I hate to be one of those people who say “This show isn’t as good as it used to be.” It’s typical for any poser to claim that it was funnier when it was young and raw, before everyone jumped on the bandwagon. The fact that that’s occasionally somewhat true just makes it all the more annoying, because no one likes a poser (Except other posers, it’s a kind of mating call, I expect), and a poser who managed to fall ass-backwards in to being right is damn irritating.

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A Very Long Time Ago:

The Original Mandarin” has the Macluan rings, and wants to give them to his heir, but none of his own children are worthy, so he hides them all around the world along with several tests to determine if someone can be trusted with them.

About 10 Years Ago:

“Ben Ten, I have come to kill you and enslave your world. Is now a bad time?”

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We start out with a lengthy scene of combat between a slightly-redesigned Vilgax and Ultimo. They duke it out for a surprisingly long time, and then Ultimo yields and Vilgax either kills or cripples him, it’s deliberately nebulous, but whatever he did, Ultimo’s not going to shake it off any time soon. Vilgax’ lackey hooks Ultimo up to some big techmojo that gives his powers to Vilgax, who’s now hailed as “The conqueror of ten worlds.” That’s right, he’s Vilgax 10!

Welcome to what may or may not be the second season of Iron Man, Armored Adventures. This might be Episode 2, season 2, or it might just be Episode 15 of the unexpectedly long season 1. Nobody seems to care enough to post it on the ol’ interwebs, and I’m not really a Marvel guy so I don’t just intuitively know this stuff, but wherever we are, it was a pretty good episodes.

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