sources, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The series ended on November 11, 2012, and was replaced by Avengers Assemble.

 

Season one

Following a mass S.H.I.E.L.D. prison breakout, earth's mightiest heroes unite to form the Avengers, a team comprising Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Black Panther, and Hawkeye. The Avengers battle the world's most dangerous supervillains, including Baron Zemo, the Leader, Kang the Conqueror, and Ultron, as well as the criminal organizations Hydra and A.I.M. It is ultimately revealed that Thor's adopted brother Loki orchestrated the breakout and had the Enchantress form the Masters of Evil to distract the Avengers so that he can conquer Earth.

Season two

Following Loki's defeat, the Avengers track down the remnants of the Masters of Evil. The team is joined by Ms. Marvel and the Vision as they face new enemies including Doctor Doom, Thunderbolt Ross, and the Red Skull, as well as alien threats such as the Skrulls, the Kree, and Galactus. The season alludes to a developing storyline in which Surtur, now free of his imprisonment in Muspelheim, slowly gathers his strength to oppose the Avengers as a prelude to Ragnarök.

Numerous other Marvel Comics characters make guest appearances, such as Spider-Man, Wolverine, Scott Lang (the second Ant-Man) and his daughter Cassandra, the Heroes for Hire, Crossfire, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Quake, Beta Ray Bill, the Falcon, and lastly the Winter Soldier.

Principal cast

• Brian Bloom – Steve Rogers / Captain America
• Chris Cox – Clint Barton / Hawkeye, Crimson Dynamo, Fandral, Rattler
• Jennifer Hale – Carol Danvers / Ms. Marvel, Corina Korvac
• Peter Jessop – Vision
• Phil LaMarr – J.A.R.V.I.S., Wonder Man
• Eric Loomis – Tony Stark / Iron Man
• James C. Mathis III – T'Challa / Black Panther, Bulldozer, King Cobra
• Colleen O'Shaughnessey – Janet Van Dyne / Wasp, Cassandra Lang, Vapor
• Fred Tatasciore – Bruce Banner / Hulk, Graviton, Griffin, Kalum Lo, Mandrill, Red Hulk, Thing, Volstagg, Yon-Rogg
• Rick D. Wasserman – Thor, Absorbing Man, Surtur
• Wally Wingert – Hank Pym / Ant-Man / Giant-Man / Yellowjacket, M.O.D.O.K.

• Joshua Fine – Supervising Producer
• Vinton Heuck – Director
• Sebastian Montes – Director
• Jamie Simone – Casting and Voice Director
• Christopher Yost – Story Editor, Writer
• Ciro Nieli - Supervising Director (Season 1)
• Frank Paur - Supervising Director

Development

Josh Fine and a number of other creators of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes were initially developing a series based on the Hulk. However, it never made it past the scripting stages before the team was brought on to create a new series based on the Avengers.

Production

Marvel announced in October 2008 that its Marvel Animation division and the outside studio Film Roman would produce an Avengers animated TV series, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, for planned broadcast in 2010. Fifty-two episodes have been confirmed as being in production. The show's executive producers include Simon Philips and Eric S. Rollman. Joshua Fine serves as supervising producer and Christopher Yost serves as story editor on the show. A 20-part micro-series debuted on September 22, 2010, on Disney XD, focusing on each hero's backstory and the events that lead to the main series. The idea behind the micro-episodes came after the success of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The series started airing on Marvel's sister network, Disney XD in the United States on October 20, 2010, and on Teletoon in Canada on October 22, 2010, in English and March 2011 in French. According to Jeph Loeb, season 2 would presumably begin around October 2011, same as season 1 and producer Josh Fine tweeted in April 2011 that 13 episodes have been completed. Ciro Nieli, one of the show's developers, also had a hand in creating Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!.

At the 2011 New York Comic-Con, Marvel TV director, Jeph Loeb contradicted his earlier statement of season 2 launch in late 2011. Loeb announced at the panel at New York Comic-con that "Avengers Season 2 will be coming in early 2012 (to coincide with Ultimate Spider-Man)." This date would later get clarified to April 1, 2012. Dong Woo Animation, Lotto Animation and Noxxon Enterprise has contributed some of the animation for this series.

Cancellation

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was not renewed for a third season and was succeeded by a new Avengers show called Avengers Assemble in 2013. On Saturday, July 14, 2012, at the 2012 Marvel Television Presents panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Jeph Loeb, Head of Marvel Television, said of the relationship between the two shows:

We're not in any way saying Earth's Mightiest Heroes never happened. You will see an epic conclusion. And then you'll say, 'Oh, what's next?'

The only voice actors to reprise their roles for Avengers Assemble are Fred Tatasciore and James Matthis III as the Hulk and Black Panther, respectively. Additionally, Drake Bell returned to voice Spider-Man for guest appearances, while the other members of the team share their voices with their counterparts in the separate Ultimate Spider-Man series.

Season 3 Plans

According to Christopher Yost, if the 3rd season had occurred, the first half of the season would have had Surtur as the main antagonist in an adaptation of Ragnarök, and the second half would have focused on introducing the X-Men, where he would have focused on Avengers vs. X-Men, in which the Phoenix Force would have played an important role. Being a season focused on "magic and mutants". It was also mentioned that his line-up for the X-Men would have been Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, Shadowcat, Colossus, Rogue, among others that were necessary. An episode was planned in which the X-Men would join the Avengers to also defeat common villains, such as Magneto, his brotherhood, Marauders, Silver Samurai, Omega Red and more.

Due to changes among executives in the direction of the second half of the 2nd season (specifically the episodes after the Secret Invasion adaptation), the series producers received new orders that altered the development of the show and some ideas were moved to the cancelled 3rd season. The Red Skull story had originally been conceived to be part of a third season saga and extended into a hypothetical fourth season, before being compressed into a secondary arc in the latter half of season 2. Thus as it was considered that the story of Unlimited Ultron and his robotic replacement plan was introduced very soon after the Skrull invasion with a similar story, wishing that this arc had been carried over to later seasons. Furthermore, among discarded ideas or modified that could have been rescued in the continuation of the series, Cristopher Yost mentions that they wanted to introduce Nova, in an episode focused on him, since the 2nd season and that the Silver Surfer could not be used in the series due to a ban from executives. On the other hand, he mentioned that Spider-Man was originally supposed to be the same version of The Spectacular Spider-Man, and that the "Along Came a Spider" episode was written as if it were a continuation of the canceled series (however, the claims that they take place in the same universe were avoided due to copyright problems with Sony and the replacement of Josh Keaton's voice by Drake Bell,12 in addition to the fact that Spectacular's Peter Parker was assigned his own Earth-26496 by Marvel Comics, and its creator, Greg Weisman, denies the connection with his project), however, it allows us to speculate that the Peter Parker of Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes (Earth-8096) would have revealed in the following seasons that he have a very similar past like the story of the Spectacular version. It was also originally planned to adapt the "Emperor Doom" comic arc (with the appearance of Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch), before it was altered into the episode "Emperor Stark". Other ideas were to present the Winter Soldier in a more lethal, although less powerful way. As well as that Falcon and Mockingbird join the Avengers. Finally, it was originally intended to make the season 2 finale a 3-part one where the Avengers would further explore Planet Hala (capital of the Kree Empire) after defeating the Supreme Intelligence, and learn more about its culture and its implications in Marvel's cosmic history; ending everything in a confrontation against Galactus there instead of on Earth. At the same time, that season finale would have originally made the New Avengers episode happen after Operation Galactic Storm (as was supposed), replacing the causes that the Avengers were on the other side of the universe and not because Kang took them out of time, where Yellowjacket and Spider-Man would have been searching for Sentry (who was originally supposed to have been introduced in "Assault on 42" and have an episode focused on in it). It is also mentioned, by Josh Fine, that Princess Ravonna would have awakened from her stasis in Reed Richards' laboratory and would be seeking to free Kang with Solomon's Frogs, caused because The Avengers collapsed the Kree wormhole and prevented the destruction of Earth's sun, which prevented the event that destroyed the future Earth of Kang's timeline. Due to script changes by orders from above (Man of Action Studios and Jeph Loeb), the Ravonna thread was left pending, so later, when Christopher Yost was working on the comics for the series, he decided to address it as a seed for a possible 3rd season. It is also mentioned, in an original script of "Powerless", that Loki was imprisoned in a corner of Yggdrasil and that Amora the Enchantress had freed herself from Surtur's possession and was serving her with free will (due to Thor's constant rejection and not having saved him in the Ballad of Beta Ray Bill episode, making her more Nihilist and losing faith in the value of life), as well as Ms Marvel and not Iron Man being one of the villains' targets to lose their powers (along with an emphasis on Hawkeye) In addition to Odin having a scene where he lost his eye and would be replaced by Kurse, while Amora would accuse Loki (revealing to have severe facial injuries from the Midgard Serpent's acid) of trying to betray him for wanting to use his powers for his own plans to conquer Asgard instead of contributing to Ragnarok. Other plans for the third season mentioned by Josh Fine included continuing the Ragnarok storyline, with Thor as the focus of the plot, and a story inspired by Avengers vs. X-Men, as well as giving Carol Danvers the rank of "Captain Marvel." As well as introducing characters like Hercules, Morgan le Fay, Taskmaster, Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff, Black Knight, Stephen Strange, etc.

Character designer Thomas Perkins did a series of concept art illustrations in 2012 of what a third season could have looked like. Characters appearing in the art included the New Avengers, Impossible Man, Mockingbird, Human Fly, Rom the Spaceknight, Crystar, Deathlok, Black Knight, U-Foes, Adam Warlock, Morbius, Baron Blood, Daimon Hellstrom, 3-D Man, Omega the Unknown, Captain Universe (with Janet Van Dyne with the Enigma Force), Bill Foster (future Goliath, although still the new Giant-Man), Monica Rambeau, Machine Man, Shuma-Gorath, Uatu the Watcher and members of the X-Men like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue (with the body of Ms Marvel), Nightcrawler, Storm and others. He also did illustrations for Black Bolt of the Inhumans and the Super-Adaptoid.

In September 2020, for the 10-year anniversary of the series' premiere, Christopher Yost revealed his plans for each episode for the cancelled Season Three (as well as revealing the first pages of the script for the 1st episode of season 3), that included characters that never made it into the show. Those including heroes like Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver (these two would have joined the Avengers), Tigra (who would be a founding member of the West Coast Avengers), Nova (Richard Rider), Namor, The Defenders, etc. Also including villains like Nightmare, Magneto, the Brotherhood of Mutants, Modred the Mystic, Kulan Gath, the High Evolutionary, Chthon, the Midgard Serpent, Rama-Tut (a version of Kang in another era), Juggernaut, the Brood, etc. As well as introducing important elements and locations of the Marvel Universe, such as the Serpent Crown, the Twilight Sword, the Darkhold, the Phoenix Force (along with the Dark Phoenix), Time Travel, Wundagore Mountain or the Nova Corps. In addition to species such as the Fire Demons, the Mutants, the Atlanteans, the Inhumans, the New-Men, the Deviants, the Eternals or the Celestials. Including the continuation of the arc of characters or organizations with unfinished plots such as: Surtur, the Enchantress, Wonder Man, Loki, Hydra, Shield, the Masters of Evil, Graviton, Kang the Conqueror, Ultron, etc. There are indications of adapting arcs such as Ragnarok, Dark Phoenix Saga, Evolutionary war, House of M. And that the end of the 3rd season is an adaptation of Heroes Reborn, for which Wanda Maximoff and Jean Gray contained the Phoenix Force in a pocket dimension, where the X-Men would sacrifice themselves to keep it there and there is a connection with the opening scene of the Wolverine and the X-Men. Josh Fine commented that this while he was very entertained by the synopsis he read, they were not discussed by the original writing team.

Additionally, regarding the Fourth Season, Cristopher Yost mentioned that the first half would be called "Under Siege", while the second half would be dubbed "Infinity Quest". The plot of "Under Siege" would have been an adaptation of the comic "Acts of Vengeance" which would have involved a political and global story, with Dr Doom as the main villain in his quest to conquer the world, bringing together the best supervillains on the planet (probably the Mandarin, Magneto, Red Skull, Kingpin, Wizard and Loki, according to the original comic) to put the Avengers on the run, traveling to many international locations, appearing villains and guest stars from outside the United States; in turn, a Hydra invasion, with the help of Norman Osborn (Green Goblin), to Asgard also had to happen, adapting the Dark Reign and Siege story, and probably appearing the Dark Avengers. The plot of "Infinity Quest" would have been about the Elders of the Universe searching for the Infinity Stones to destroy the universe (Earth-8096) and elevating themselves as gods in the new firmament of the multiverse, forcing the Avengers to disperse across the most cosmic corners of the Marvel universe; impliying also the return of Galactus and the introduction of the Beyonder and Molecule Man in this part of the season. In turn, Josh Fine mentioned that the plans for the 4th season included the presentation of the Superhuman Registration Act and that there would be an adaptation of the Civil War as a consequence of the proposals of Maria Hill and Dell Rusk in season 2.

As for a Fifth Season, the only thing that has been revealed is the interest in having adapted the Secret Wars arc (with the Beyonders starring), which would have involved all the teams of heroes and villains, along with all the possible characters from Marvel Comics, within a saga that would have spanned the entire season.

After the abrupt cancellation leaving the producers unhappy, and while accepting that it would still be unlikely, Chris Yost and Josh Fine have since discussed their renewed interest in continuing the series.

Home media

Critical response

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 7.50 out of 10 based on 5 reviews.

Allan Scoot of Screen Rant stated that The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes features "amazing animation and writing that updated the classic origins of the Avengers," saying, "Thankfully, two seasons of EMH still gave fans the best take on Marvel's premiere superhero team that was both comic-accurate and entertaining, complete with an incredibly catchy theme song resulting in the creation of a perfect Avengers cartoon." Will Wade of Common Sense Media gave The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes a grade of 3 out of 5 stars, complimented the depiction of positive messages and role models, citing the bravery of the character, asserting, "There is enough plotting and planning to generate an ongoing storyline and develop the characters in a way that will appeal even to teens and older Marvel fans." Alex Zalben of MTV ranked The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes 1st in their "5 Best Avengers Cartoons Of All Time" list, writing, "Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is also the best animated Avengers we’ve seen... It’s faithful to the comics, it’s fun, and it’s ambitious, mixing big story lines, hundreds of characters from the Marvel Universe, and making it work for both kids and adults. Not just the best Avengers cartoon, but possibly one of the best Marvel animated shows - ever."

Trey Pasch of MovieWeb ranked The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes 2nd in their "Best Marvel Animated Projects" list and called the show "immensely popular." Jonathon Dornbush and Joshua Rivera of Entertainment Weekly ranked The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes 4th in their "9 Best Animated TV Series Drawn From Comics" list, writing, "With a well-constructed team dynamic, EMH created a familiar yet fresh core cast that complemented the current slate of Marvel live-action properties." Michael Doran of Newsarama ranked The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes 10th in their "10 Best Comic Book Animated Series Of All Time" list, asserting, "It's heroes working together, it's crazy over-the-top villainous threats, it's big action, and there was this prevailing sense of happiness over it all."

Accolades

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes was nominated for Best Sound Editing: Television Animation at the 2011 Golden Reel Awards.

Comic book

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes comic book series, written by Christopher Yost, and artwork by Scott Wegener, Christopher Jones and Patrick Scherberger was published to accompany the series. It was a four-issue limited series. An ongoing comic book series titled The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Adventures debuted in April 2012, alongside the Ultimate Spider-Man Adventures series. Christopher Yost returned as the main writer, with Adam Dekraker serving as the comic's creative team, while Nuno Plati provided artwork.