Let’s be honest, calling the crop of Marvel cartoon in the the 1990s a shared universe isn’t quite accurate. The DC Animated Universe wasn’t all that tight a continuity, or even exist honestly, until Batman moved from Fox Kids to Kids WB to join Superman. From there a shared universe was formed along with Batman Beyond, Static Shock, and The Zeta Project, with Cartoon Network’s Justice League and Justice League Unlimited marking the end of the DCAU. Static and the residents of Dakota (the city, not the divided state) was a DC property only because of the publishing deal with Milestone Media and Zeta started off as part of a “backdoor pilot” where he met Terry’s Batman. One of the disappointing thing about the Teen Titans cartoon of that period is despite a line from Batman to Static the show we got was completely divorced from the DCAU but had the heart to win fans over anyway.
In contrast the so-called “Marvel Animated Universe” was not a shared universe at all. They shared some voice actors (and there were times when even that statement wasn’t true) but only in the same way that Transformers: Rescue Bots and Transformers: Cyberverse did, and they were two separate continuities. The closest we came is Tom Tataranowicz working on the Marvel Action Universe (the second time that was used for a syndicated programming block) and the first season of the UPN Incredible Hulk. There was no plan because Tataranowicz was the closest thing they had to Bruce Timm and he only worked on two shows, two of which were syndicated and the other on a network that wasn’t Fox Kids, who had the other Marvel shows and didn’t have Tataranowicz. (By the way, Tataranowicz has the best run on season two of Iron Man and Fantastic Four and while Incredible Hulk season two wasn’t the dumpster fire of the “Marvel Action Hour” season of Tony and the Four his absence did lead to a lesser show. Adding She-Hulk and occasionally referencing the first season was all they did right.) So can we please stop pretending there was a shared continuity in the same way the DC shows had?
That said, Fox Kids has X-Men, which was received well enough to give Marvel’s mascot flagship character at the time, Spider-Man, his own show, which was cut short thanks to the Sony deal and replaced with the sadly underappreciated Spider-Man Unlimited. They also had a Silver Surfer cartoon but I just couldn’t get into that one. They did have plans for another Marvel hero to get his own show, namely Captain America. However, after hearing Owen Likes Comics discuss what the network was going to do to the show, it might have been better off not being made…though with the current writing mentality in comics and animation it would have been the last chance to have a good Captain America show. I’ll let him explain the whole story so we’re on the same page and then go over why maybe it’s not so sad.
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