An infamous Avengers villain gets the sitcom dad treatment
What’s a M.O.D.O.K.? Glad you asked. Introduced in 1967, M.O.D.O.K. (which has stood for a ton of different things over the years) is a long-storied Avengers villain created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He’s essentially a giant floating machine enclosed head with smaller appendages who uses mindpower, violence and rage to try to kill superheroes.
2021 brings us the titular villain as a deadbeat who has run his company into the ground, let his obsession with the Avengers consume him, and has also become a pretty lousy father. The show is 100% sitcom right down to the dad being clueless, the kids being impossible to control, and the mother seeking out her independent path in life. It’s every sitcom trope in one unapologetic offering.
The art style of M.O.D.O.K. is instantly recognizable. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios provides the stop-motion approach that they perfected while producing years of Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken. There is tons of violence and decapitation that is handled with puddles of ooze. Several characters are made out of what looks like whatever Gummi Worms are made out of.
M.O.D.O.K. is voiced by one of the lords of the nerd kingdom in Patton Oswalt. His wife Jodie is voiced by Aimee Garcia (Lucifer.) Ben Scwartz (Parks and Rec) and Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) play their kids. Early in the season, Jodie becomes a self-help guru and asks for a divorce. This lets the show handle typical family sitcom situations like shared custody and parental approval for children in a broken home.
On top of his family issues, M.O.D.O.K. has run his company bankrupt and gets bought out by GRUMBL. That deal comes with the overly positive Austin (Beck Bennett) as the liaison and new boss. M.O.D.O.K.’s failure is the topic of ridicule from his work nemesis, Monica (Wendi McLendon-Covey.) Other great voice talent on the show includes Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Jon Daly and Sam Richardson.
Another piece of absolute ridiculousness is the writers’ willingness to dig deep into the Marvel vault and pull out characters. Sure, Iron Man and Wonder Man are well known heroes, but villains like Melter, Armadillo, Fin Fang Foom, and Angar the Screamer require an obscene level of fandom or a lock-tight memory.
As a show, M.O.D.O.K. is just a weird adventure ride that sees its protagonist deal with alien dance monsters, time travel, marital woes, overly friendly side kicks, and constant failure. Oswalt delivers the perfect blend of downtrodden guy who is ready to give up and rage machine hell bent on taking over the world. It’s a sitcom for Robot Chicken fans with tons of sight gags, a great cast, strange stories and a lot of heart.
M.O.D.O.K. debuted on May 21st on Hulu and the first season contains 10 episodes.