Sunday, October 25, 2009

The Always Fashionable Marvel

Though Disney has recently purchased Marvel, the 2 companies will not affect each other for quite awhile. Once all of the final contracts our worked out and signed the creative teams of Disney and Marvel will start to meet.

Disney, well known for it's animation division, may be surprised by the wide array of current animated projects Marvel has operating. Without getting into straight to DVD animated features, Marvel currently produces Ironman: Armored Adventure, Wolverine and the X-Men, and The Super Hero Squad Show. Marvel also has other shows currently on television and in pre-production, but these three are maintaining excellent ratings in the youth market.


Of the previously mentioned shows, The Super Hero Squad Show is doing quite well in the under 10 years of age demographic. I sat in on a viewing of two of the upcoming episodes and recognized right away that the target demographic was a young child (it was painful). Unlike Wolverine and the X-Men target market of young teens (and comic lovers of all ages), The Super Hero Squad Show has very basic plots and slapstick comedy. There are hidden bits of info only Marvel comic fans will understand and appreciate, but the show is made to be loud and quickly paced for the current A.D.D. culture of children television.

When I was young shows like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the 90's X-Men animated series were made in a different style. TMNT was fun for kids because there was action, but they could also understand what was going on differently. The characters talked slower and the show was not one dramatic scene followed by another. Attention spans have changed and with the advent of so many program choices and recorded television, loud noises and constant intensity is often needed to keep the channel from changing.

The Super Hero Squad Show is not only fashionable on TV these days...it is also keeping up with the community of the growing amounts of children on the Internet. The show has it's own section on Marvel's animation page, and includes some very cool interactive features. The coolest feature: the create your own comic section.

Using a simple type of Flash, you are able to either create a mini comic strip of a couple panels or a full comic book with several pages! The give you backgrounds, characters, dialog balloons and many other options to create your own original stories...using the Super Hero Squad Show characters, of course.

You may recognize "My Lovin' " strip inspired by En Vogue.

Create your own comic here. Have fun with it. Oh and one more thing...

A'Woo Woo Wooo!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The En Vogue breakdown is classic!