Agreed entirely. I hope this is an anomaly but I know my hope is unlikely to be true.
Thank you. I am entirely in agreement with you here.
They're not going to make fun of Black Widow or Falcon because they're the lone woman and the lone minority. Making fun of the Hulk or Thor will just result in violence of the potentially extreme sort in-show, and there'd be a
huge meta backlash if they made fun of Captain America. That just leaves Iron Man and Hawkeye, and Iron Man's supposed to be the leader, so . . . that leaves Hawkeye as the comedic relief character. Problem is, as it's been mentioned, Hawkeye is not an ideal comedic relief character. His personality doesn't mesh with it, and since he's the closest thing to being a "normal guy" on the team, the fact that he's getting picked on, particularly by the Hulk, seems to scream "the rich and powerful picking on the weak". I don't think that was the conscious theme MOA was going for, the fact of the matter is if they want a comedic relief character it was going to be Hawkeye by process of elimination as I just showed there. But there's unfortunate implications with Hawkeye being the butt of jokes. IMO, they would have been better off without a comedic relief character and took the approach EMH did, in which everyone took their turn being the goat of the team.
The thing with Black Widow being the only significant female character (and she's not even going to be "on the team" consistently) may unfortunately be better for the show in the long run. MOA's track record of female characters in their cartoons is startlingly lacking, usually the women in their shows range from "just there" (
every female character in
Generator Rex, Mary Jane in
USM) to "Mary Sue" (Black Widow and Vicky/Jinja in
Monsuno) to "extremely annoying" (Gwen Tennyson in Ben 10, White Tiger in
USM, Medea in
Monsuno) or some variation/combination of the three. The only female character I've felt that MOA has ever pulled off decently was Charmcaster in
Ben 10 and that's because Charmcaster had a charismatic evil about her that made her memorable in a good way. This is really, really sad, especially as recent Marvel shows pre-Loeb (EMH pre-MOA, Spectacular Spider-Man, Wolverine & The X-Men, Iron Man: Armored Adventures) all had at least one well-rounded female character. And if you go through a lot of the good action cartoons from the last 10 years, from TMNT 2003 to a number of DC productions to anime like
Gurren Lagann and
Fullmetal Alchemist (hell, even
Naruto/Naruto Shippuden and
Bleach, much-maligned for their female characters, the shows and the manga they're based off from still
try to write them well, even if they fail much of the time), this gets even more pathetic.
From the looks of it MOA isn't even trying anymore to write a decent female character whether villainous or good or somewhere in-between. The cast is going to be strictly male besides the occurrences of Black Widow dropping in. Again, that might actually make the show better but when you get down to it, it's just plain sad that they're not even going to try. And I bet they wouldn't have Black Widow involved either if she hadn't been in the movie which pretty much forced them to include her since the cast is sticking close to the recent movie. But they solved that "issue" by making her a part-timer so they can write her out of the show whenever they want to.
I know that people are going to say that "boys in the target demo aren't going to be interested in female characters". I WAS in the target demo at one point in time, and I remember owning female action figures and being interested in several of the female characters that were in the shows I watched. Not all boys are adverse to female characters and this practice of eliminating the women from the cast (other than Widow because they have to include one woman or they're "sexist") is a disservice.
Really, I would've just put the Wasp or Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel on the team so that way even if I were afraid of being called "sexist" having two women on the team would've "granted permission" to portray them as more well-rounded characters with flaws because then the ratio of men-to-women wouldn't have been so lopsided. The Wasp doesn't need Ant-Man/Giant-Man around to be a good character, EMH proved that during that long period in the show where Hank had no spot on the team at all. Yes, they're connected and both characters are richer because of that connection, but it is not absolutely essential. And Ms. Marvel/Captain Marvel is a powerhouse that would add more power diversity and finesse to the team as well as Carol Danvers doesn't always go for brute force, plus her military mind-set could lead to interesting conversations and argument between her and Iron Man. Imagine the conversations between Carol Danvers and Tony Stark when Stark was rushing through all of those strategies and attack plans, that could've really helped both episodes.
Finally, off-topic, I really, really wish Bruce Banner would have a role in this show. Again, MOA is missing the point. People liked the Hulk in the Avengers because of Ruffalo, not because of the CGI behemoth. I'd go into more detail again but I've grown sick and tired of writing this post so I'm just going to end it here.
.
