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As you might imagine, studios are combing their libraries to find related items to reissue to tie in with the frenzy surrounding the May 3 opening of The Avengers. Coming Tuesday are two more discs that come closest to the feature film, a sextet of Marvel Animation films in two sets. Making their Blu-ray debut, the first set is Ultimate Avengers Movie Collection which contains the two animated films based on the successful Ultimates comic, along with the bonus film Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow. The other Blu-ray set is merely dubbed Marvel Animated Features and contains Planet Hulk, Invincible Iron Man, and Doctor Strange.

Both Ultimate films pretty closely follow the initial Ultimates arcs from Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch although the script is better at aping Millar than the animation is following Hitch’s naturalistic style. A significant change is that Tony Stark’s identity remains a secret and...

Marvel and DC are both in the middle of a new movie strategy where they release animated films of some of their most popular characters direct to DVD. The two rivals have arguably been doing it for ages if you count the spin-off “movies” from their animated television series, but the last 4 years have seen a leap in activity. Have any of them topped Batman: Mask of the Phantasm? No, not really. However, each of the studios seems to be making huge strides with each successive movie. Marvel, having reached its 6 film marker (DC isn’t far behind at this point), have released them all in a box set. While it’s nice to have an anthology to put on the shelf instead of individual DVD cases, it ends up serving as a reminder of how far the films have come since the original Ultimate Avengers: The Movie back in...