The Funniest Marvel Series Just Got The Axe
The funniest Marvel TV show has officially been canceled, following the fate of a number of Marvel shows before it.
Marvel’s MODOK has been canceled by Hulu after just one season, robbing the world of Marvel’s funniest property yet. The stop-motion animated series starred Patton Oswalt (who also co-created and co-ran the show with Jordan Blum) as MODOK aka George Tarleton, a supervillain determined to rule the world and show his superiority over the likes of other notable villains like The Leader and Mister Sinister. The show took a twist to one of Marvel Comic’s weirder characters (and that’s saying something) by portraying him as something of a failed mastermind whose evil organization A.I.M. (or Advanced Idea Mechanics) goes bankrupt and is purchased by a larger evil corporation, demoting him to an employee. MODOK only lasted for ten episodes, but was well-regarded by critics for its offbeat humor and riffing on the conventions of comic books.
In the Hulu series, MODOK doubles as a would-be world-dominating supervillain and a family man trying to juggle his frustrations at losing control of his company with the pressures of domestic life. As voiced by Patton Oswalt, MODOK was a riff on the idea of supervillains as portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper and also a bit of a parody of a sitcom dad. He was supported by a stellar voice cast that included Aimee Garcia as Jodie Ramirez-Tarleton, his lifestyle vlogger wife, Ben Schwartz as his cheerfully clueless son Louis, and Melissa Fumero as his popular and aspiring supervillain daughter Melissa.
MODOK also featured numerous prominent guest stars, including Jon Hamm as Iron Man, Bill Hader as The Leader, and Kevin Michael Richardson as Mister Sinister. The show also included less well-known characters like the superpowered wrestler Poundcakes (Whoopi Goldberg), Chris Parnell as a bowling-themed villain named Tenpin, and Dustin Ybarra as Armadillo, an actual comics character that shows not every animal needs a super-character themed around it.
The character of MODOK was created as an antagonist for Captain America in 1967 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He was first characterized as a human man named George Tarleton that was hideously mutated and cybernetically enhanced by A.I.M. to become the entity known as Mental/Mobile/Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing (or M.O.D.O.K.). The show MODOK was not set in the official MCU canon, where A.I.M. previously appeared in Iron Man 3 as run by Guy Pearce’s villainous Aldrich Killian.
The MODOK series is the latest cancellation of Hulu’s slate of Marvel shows. Previously, Helstrom also lasted one season, while Howard the Duck and Tigra and Dazzler did not ever air. So far, only Hit-Monkey has managed to escape cancelation, though it has not officially been renewed for a second season. With Marvel Studios having fully dismantled their Marvel Television division and increasingly utilized the Disney+ streaming platform for serial content, it seems less and less likely that series like MODOK will be sticking around.
