Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe there was Iron Man, which became a
bigger hit than anyone could have anticipated for such a widely unknown
character. Naturally, Marvel Entertainment
sought to capitalize on that momentum and commissioned the creation of an
animated series; only the second after 1994’s Iron Man, although
the character has appeared in other shows. Developed by Alexandre de La Patelliére, Craig Kyle, Romain van Liemt and Christopher Yost, Iron Man:
Armored Adventures was a French co-production that followed a teenaged Tony Stark (Adrian Petriw). Unlike the
comics and film, Tony was injured in a plane crash that seemingly killed his
father, Howard
(Fred Henderson). He was
saved by his Iron Man armor which he used to investigate Obadiah Stane’s (Mackenzie Gray) possible
involvement in the crash. That leads him into superheroics with the aid of his
best friend, James "Rhodey" Rhodes
(Daniel Bacon), and a girl
he meets at his new school, Pepper Potts (Anna Cummer). They eventually
get their own armor and become War Machine and Rescue,
respectively.
Tony, Pepper and Rhodey in their armors.
Iron Man: Armored Adventures debuted
on Nicktoons
on April 24, 2009, breaking the network’s record of the highest-rated original
series. The CGI-animated series ran for two seasons, with Yost serving as head
writer for the first and Brandon
Auman assuming the role for season 2. The series loosely adapted several
storylines from the comics, making changes to account for the characters’
reduced ages and integrating elements introduced in the Iron Man films
and blossoming MCU; such as Tony’s armor resembling the film version and even
changing his chest beam from round to triangular as in Iron Man 2. Unlike the
MCU, the series was able to incorporate characters licensed at the time to other
studios; such as Fantastic Four
villain Doctor
Doom (Christopher Britton)
and X-Men villain Magneto (Ron Halder), both with 20th Century Fox (which
later became a part of Disney). The
series’ theme was written by Robert
Schwartzman and recorded by his band, Rooney.
Kids on a mission, even without their armor.
A third season was planned, but
following Disney’s acquisition of Marvel the series was quietly and informally
cancelled in favor of moving the character over to a show that brought him more
in line with the MCU. However, instead of a solo effort, that ended up being Avengers Assemble which
replaced Avengers:
Earth’s Mightiest Heroes on Disney XD. The month
following the final episode, Armored Adventures began airing on The CW’s Vortexx Saturday morning
programming block until that December. The entire series was made available to
stream on Disney+ in 2020.
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