Cognition Dissemination: The Rebirth of Marvel Animation

The first large and in-person iteration of the San Diego Comic-Con event since the pre-pandemic era of 2019 was held over the weekend. Big companies and organizations came prepared with their biggest announcements. Among the most popular panels was unsurprisingly Marvel Entertainment’s, an instant source of hot anticipation following producer Kevin Fiege’s announcement of the company’s first panel in three years. There was plenty to celebrate, including confirmation of the new Sam Wilson Captain America film New World Order and the Thunderbolts film that will feature a team-up of anti-heroes.

That’s not what the majority of this post will be about, though. I’m more interested in the Marvel Animation stuff, a segment of the company showing more signs of life than they have in nearly a decade.

The evisceration of Marvel’s previous animation department started around a decade ago, coincidentally when Jeph Loeb took over as a producer, assigned to the position by noted asshat Ike Perlmutter. Loeb’s hands were all over the last one-third of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ second season, which included a series of episodic tales that didn’t compare to those from the first season or the Skrull saga that preceded it. This reportedly happened to push EMH into cancellation because it was too big of a hit with the adult audience over the younger crowd (including me, a manchild who watched it in my 20s), with the replacements being more clearly “kidified” shows like Avengers Assemble, the Guardians of the Galaxy show, and Hulk: Agents of S.M.A.S.H..

None of those replacements took off in a big way, thanks in part to Loeb and his team not understanding what young boys and men (and boys-to-men) liked. After Loeb was moved to the live-action shows in 2015 (where his effect was less detrimental though still extremely problematic in some ways), Marvel’s animation teams were largely left to wither. It’s taken until now, the Disney Plus era, for them to only start the rebuilding. The SDCC panel showed how there are big plans in store with four projects.

One is a continuation of a show already running: The second season of the What If? animated anthology series focusing on Multiverse scenarios featuring characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hence the name. The first season introduced several alternate-universe characters who’ve since become very popular, by far the biggest being Captain Carter, with Star-Lord T’Challa coming in at a close second. Lucky attendees were shown a trailer that featured, among other matters, the continuation of Captain Carter’s adventures, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, an episode based off Neil Gaiman’s 1602, and Shang-Chi fighting Odin. I hope the individual episodes are longer this time around, as several from the first season needed more time to breathe. I have little faith in that being the case in time for early next year. Perhaps they’ll hear that criticism for the also-confirmed third season.

The other shows were previously announced, but further detailed. X-Men ’97 is the key show for 90s kids who’ve now come of age (like me), the continuation to the 1990s X-Men: The Animated Series that will pick right up from where the original show ended in 1997. The art style, according to details from the panel, will resemble the original series, with the X-Men being led by Magneto this time around in Professor Xavier’s absence. The preview will hopefully surface on YouTube soon, but it was specified that the animation style will be close to the original but with a budget. The series won’t begin until fall 2023. Marvel and Disney already know this will be popular, which explains why they’ve already green lit a second season. Or is that the seventh?

Meanwhile, the X-Men TAS series is now in chronological order on Disney Plus, which only took them three years to fix. Don’t ask me why it was messed up in the first place.

Introducing zombies in a non-horror franchise often feels like a creative dead end for a brand, but that hopefully won’t be the case for the Marvel Zombies animated show. It’s not coming until 2024, but the team laid out who the heroes will be, including Yelena Belova, Kate Bishop, Kamala Khan, Shang-Chi, and Jimmy Woo, who will fight zombies like Carol Danvers, Wanda Maximoff, and Ghost (from Ant-Man and the Wasp). The show will interestingly be TV-MA, potentially making this the first such Marvel show not made for another network first to get the rating. No release timeframe was provided, but the studio will assuredly provide bits of pieces of info in the meantime. It should be fun enough, similar to the What If? episode this will be a continuation of, but I’m mostly looking forward to the banter among the heroes.

Lastly, there’s Spider-Man: Freshman Year, a show stated to occur before Captain America: Civil War that will apparently branch into an alternate timeline given the concept. Norman Osborn, for instance, will be a mentor for Peter Parker here, as Spider-Man fights villains like Doctor Octopus and the Scorpion. He’ll eventually team up with other superheroes like Daredevil (with Charlie Cox reprising the role) and Doctor Strange. There are already inconsistences with the main 616 MCU timeline, like Doctor Strange not assuming the magician role until after Civil War (while Parker is still a high school junior), but those will for the better. They shouldn’t let strict canonicity requirements hold them back creatively. The show will arrive in 2024, and will eventually be followed by Sophomore Year.

In addition to these and shorts like the I Am Groot series, I assume this won’t be all the new Marvel Animation has in the works. It’s a real shame the adventures of Star Lord T’Challa couldn’t continue for the same reason plans for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had to be reorganized, thanks to the untimely death of Chadwick Boseman. The animated works are still nowhere near as high a priority for Marvel as live-action content, but it’s welcome enough that the medium has risen in popularity within the company again.