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Max Steel
Publicity is everything. That said, I
practically missed this show completely, from ever being on the air! I
more or less stumbled upon Max Steel, when my brother
requested that I search the cable stations for the series that his
6-year-old son's
favorite toys were based on. I began taping --and inevitably watching-- a
CGI animated series that is far better than most of the rubbish Cartoon
Network is feeding kids lately (yet not as good as Justice League).
Though its current (apparent) cancellation makes it a potential candidate
for my What Went Wrong?
column someday, I must admit...I liked what I saw!
The story is a nice spin of the typical
"Six Million Dollar Man" plot; a young college student named
Josh McGath goes to visit his father one day at work. He stumbles
upon a thieving operation led by Psycho, a cyborg more robot than human.
In the resulting struggle, Josh gets gets too close to an exploding tank,
which contained highly experimental nanoprobes (think: microscopic
robot-"organisms"), which
fuse themselves to his organic tissue...making him Max Steel!
Max, as all superheroes do, has a lot
of high-tech superpowers. For one, he can use all the "transphasic
energy" in his system to go turbo, for super strength at any time. He
can also go into stealth mode, blending into any environment chameleon
style. Best of all, he can alter his appearance slightly, so the blond,
weaker Josh can still lead a normal lifestyle by day, while the dark
haired, burly Max Steel can fight crime by nightfall.
Enemies are also well conceived. While
deemed politically incorrect, the henchman of Dredd's terrorist group,
Psycho, is a believably tough arch-villain, complete with a robot right
arm that's almost like a Swiss Army Knife gone bad. He also takes off his
mask frequently, revealing the toothy grin of his metallic skull
underneath (hence the condescending nickname "Smiley" by Max).
There is also Bio-constrictor, a formerly gangly scientist who fell into a
pit of bio-altering waste products and became a poisonous snake-human, with the added
ability to control all serpents. There are a wide menagerie of other
villains, including a bionic-limbed adversary named Virtol, whose limbs glow with greenish energy. While my
nephew wound up asking for episodes involving Psycho and Bio-constrictor
more than any other enemy (those are the main action figure villains
available for sale, after all), I liked the diversity of adversaries here,
and rarely came across more than 2 episodes of the same villain.
It's the first season where this series
shone most brightly. In it, we were offered a nice secret-agent type setup
for Max, as he discovered double agents, secret plans, and other James
Bond type plotlines. Even better, however, was the lifelike characters in
this season, with Josh seen dealing with college life as well as
maintaining a relationship with Laura, a girlfriend who knows nothing
about his "Max Steel" secret identity. best of all was the
believable love triangle that ensued for a while, with Josh, his
girlfriend, and his assigned mentor at N-tek, Rachel Leeds.
If only later seasons were as cool. Season
2 was little more than action city, with the episodes seeming to be
modeled more to commercialize the line of action figures than to portray
any back story. Season 3 was better rendered visually --thanks to being
done by Mainframe, who also made Barbie
Nutcracker and Reboot--
though had little more to contribute. Sad to say, the last I saw the
series aired was on 6 or 7 AM on Cartoon Network, and I haven't seen it
aired since.
Some claim this series failed because kids
didn't like it as much. Note that I didn't finish that sentence, because I
have no idea how: as much as...what? Don't tell me that all those
marathons on Cartoon Network actually mean kids like Ed, Edd & Eddy more than even classic Bugs Bunny cartoons?!? Does this have anything to do with the fact that
cartoons that look drawn by crayon, cost less to purchase and
broadcast for the network? Seems like they're trying to pull the wool over
their younger viewers' eyes...and to look at the blank expressions on my
nephews when Ed Edd & Eddy is on, I'd say the ploy is failing.
Cartoon Network is making a big mistake if they plan to stop showing any
and all CGI cartoons just because they cost more. Even cartoons that use slight amounts
of CGI, like Johnny Quest, are no longer shown on Cartoon Network at all.
However, I digress; Max Steel was an admirable show, which deserved its
reign on TV...I mean, after all, how important was that 7 AM time slot to
Cartoon Network...?
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