Iron Man (1994 cartoon, DVD)

I heard that most of the 90's Marvel animated series that weren't X-Men or Spider-Man weren't great and that certainly holds true with this, at least what I've seen so far. I'm getting close to the end of the first season but the majority of Iron Man has been fairly stupid, with silly plots which are mostly identical (Tony Stark builds something, the bad guys want and then steal it, Iron Man and his team save the day). The animation is lacking and some of the voice acting is sub-par. I've read that season 2 is meant to be a lot better than season 1 so I'll stick with it, but so far this series hasn't been very good.








Spider-Man (1994 cartoon, DVD)

I have the first three seasons of this and this month I've been watching season 2. Unlike Iron Man, this features good stories, excellent animation, superb voice acting and lots of fan service as Blade, Punisher and the X-Men all make appearances. This season is about Spider-Man's battle against himself as he keeps losing his powers and at one point becomes a hideous spider monster. One annoyance I had with this is with the Morbius character, who is a vampire. Several episodes just seemed to be him making an apperance, then running away and Spider-Man going after him in chase sequence after chase sequence. I also found it amusing how Morbius didn't want anyone's blood, but he wanted their "plasma". Aside from that though season 2 was entertaining and I look forward to watching season 3.

On another note, I have to say how much better the X-Men looked in this series compared to their own. I would have loved for the X-Men series to have had the same quality animation this had.



Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe/Gameswipe (BBC Four)

You may have noticed that I don't tend to watch much "normal" TV, but then that's because most stuff sucks. However, of all the new stuff I've watched recently, Charlie Brooker is the only thing worth bothering with. The man is a genius. About a year a go my brother introduced me to his various works and I've watched all of his Screenwipe program, a hilarious and sometimes depressing look at what's being going on with British TV. Usually shown on BBC Four but I've had to watch it via Youtube. Take your pick from these funny clips and be enlightened: The talent, The 10 biggest cocks in advertising, Getting an idea on TV, Aspirational TV, Fat kids and A career in television.

He's also got a one off special on video games, which is probably the first time a program on games has ever been any good.