Tony's Indignation At His Armor Being Called Quaint Was Hilarious

I've been catching episodes of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes whenever I can, though that's lead to a piecemeal viewing experience. Last night "Kang the Conqueror" was running, which I hadn't seen previously, and there was a lot to it I enjoyed.

Right off, Captain America's reading an article on Tony that refers to Stark as a "futurist". Which leads to Tony, in his slightly condescending way, describing to Steve what that means, how Tony's developing technology for the next century, like transmitting and receiving information wirelessly, rather than through computers. Which leads to Steve (who is having one of those raw egg protein drinks for breakfast, grossing out Tony) stating 'I like newspapers. For instance, this one has a picture of you fighting HYDRA, and anyone can tell from this picture that you don't know how to fight.' Cue Tony being offended, which puts the two of them in the ring together.

Two things I enjoyed about the scene:

1) That Hawkeye and the Hulk came downstairs to watch, and get a real kick out of Tony getting stomped.

2) The first two times Tony tries to hit Steve, we see Tony start to throw a punch, we hear someone make contact, and then Tony's on the ground. I like that Tony can't even see Steve's punches coming.

On the downside, Hank, Tony, and Reed Richards made a Negative Zone prison in that universe, too. And they staffed it with Ultrons. At least their creation is equally on Tony's head, rather than just on Hank's*. Hank's argument in favor of the prison is that since it's in an anti-matter universe, even if the bad guys escape their cells, there's nowhere to go. Great. What happens when one of the villains decides he doesn't care anymore (or thinks it's a bluff), and tries to break out. He gets annihilated by the anti-matter, which then flows into the prison through his escape hole, killing the rest of the prisoners. Oh well, hopefully it sets up an Avengers/Annihilus fight down the line. I don't think I've ever seen that.

Kang's shown up to kill Captain America, who isn't supposed to exist in the 21st Century, and whose presence will lead to Earth being destroyed in a Kree/Skrull war. I don't think I follow the line of reasoning that says it's Cap's fault aliens wipe out the planet, but Kang really only cares because the destruction of the Earth in the 21st Century kind of wrecks his empire in the 41st Century.

It was a nice touch Tony was able to operate Kang's time chair because some of it's components are based on Stark's technology. A reversal of Busiek's Kang story, where the military tried to use Sentinels against Kang except, oops, he'd been involved in the design of some of the technology the mutant-killers were based on, and he naturally left himself a back door.

The part I found funniest was as Kang's beating on the Avengers and proclaiming his intent to kill Cap, Hank, Thor, and the Wasp show up and Thor shouts something about if Kang wants to kill someone, then try to kill them. The Wasp starts to charge forward saying, 'That's right!' then comes to an abrupt stop with 'Wait, what?' I burst out laughing right then. Unfortunately I was brushing my teeth at the same time so I spent the next few minutes cleaning up toothpaste.

* I've seen one of the later episodes, so I know the decision to use them for combat was Tony's idea, and Hank strenuously objected. Well, not strenuously, maybe, but he objected.