I like the other characters. I loved the atom eve show, in even coming around to amber. They clearly addressed a lot of the issues people had, her complaining mark isn’t spending time with her or telling him his secret identity is completely 180ed in season 2.

I loveeee seeing more of Debbie. The comic absolutely did fail in that regard. Seeing her grief was powerful, and well done.

That being said, that entire 4th episode, should have mostly been that fight. Constantly constantly cutting away for long prolonged periods of time, absolutely killed the pace. Even if the fight itself was good. We went through like every single cast member in that episode often for multiple scenes.

They also absolutely should not have changed some of the diolgue for that episode. Like Nolan’s speech while strangling mark was night and day better in the comic and more nuanced. It did a better job displaying Nolan’s confusion, and marks response was better and more realistic. (Marks response to seeing his dad is way better in the show though). Removing the “did you know they sent you here to DIE!?!” quote Nolan gives while smashing two of their heads together in the comics was kinda sad haha. He was way more pissed and losing control in the comics, to show how confused and unable to control his own very human emotions he is in that moment. And arguably for the first time, truly caring about who he’s Fighting for.

This season is simply FAR FAR too short to treat everyone like a main character every single episode. I get wanting to flesh them out more, I do. But a lot of shows do this now, where the obsess over every character getting their moments all the time. Or otherwise run the risk of them being called “shallow” or whatever. But I think there is no harm in having a truly main character. Which is mark. There’s nothing wrong with a character here and there who’s just plot or has some down time where they just aren’t focused on. Like Rex. Did we need that extra conversation about immortal? Did we need monster girl to speak up there and have that whole long scene? Did we need that fight with eve that’s almost as long as the mark and Nolan fight in that episode?

The solution to this I think is rather simple and there’s options. Number one, just do more episodes? 8 for something like this is so so so weird. I get animation is hard, but it’s not THAT hard for a show like this where it’d take years for 8 episodes of a show thats copying another piece of media almost beat for beat, sometimes word for word. There absolutely has to be something going on in the background that’s preventing them from doing so. And I really hope it isn’t them focusing more time on the live action movie that I hope never gets made (unpopular opinion, I know, but you simply cannot do a story like this justice in a trilogy of movies nor keep the same earnest wackiness and just constant scale, just put that money into the cartoon and animation please)

And the animation is far from bad. But it’s also not movie quality or even high end streaming quality? Like it’s no better, even worse at times, then something like the Batman the animated series and all it’s spin offs and sequels. And that was on cable… Again, it’s not bad, but there’s no reason it should take years and end up with only 8 episodes a season. So far we have not gotten the level of animation that season one had in its finale. It isn’t some huge step up like I lot of people were expecting they were doing in all this time.

The other option, or alongside it, is MORE Atom eve style specials for these characters. The comics did that too, had spin offs and one shots.

Again, it’s not that I don’t want this extra content and depth. But not at the expense of Mark, and his story, and the important events of the comics. It kills the pacing. I expected a bit more from that fight. It’s the first full blooded viltriumite on viltriumite fight in the series, and with all the other scenes, it’s rather short lived and sparatic.