'Iron Man And His Awesome Friends' Announces Rogues Voices

Vanessa Bayer, Talon Warburton, and Tony Hale join the first Iron Man-starring preschool series as Swarm, Absorbing Man and…Ultron?!

This I wouldn’t exactly call 6+ months “soon”, but Disney Jr.’s upcoming preschool Iron Man animated series Iron Man and his Awesome Friends has had its three lead villains announced by Disney Branded Television on Tuesday. With a promised summer premiere on the channel and Disney+, trailers are likely to come soon, and a premiere date even sooner.

The show’s three announced villains are Absorbing Man, voiced by Megamind Rules!’s Talon Warburton, the mischievous Swarm voiced by Saturday Night Live alum Vanessa Bayer, who previously recurred on Alice’s Wonderland Bakery as Tweedle Do, and the genocidal highly intelligent self-aware AI robot with a god complex himself, Ultron, as voiced by Emmy-winning Arrested Development, Veep, and The Mysterious Benedict Society star Tony Hale. Your guess is as good as mine as to how they adapt the humanity-annihilating ambitions and the god complex for a preschool audience. With someone so adept at neurotic performances, it’s possible they could tap into that. Tom Kane’s performance as the character from Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes has proven to be quite popular.

‘Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends’ Renewed For Season 5 at Disney Jr.

All three actors gave their own statements, each centered on how new the villainy experience is, whether it’s playing against type for Hale and Bayer, or just still being relatively new as Warburton, the son of Family Guy’s Patrick Warburton, is to the industry. Hale, whose previous voice work includes Fear in the Inside Out franchise starting with the second film and Forky in the Toy Story franchise, and television work that runs the gamut of preschool shows like The Chicken Squad to Sanjay and Craig, Rugrats, Archibald’s Next Big Thing, and I Heart Arlo to adult fare like Housebroken, Harley Quinn, and Crossing Swords says “It’s really fun playing a villain because it gives me permission to yell at people and get paid for it. Yes, please.”

Bayer said “it’s an honor” to do a Marvel role like Swarm: “Often, I get typecast as a nice person, so it was really fun to get to play a villain.” Warburton added that he’s been a Marvel fan since childhood, and he’s enjoyed getting to share the series with his son: “Now I just have to figure out how to explain to him that his daddy is a bad guy!” The Absorbing Man is Carl Creel, who has the power to absorb and become any material he touches. The character’s most-known adaptation is likely from Agents of SHIELD in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, played by Brian Patrick Wade as a HYDRA operative turned bodyguard of Glenn Talbot, defecting back to protect against Thanos but ultimately gets absorbed as Talbot descends into becoming Graviton. His boxing gets a nod in an episode of Daredevil.

In the comics, Swarm is male, named Fritz von Mayer, and he’s a flat out Nazi who grows intrigued by a colony of mutated bees. After failing to enslave the queen bee he gets eaten down to his skeletal remains, which are inside the swarm. The bees' unique qualities caused them to absorb von Meyer's consciousness, which allow him to manipulate the hive to do his will, acting as one being. The series continues what is possibly considered a tradition in that it makes its own version of the character, with not even the name carrying over. The most recent is from the 2017 series, and this version is actually Jefferson Davis, Miles Morales’s father. He uses purple nanotech bees that give a solid form and have mind-controlling stingers. With Bayer’s iteration obviously being gender-swapped, a lean-in on the “queen bee” idea is very likely, and might even teach how beehives and its hierarchy work to get in that educational aspect.

Iron Man and his Awesome Friends sees the adventures of best friend super geniuses Tony Stark, voiced by Mason Blomberg and who keeps his Iron Man moniker, Riri Williams, who voiced by Kapri Ladd remains Ironheart, and Amadeus Cho as Iron Hulk, voiced by Aidyn Ahn. They have a beachfront base called Iron Quarters (IQ), and Vision, voiced by David Kaye, is already present. It remains to be seen what kind of relationship they write between him and Ultron. They have a puppy named Gamma, voiced by Fred Tatasciore who has her very own Iron Pup armor, tagging along on many of the team. Powers include Iron Man’s Nano-Shield; Ironheart’s Heartbeat Bubble forcefield protection, and Iron Hulk’s Iron Boom clap and Iron Hulk Stomp.

From Disney Branded Television, produced by Disney Jr. and Marvel Studios in association with Atomic Cartoons, the series is executive produced by Sean Coyle and Harrison Wilcox. James Eason-Garcia is co-executive producer and story editor, Alex Cichon is supervising producer; Ashley Rideout is producer, and Michael Dowding is supervising director.

Marvel Studios’s Vision Series Rings Up Tense Return For Faran Tahir

Source: Marvel