How would you personally rank the different eras of Marvel Animation?

[Freddy]

Before starting, I should make it clear that basically none of these eras are any way "official". I came up with their names and cut-off points myself and you are free to disagree with my reasonings.

Anyway, in my eyes the history of Marvel Animation can be broken off to following eras:

The Silver Age (1966-1970)

While Marvel has been around all the way from 1939 (then known as Timely Comics), many people see 60's as the decade Marvel was truly born, with Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko creating the likes of Fantastic Four, X-Men, The Avengers and Spider-Man. So, it makes sense that Marvel animation also got its start in the 60's.

This was of course back when most of characters were still, relatively speaking, in their early days and weren't all fully formed yet. This was before X-Men were an overt commentary on bigotry, before Tony Stark was a self-destructive wreck, before Hulk was a stand-in for mental illness etc. Also, this was before all the truly big breakthroughs of TV-animation, so animated shows on TV were still done extremely cheaply. Not saying none of the comic stories of that time were great or hold up (the original Lee/Ditko/Romita run is IMO arguably still the best era of Spider-Man comics) or you can't find certain charm from cartoons of this time, but I don't think anyone would object to me saying that the truly great Marvel cartoons were yet to come.
It would be unfair of me not to give a special shout-out to the Spider-Man series, with its memetic status and truly iconic theme song, which gets refenced and covered to this day. I personally feel that those are more fun than the show itself, where the camp value gets old after couple of episodes, but I can understand how and why the show holds a special place for some people.

The shows of this era:
- The Marvel Super Heroes (1966)
- Hanna-Barbera's Fantastic Four (1967)
- Spider-Man (1967)

The Bronze Age (1970-1990)

A notable development here is that during this time Marvel formed a production company called Marvel Productions (later renamed to New World Animation Ltd.) which produced most of the cartoon shows of this era. They also produced some shows unrelated to their comics, like the original Transformers and My Little Pony, but I'm only going to count their shows directly adapting their comics for this.

Couple of things of note from this era:

- This era gave us The New Fantastic Four series, which infamously replaced the Human Torch with H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot. For the longest time, a popular urban myth was that this was done, because the producers were afraid of the kids setting themselves on fire, but the truth is a more mundane case of the rights to the character being sold to a different studio.

- Marvel teamed-up with Toei Animation a lot, which not only produced some of the best looking invidual episodes of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, but also two anime OVAs, Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned and The Monster of Frankenstein, which adapted material from their old horror comics.

- This era predates serialized television, both in live-action and animation, yet the Spider-Man solo series had an on-going Doctor Doom storyline, which had a clear begining and ending.

- This era was when we had a first serious attempt at adapting X-Men into a media outside of the comics, with the Pryde of the X-Men animated pilot, which got never picked up for a series, but probably started the domino effect, which gave us a certain other show from the next era.

While it would be a strech to call any of the Marvel cartoon's of this era particularly "deep", they are in my eyes great improvements from the previous era. I would like to give special shout-outs to both The Incredible Hulk and solo Spider-Man shows, where you can see in certain episodes certain writers trying to be slightly more ambitious than they were allowed to be, with Hulk doing fun remixes of old sci-fi tropes and Spider-Man truly trying to have a balance between Peter Parker's real-life drama and superhero action. I also feel that the 70's Spider-Woman cartoon is criminally overlooked, being kinda ahead of its time in a way it depicted a female main character (I.E. The show was allowed to be an action series, rather than trying to be something more traditionally "girly") and, if you are someone who enjoy the likes of 60's Spider-Man or His Amazing Friends, it has ton of cheeseball entertainment value.

Also, it is very interesting and funny how all of Marvel's first movie adaptations had very unconventiol choices of source material. With their first theatrically released live-action feature film was Howard the Duck (1986) and their first animated features were the aforementioned Dracula and Frankenstein animes.

The shows of this era:
- The New Fantastic Four (1978)
- Spider-Woman (1979)
- Spider-Man (1981)
- Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981)
- The Incredible Hulk (1982)

The movies of this era:
- Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (1980)
- The Monster of Frankenstein (1981)

The specials of this era:
- Pryde of the X-Men (1989)

The 90's (1990-2000)

Now, I don't pretend to be an expert or even particularly well-researched on animation history, but I do feel that 90's was in a lot of way a big turning point for American TV-animation. Thanks to the likes of The Disney Afternoon (which, yes, technically got started near the end of the 80's) and Warner Bros. animation investing more on the production values of their animated shows than ever before and pushing some serious envelopes what animation can do on TV, the bar got set high. And finally, after years of behind the scenes battles and disagreements, X-Men got their first succesful adaptation with their 90's series, which was a bigger hit than anyone could have expected and opened the doors for ton of other Marvel shows.

A lot of people like to look back on this era as the peak of Marvel animation and X-Men '97 has no doubt made those rose colored glasses even rosier, but this era had its issues. Arguably, X-Men and Spider-Man were their only truly succesfull shows, with everything else getting cancelled after only a season or two. Iron Man and Fantastic Four had terrible first seasons, which lead to heavy revamps for their second ones, while the likes of Spider-Man Unlimited and The Avengers: United They Stand were just generally the laughing stocks for the longest time (although, to be fair, the former has gotten kinda a following in recent years). Admittedly, because of the 90's comic crash and some terrible business choices, Marvel was going through a bankruptcy at the time and genuily couldn't produce some of the shows anymore, so it can be hard to tell how much some of them were genuily tanking.

People also like to headcanon this era as one big shared universe and the head-writer of the first season of X-Men '97, Beau DeMayo, has said that he treated them as such, but I don't agree with that. Most of them had different production crews and writers working on them, with ton of story contradictions. Now, to be fair, some of them can be seen as shared universes. X-Men had a two-part crossover with Spider-Man, where a great care was taken to get every voice actor to reprise their roles, to use the same character designs, include music from their soundtrack and not directly contradict anything, so those two are clearly a shared universe. Iron Man, Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk all did direct continuity references to each other, so those three are also a shared universe. But one big universe with all of these shows? No, I don't think so.

Personally, I feel that X-Men is the only show that holds up as an overall great show. The other big fan-favorite, Spider-Man, has things to admire, but the production values were just abysmal and the writing of Peter Parker's personal drama got weaker season-by-season. I do, however, want to give shout-outs to the first season of The Incredible Hulk, which was very solid (too bad the second season was terrible) and Silver Surfer, which was genuily great science-fiction (especially for kids), but unfortunately ends on a major cliffhanger.

The shows of this era:
- X-Men (1992)
- Fantastic Four (1994)
- Iron Man (1994)
- Spider-Man (1994)
- The Incredible Hulk (1996)
- Silver Surfer (1998)
- Spider-Man Unlimited (1999)
- The Avengers: United They Stand (1999)

The New Millenium (2000-2010)

After being saved from the bankruptcy by making various movie deals, Marvel was able to get back on their feet and start making cartoons again and in a lot of ways this might be their most succesfull era, in terms of producing some of their biggest fan-favorites, officially forming Marvel Animation production company and just the sheer number of projects they produced. This era could also be splitted to two, with Christopher Yost becoming a notable driving creative force on these projects at a certain point and combining ton of them into his own shared universe (which unfortunately never got a chance to have any big DCAU style crossovers for various reasons).

Some of the notable points of this era are Marvel trying their hands at their first "mature" animated show, with MTV's Spider-Man (although, "mature" in this context means more teenage boys), them producing a whole series of direct-to-dvd animated features with Lionsgate and teaming-up with Madhouse to produce four anime mini-series (although, most of their premies bleed over to the next era).

Personally, this era might actually be the most nostalgic for me personally and it is an era of big hits, but also big missses. The Spectacular Spider-Man and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes are both masterpieces and easily the best adaptations both properties have gotten. I also have major soft spots for Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes and Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (despite me kinda taking a jab at it earlier). As for misses, never cared for Iron Man: Armored Adventures or The Super Hero Squad Show, and my big hot take is that Wolverine and the X-Men does not hold up.

I know a lot of people look back fondly on the straight-to-dvd animated movies and wish they would have lasted longer or came back, but, to be honest, I feel most of them played it weirdly safe (especially the Doctor Strange one, where some of the creative choices felt like something you would have done with a live-action Doctor Strange movie at the time, not with animation where CGI-limitations aren't a concern) or were too childish for my taste (Next Avengers and Tales of Asgard). Hulk vs. and Planet Hulk are the only two that I personally think still hold up (and, even then, Hulk vs. Wolverine short does a lot of heavy-lifting for Hulk vs.).

The shows of this era:
- X-Men: Evolution (2000)
- Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (2003)
- Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes (2006)
- The Spectacular Spider-Man (2008)
- Wolverine and the X-Men (2009)
- Iron Man: Armored Adventures (2009)
- The Super Hero Squad Show (2009)
- The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (2010)
- Iron Man Anime (2010)

The movies of this era:
- Ultimate Avengers (2006)
- Ultimate Avengers 2 (2006)
- The Invincible Iron Man (2007)
- Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme (2007)
- Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (2008)
- Hulk vs. (2009)
- Planet Hulk (2010)

The Dark Age (2011-2020)

Between the first and second seasons of Avengers: EMH, a major shift happened behind the scenes of Marvel Animation. Jeph Loeb became the head of Marvel Television, which gave him the power over their animated projects too. Now, Loeb is somewhat divisive figure, with him having written some critically-acclaimed Batman comics, yet his various works at Marvel make people tilt their heads. For the purpose of the topic at hand, I will ignore his works on Marvel comics and live-action TV (although, to be fair to the man, Netflix Daredevil is IMHO the greatest live-action adaptation of any Marvel property ever made) and focus on the fingerprints he left on their animation.

Look, the fact that I chose to name this era "The Dark Age" already shows my hand, so there's really no point dancing around this. This is easily the worst era of Marvel Animation. Loeb was pretty open about seeing animation as purely something for kids, which doesn't inherently mean that the end product is going to be terrible (arguably 90% of the works we have talked about so far were aimed at kids), but for him "made for kids" meant "talks down to kids". All the shows of this era are just extremely juvenile, with all the main characters acting incredibly imature and all the plots being stock cartoon fare, with almost every show having things like token body-swap episode.

This era also had two other fatal flaws. Firstly, the production values took huge nosedives. Of the shows, Ultimate Spider-Man still looked decent, but everything else had muted colors and often resulted to tricks like moving a still 2D image accros the screen to showcase a character "moving". The other flaw was constant MCU pandering and cross-promotion. Characters weren't allowed to be of any importance, unless they had made a MCU debut, all the character designs had to reflect what the movies were doing, most of the voice actors were hired to be cheap sound-a-likes of the movie actors and the characters had to constantly quote and/or reference scenes from the movies.

There were some direct-to-dvd movies from this era, two of which were more anime co-productions with Madhouse, but none of them are particularly worth talking about.

Speaking of movies, the two major bright spots of this era came outside of Marvel themselves. First, the Disney produced Big Hero 6 movie, which I personally always feel iffy counting as part of Marvel Animation, since it's pretty much in-name-only adaptation and Marvel is mentioned nowhere in the main credits, but it is based on a Marvel comic, so it counts. Second, Sony's Into the Spider-Verse movie, which is one of the rare non-Disney/Pixar movies to win the best animated feature Oscar. While BH6 is not one of my personal favorite Disney movies and I do think Spider-Verse, both the original comic and the movie, is overhyped, they are both quality movies and leagues above Marvel's own animated productions of the time.

The shows of this era:
- Wolverine Anime (2011)
- X-Men Anime (2011)
- Blade Anime (2011)
- Ultimate Spider-Man (2012)
- Avengers Assemble (2013)
- Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. (2013)
- Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers (2014)
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2015)
- Marvel Future Avengers (2017)
- Marvel's Spider-Man (2017)
- Big Hero 6: The Series (2017)

The movies of this era:
- Thor: Tales of Asgard (2011)
- Iron Man: Rise of Technovore (2013)
- Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United (2013)
- Big Hero 6 (2014)
- Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher (2014)
- Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United (2014)
- Marvel Super Hero Adventures: Frost Fight! (2015)
- Hulk: Where Monsters Dwell (2016)
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
- Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors (2018)

The specials/shorts of this era:
- Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel (2013)
- Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013)
- Marvel's Rocket & Groot (2017)
- Marvel's Ant-Man (2017)
- Marvel Super Hero Adventures (2017)
- Marvel Rising (2018)
- Spider-Ham: Caught in a Ham (2019)

The Streaming Era (2021-???)

I would almost like to ignore this era, since it hasn't really formed its identity yet and is still ongoing. Not only have some of the final projects of the previous era bled into its begining, it has been really slow to actually get started. At the time of writing this, only three shows, which I would consider of this era, have premiered, with one of them having only just recently finished its first season.

On the other hand, it is currently shaping up to be an improvement from the previous era. At first, all it took for me to embrace What If...? was it being better than anything Jeph Loeb produced, but with season 2 being a major mixed bag for me, I'm not sure the show overall will hold up for me beyond that. However, X-Men '97 has been better than it had any right to be and up there one of the greatest Marvel animated projects period, so that alone counts for a lot.

The shows of this era:
- M.O.D.O.K. (2021)
- Spidey and His Amazing Friends (2021)
- What If...? (2021)
- Hit-Monkey (2021)
- Baymax! (2022)
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023)
- X-Men '97 (2024)
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (Upcoming)
- Marvel Zombies (Upcoming)
- Eyes of Wakanda (Upcoming)

The movies of this era:
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
- Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (Upcoming)

The specials/shorts of this era:
- I Am Groot (2022)
- More Lego Marvel (2022)
- The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story (2023)

My Personal Ranking of the Eras:

1. The New Millenium
Has its clunkers, but the good stuff is some of the best Marvel has ever produced.

2. The 90's
Perhaps overrated, but X-Men is iconic for a reason and some of the other gems shine brightly.

3. The Streaming Era/The Bronze Age
One is too young to be properly judged, but already has one major masterpiece under its belt and could jump to the second place, if not all the way to the first, if future projects are even half as good. The other is goofy cornball fun, which doesn't stand the test of time exactly, but is fun to look back to.

4. The Silver Age
Has certain value in terms of history and memes, but I'm not personally going back to any of its offerings.

5. The Dark Age
The one genuily terrible era, even with some bright spots.

 

[Rick Jones]

I like the way you categorized it. This is one of those things I think of way too much. I usually can't help but just think of them in decades. I tend to think of the trio of Spectacular Spider-Man, Batman Brave and the Bold, and Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes as sort of their own "Second Silver Age", just because of how great I think they all are and because of how much I think each show perfectly gets the feel of their respective Silver Age comic counterparts.

When it comes to the ranking, I go with:

1) The 90's - I can't help it. I'd probably feel differently if I was born 10 years later. The 90s were just when they first went full blast with the Marvel cartoons. This was the era that made me a hardcore fan. I was born a Marvel guy but the 90s bombarded me with Marvel as much as it did with Disney. I was reading and collecting comics, buying toys and games, and watching the cartoons faithfully. I wish the shows really had the budget and freedom to fully realize their vision but this era was just the most important in my eyes. It also still feels like the era when we were seeing the most Marvel characters being adapted.

2) New Millennium - We really saw the shows getting the budgets and production values they deserved. Marvel finally started taking advantage of the movie medium as well, and I'm still a fan of what they were doing. An era full of potential and great writing. I wish every show of that era went longer than they did, especially Spectacular Spider-Man with its 5 seasons and a few movies dream plan.

3) Bronze Age - What I like to think of as the Marvel Productions era. I was kind of born after these shows had their run but these were my first exposures to a lot of the Marvel characters, along with my cousins' and uncles' comics. I still remember being preschool age and seeing Along Came Spidey for the first time, and how much it strengthened my lifelong love of Spidey. They also cemented Doctor Doom as the villain supreme in my mind. The shows were firmly in the softened Saturday Morning era of the 70s and 80s but i think they still did a lot to usher kids into the great comics of that period. One thing that was always a shame to me was that Marvel was one of the top animation producers of the period but they were only able to create a handful of shows about actual Marvel characters. This really bled into how much they were able to do in the 90s.

4) Silver Age - I'm so fond of these shows but they're really reflective of their period. In a similar way to the Superman cartoons of the 40s, I think it's really interesting to see the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and others adapted so soon after they were first created. The shows are at their best when they follow the original comics closely. In the case of Marvel Super Heroes, it's a shame that they followed too closely and were pretty much motion comics, not even as animated as Spider-Man and Fantastic Four were, but they're still a great time capsule.

5) The Dark Age - The post buyout era. I felt as though there was so much potential to be reaped after the New Millennium and especially after getting Disney backing, so I will always feel as though they aimed too low during this era. We're only just seeing the benefits of the Disney buyout now, during the Streaming Era. Two gems of the period were the Big Hero 6 and Spider-Verse movies, both produced independently of Marvel Animation. I also loved the branching out into the Anime market with 6 series and 2 movies, even if this was very hit or miss. Marvel Rising was a very interesting experiment, as was Marvel Super Hero Adventures. The shows and movies created by Marvel Animation Studios mostly felt like a stepback in many ways, sadly, but there were still enjoyable moments (for me). It just could have been so, so much more but it never felt like they were trying to be.

 

[Neo Ultra Mike]

My ranking of these eras.

6. The Bronze Age - I was honestly really tempted to give the worst spot to the dark age because you can argue everything BEFORE the 90s had to be super sanitized and appeal only really to the youngest demographic over in the US because that's just what cartoons really were for the most part on TV. So it makes sense this era of shows are the way they are more then the 2010 series. Two things though made me decide against that. First the fact there are at least solid elements in the dark era worth recommending (more on that later) and second realizing the big difference between the Silver Age and the Bronze Age; The fact this age just didn't really CARE about trying to really represent the comics at all even for the time they came out in.

And granted most TV cartoons were pretty garbage in the 70s all across the board as yeah cenorship came down a lot harder then the 60s but you know the Silver Age shows felt like they represented the actual comics they were more based out of. Maybe the animation was a bit more jank but the stories and ideas have transcended those times for a reason. What did Marvel have in the 70s thougH? A Fantastic Four cartoon where due to rights issues they couldn't even use one of the main Fantastic Four characters? Another sort of related Fantastic Four cartoon where the Thing is made up of two kids with a magic Ring with an intro promising a Flintstones crossover the main cartoon can't even deliver? A Jessica Drew cartoon that doesn't properly translate the interesting elements worth covering of Spider Woman? Like nothing in that decade even felt like the Marvel properties it was trying to adapt. I guess the 80's were a bit better (even if you had to make up one of Spider Man's amazing friends though at least Firestar makes more sense as a character then HERBIE the Robot) but the 80's were a period where due to cartoons now being made more for merchandising the idea of more general action and escalating plots were more generally acceptable but yeah the couple of shows that came out in that era didn't really take advantage of that at all. Thus nothing really about it stands out and makes it easily the weakest era of all Marvel animated TV. I mean in the comics the 80s were the era of the first major events and really inventing and coming up with a lot of cool concepts while on TV we had a forgotten Hulk cartoon, a forgotten spider man cartoon somehow related but not really to the slightly more remembered one and a failed X-Men pilot. Yeah easy to rank that and the 70s as worst overall.

5. The Dark Age - Again there is less excuse for this era then the Bronze/Silver age because by the 2010s there have been at least two decades of actually GOOD Marvel cartoons that should have showed executives what people wanted to see from them. Hell there were three really good ones at the tail end of that decade CANCELLED and pretty much replaced for Jeff Loeb's mix of wanting to cater just to the little kids/MCU crowd. I guess that did at least mean more expansive use of some more modern concepts but it also meant cutting a lot of corners in not only the animation but the story telling in general thus as a result a lot of junk series not really worth recommending. Seriously how many Marvel fans are going to stick their next outs and defend Ultimate Spider Man, Avengers Assemble, Hulk and the Agents of Smash compared to stuff that came before or even now? I feel very few even the little kids who grew up with those shows now are more aware of better series worth recommending. This feels especially hurtful to think about because yeah this was now the era where shows were getting some actual disney money pumped into them but yeah not really enough due to skeevy executive practice to really count as solid additions.

Again there are a few things that edge this one above the sludge of the Bronze Age. The series that weren't in Loeb's pandering wheel house produced some decent entertainment like the 4 Anime series or even the Big Hero 6 show. And speaking of Big Hero 6, this was the first era where we actually had major animated marvel products on the Big Screen to become some solid hits. Granted most people feel Big Hero 6 was okay (I still really dig it but I get that reputation) but I would certainly take it over any of the Bronze era shows. And then of course you had Into The Spider-Verse, a game changer not just for super hero movies but for ALL films, animated or otherwise, across the board that deserves pretty much all the praise it gets. Honestly those two film alone do raise this era some points...the feel and so much of the content throughout it still rate it fairly low but not the worst so that's something.

4. The Silver Age - I mean in terms of animation this is probably the weakest era. The Marvel Super Heroes is pretty much just motion comics which by the late 2000s were sort of just standard ideas to appeal to those who didn't want to do reading for their comics not... you know an actual animated adaptation you'd see on TV. Well I guess the Black Panther series on BET but even that had wayyyy more motion then these 60's Namor/Hulk/Captain America/Iron Man/Thor etc. Still though what puts this above the previous two eras is that this is actually a solid representation for what comics were like in the 60s. This isn't the bronze era failing to not capture stuff from the comics or the pandering dark age era. As there's a reason this stuff though corny is still memorable. Even if you never saw the 60s animated Spider Man series you know it's theme song and yeah even some of the memes plus the insanity there made it at least interesting. And sadly it would only take till the... LATE 2000s to have a more faithful Avengers cartoon then the Marvel Super Heroes. Plus hey this era had the classic Fantastic four 60's cartoons which was one of the first things that really even got me into Marvel at all when they played super chunks of it on Cartoon Network. So I do have some nostalgic attachment to this era I couldn't say as much as the other eras. I don't think it makes this era that good but it does make it important and stand out more overall even though yeah it's really only the other three eras I would call "good" at all. And what would be least good? Well...

3. The 90s - Look the 90's is a very important era not just in Marvel animation or super hero animation but in animation in general for the standards and restrictions torn down allowing for new ideas and experimentation that would forever change the game of what you could get away with. Specifically for Marvel animation it actually meant fully exploring the pathos and themes from the comics you NEVER would have been able to do previously and allow for depth and drama that are pretty important elements from the source material. Not to mention being the first true attempt at connecting various projects together into one shared continuity. Like the MCU is the most known example but the 90's animated shows did that first and considering how many more umbrellas and different brands they were working with having anything coherent with that should be applauded. And yeah we also have the shows themselves with X-Men 92 being such a game changer and then Spider Man 1994 which yeah I have so much love for and would love to see that get brought back in this era as well. So there is quite a lot of greatness for this era I do get why people hold it in such high regard.

At the same time though it is farrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr from perfect and honestly probably fairly overhyped compared to certain other periods of animated Marvel fare. Yeah X-Men 92 is a great show and Spider-Man 94 still mostly works (the fight scenes are super edited choppy but again still had some restrictions you had to work within) but those are the only two major series throughout that I can say are overall solid, and even then the final season of X-Men 92 is step back for a reason. But even that bar isn't as low as the early half of the 90's Iron man or Fantastic Four, or the She Hulk dominated 90s Hulk series that aren't really that good. And even when a show has a solid foundation it has a limited run like Silver Surfer, and of course the animated fare that has a limited run because it doesn't work like Avengers United they stand or Spider-Man Unlimited. I guess the late 90's due to Marvel's bankruptcy and being split to various different factiosn did hurt a lot of shows and their quality but we're talking about the end product themselves and in that regard it did not produce the best era of cartoons for the comic book company. Some good ones sure but across the board the 21st century... sans 2010s generally produced far better cartoons. Which produced the best? Well I debated this and at the end came to this conclusion...

2. The Streaming Era - As others have pointed out we haven't hit the pinnacle of this era as some shows like Eyes of Wakanda and Friendly Neighborhood Spider Man aren't really out to comment on but with what we have had I will say there's a lot to praise about this era and a lot of reasons why I could see someone saying it's the best. This is easily the era with the widest range of shows for a general audience to pick out. You don't have to just focus on strictly kids shows and can check out more generally adult animated fare with content that wouldn't have been possible before since streaming doesn't have to worry about networks and what they allows thus a wider range of opportunities. Some shows even proved solid enough like Hit Monkey to continue on even if their initial cross universe was shattered while Disney plus itself has given us the unique and fairly solid at times What If and yeah the excellent X-Men 97. We also have excellent movies like Across the Spider Verse (with Beyond likely also reaching that height) and even the shows on Networks like Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur certainly being worth watching.

That said not only do we not know some of these shows but some of the ones out there aren't really that great. MODOK felt like a project that works for maybe an episode not an entire series, and sans a catchy theme song I don't see the appeal of Spider Man and his amazing friends for anyone over 10. Even some of the more solid shows do have holes in them be it Moon Girls forcing on think that Disney message at times or What If focusing on a not really interesting alternate concept. There are easily more hits then misses and more potential for hits in the future but in terms of most consistent and the best quality overall that would have to go with...

1. The New Millennium - I think the worst the 2000's really has to offer Marvel animation are some cruddy DTVs like Invinicble Iron Man but even in that regard Ultimate Avengers and Hulk Vs easily make up for that blunder. And yeah due to how the shows were all structured between the differing networks you couldn't really get the symmetry of the 90's here, and thus had so many different canons to keep track of but quite frankly it was worth it. Even for the lesser shows. Yeah Fantastic Four World's Greatest heroes leaned too much on anime esque short cuts but the chemistry of the leads was still solid and made an overall decent series. Yeah MTV'S spider man was a weird experiment but again one of the few animated super hero series not just made for kids and still had a snappiness that was really easy to get into. Even for as WB lite teen drama angst as it could get, X-men evolution is a really great X-men introduction where a lot of my love for the mutant team really comes from and so much of it still really holds up today. Even Superhero Squad for as silly as that could be had a fun to it that in this nowadays is really appreciated.

But again this era had the 1 2 3 punch of Spectacular Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men and Avengers Earth Mightiest Heroes debuted here and yeah the quality of those shows really ticks you off what later works did with the source material. But they easily make this the best era and yeah a reason to hope somehow we'll see more of these stories down the line.

So that's my ranking for uh anyone who cared I guess.

 

[Mejo]

Freddy, I agree with your ranking (though I will say I do have a soft spot for some of the early eras despite how primitive they are).

I will say that my main problem with the 2010s era is how bland and lifeless a lot of the animation looks and moves. It’s nowhere near as fun and creative as the other eras are, causing the programs themselves to really suffer due to that.

 

[Medinnus]

Everall, I think the high point was the The New Millennium era; it fell pretty spectacularly with the stuff put out the the well-named Dark Ages Era. Unfortunately, I do not have a taste for the content from the streaming era, which I consider little more than pablum, of very little entertainment value (exceptions like Hit Monkey notwithstanding).