Geek Syndicate Issue 9 March 2014 | Page 63

Geek Syndicate

So that’s Cartoon Network, from the
DC/Warner stable. But what are Disney/Marvel up to, after
seemingly being behind
the curve in the 1990s?
Well they’ve got different
concerns. I think it’s fair
to say that their old Avengers series, Earths Mightiest
Heroes, was one for the
fans, being dense with
characters and storylines
torn from the comics. But
much like we’ve seen elsewhere, that’s gone to be
replaced with the more
rotation friendly Avengers
Assemble, with a cast largely built from characters
from the Marvel Cinematic
Universe. It’s also set in the same cartoon universe as Ultimate Spiderman,
and (weirdly) Hulk and the Agents of
SMASH, creating a programming
block that feels built for the sort of
audience who will be watching Disney XD much of the time anyway.
Image © Cartoon Network, 2005

Actually this makes cold commercial
sense and fits the patterns of some
recent shows. Young Justice seemed
to attract a diverse, old audience and
that’s no good. Green Lantern hardly
made toys fly off the shelves, despite
some of the characters being clearly
designed for it. It also explains the
dearth of female characters in a lot
of these shows - the “Pink Ranger”
syn-drome - because the network
really doesn’t care about making
characters that the girls would be
interested in. Exhibit A for all of this
is pre-teen marketing juggernaut,
Ben 10.

teresting is that the show started to
age with its audience. Later seasons
had Ben as a teenager. The show
also introduced some semblance of
recognisable continuity, arc plots,
and generally looked like a show
appealing to an older audience. It
also upgraded its sole female character from the first series to someone more Ben’s equal. The latest version, Ben 10: Omniverse, undid those
changes. Whilst technically following on, Omniverse self-consciously
chases the younger mar-ket, with
tons of new aliens and gadgets to go
buy in the shops. It’s also a noticeably weaker and less interesting show
to older e