Ultimate Avengers is an animated attempt at adapting the original “The Ultimates” mini-series into a mainstream piece of media that both fanboys and younger audiences can enjoy together. The sexuality, and “adult themes” found in “The Ultimates” has been softened, thus making it more of an Avengers tale anyway. Cosmetically, Ultimate Thor no longer has the big manly Nordic beard of his four color counterpart, Ultimate Hulk has been re-hued from gray to green to resemble his better known Marvel Universe cousin, and the Wasp doesn’t have to coordinate her outfits to match the new black eye that Giant Man gives her every week. It’s understandable too, since parents looking to show this PG-13 movie to their younger kids might not like the resultant questions about why daddy doesn’t “put mommy in place where she belongs, or hearing about how the Hulk made crude comments about his radioactive trouser python to the lady characters. Yeah, I think the less eluding to the Hulkster's gamma powered poon pounder the better.

Okay, enough talk about big green dicks. I'm going to have nightmares about being attacked by evil zucchinis all night if I don't put a cock in it... SOCK IN IT! Damn it!

In the waning days of World War II, US experimental super soldier Captain America and his cohorts in Generic Soldier Company (there's even a gruff guy named Kowalsky!) found themselves raiding a top secret Nazi bunker to put a stop to a Kraut super rocket that could spell D-O-O-M (as in Doctor Victor Von) for Washington DC. It's not just a giant steel Hitler phallus the good Captain finds though, but the Nazis' secret collaborators: aliens from outer space! Did I accidentally pick up an old issue of “Weird War Stories” at some point today?! Whatever the case, Cap blows up the rocket in mid-flight, along with any traces of the Master Race From Outer Space (that needs to be the title of a movie, damn it!), but ends up getting himself sunk in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, presumed dead and with the worst case of shrinkage anyone has ever seen.

Not ones to give up on their expensive guinea pigs, the US government sends scientist Betty Ross, General Nick Fury, and a small recovery team into the Arctic waters some 60 years later to recover the valuable remains of... no, not the abominable snowman... yes, Captain America. Why? Because in today's constantly evolving battlefield, the US military is constantly looking for new weapons to go all John Wayne (Gacy) on the bad guys with, so tax payer dollars are now funding a new Super Soldier Program in the hopes of creating an entire army of Captain Americas to make the terrorists of the world soil their towels before they even think of fucking with the red, white & blue again! These colors don't run... uhm, because Clorox Color Safe Bleach is mandatory in all homes by order of the US Department of Homeland Dry Cleaning...

Also working on the Super Soldier Program is Betty's sometimes-boyfriend Bruce Banner: brilliant bio-chemist and infamous turner-intoer of a certain emerald skinned juggernaut known as the Hulk. Because of his dangerous alter-ego, Banner big brain is pretty much property of the US government at this point, which is the only reason he hasn't been “dealt with” like a WMD like him normally would be. Bruce hopes that by studying and duplicating the formula that turned Private Steve Rogers into the goose-stepper smashing Captain America, he can discover some way of controlling his unfriendly, building smashing side, thus making him a valuable asset to the world and the type of muscle-bound beefcake that he thinks would made Betty a happy woman. Instead of just getting the world's most valuable cadaver though, it turns out that the Super Soldier Serum kept Cap in suspended animation for the last six decades and thawing him out just woke him up...

With the Sentinel of Liberty back on the government payroll, this gives S.H.I.E.L.D. (the group that General Fury is in charge of) the leader they need to finally put “Project: Avenger” into action. If you can't figure out what “Project: Avenger” is, then you haven't been paying attention and might want to go back and read the last few paragraphs. The other members of this spandex security squad? Well, in my best “Super Friends” narrator voice, they are - Billionaire industrialist and full-time alcoholic playboy Tony Stark puts on his “work clothes” as the high-tech armor suited tin can to end all tin cans: Iron Man! Ex-KGB super agent Natalia Romanov, who slips on her black leather jumpsuit (with just enough left unzipped so you can see some cleavage) to become the femme fatale known as Black Widow! Hotshot bio-genetic Engineer and former rival to Dr. Banner (and the uncomfortably fond of ants) Dr. Henry “Hank” Pym, whose super suit allows him to increase his mass to monstrous proportions and become Giant Man!... a.k.a. “The Alias with the Least Amount of Effort Put Into It”... Dr. Pym's wife/lab partner, the equal parts brilliant and equal parts “looks good in skin tight leather” Janet Pym, whose ability to shrink in size, fly around via the insect wings on her back, and shoot energy “stings” from her hands have earned her the title of the Wasp! Finally, the weather controlling blond bombshell who can call down the thunder and lightning whether he's really a Norse God or just some crazy tree-hugging GQ model, either way he calls himself Thor! Ladies and gentlemen, your Ultimate Avengers!

So, what are these Avengers being brought together for? Seems those shapeshifting Nazi aliens the Chitauri are still around and causing trouble for mom, baseball, and apple pie. Right now they're focused on keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. satellites out of orbit so Big Brother can't keep an eye on their misdoings. As such, it's up to the Avengers to put them out of business. The real chore for Captain America though is getting this “rag tag” group of super divas in line and following orders. You know, like Kelsey Grammer in Down Periscope... what do you mean you've never seen Down Periscope?! Oh, you saw it, you just hated it with every fiber of your being. Okay, that's understandable.

After a botched mission that almost gets the team killed, everybody quits and Cap is left to wonder is there's really a place for a guy from 1945 to exist in the 21st century. Meanwhile, Dr. Banner's been doing the b-movie mad scientist thing and experimenting on himself with the Super Soldier Serum. As always, confidence breeds catastrophe, as Bruce once again turns into the rampaging goliath whose name starts with “Hu” and ends in “lk”. As for the Chitauri, with newly acquired S.H.I.E.L.D. intel as stolen from one of their bases, the beasties rain hot plasma fire on the agency's bay side base and bring it down around their ears. The Hulk actually manages to help out and take down a good chunk of the aliens all by his lonesome, but once he runs out of little green men to splatter, he's eying the spandex crowd for dessert…

The animation's sadly nothing special. Production values must not have been too high since the flick only looks a little better than recent Marvel animated series “X-Men: Evolution”. Making matters worse, not only does it look not-so-spectacular to begin with, but it's especially hard to enjoy when the source material was done by Bryan Hitch, whose stuff is amazing if you’re not a member of the four color crowd and have no idea who the fuck Bryan Hitch is. Granted, anything out of the DC Comics’ cartoon canon in the last 15 years hasn’t exactly been “realistic” looking either, but they’ve established a certain stylized look all their own (where the men all have chins that put Bruce Campbell’s to shame) and that somehow works for them instead of against them. But, while DC’s always had the talented folks at Warner Bros. doing their productions, Marvel’s characters have been through a number of different animation studios over the years, thus resulting in a wide-like-the-McCrary-Twins variety of different rendering styles for their characters. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but it’s pretty jarring to those who see where I’m coming from… and, for once, that area isn’t located 4 inches below my stomach. *rimshot*

Despite the “dumbing down” from the original comics that some would accuse the creators of (myself included), it’s nice to see an animated Marvel project that doesn’t have “X-Men” or “Spider-Man” in the title. I mean, in all seriousness, the wall-crawler’s had at least six or seven cartoons made about him in the last 30 years! It’s good to see that Marvel’s trying to expand their other characters through a medium that DC’s been dominating ever since Fox’s “X-Men went of the air. Then again, Marvel’s been burying DC under the billions of dollars their feature films have been making since the late-90s, so I guess it’s only fair that the big ‘M’ should have to be number two in some part of the market… and yes, I just said “number two”, so let’s all break out our best Butthead impersonations and pretend it’s still funny after 15 years. Done? Great. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get back to the damn “52 Project” I’ve been working on. Jaws of the Alien isn’t just going to review itself after all!