Marvel's M.O.D.O.K.

The show is just a really solid piece of comedy, from the writing, to the animation of the toy-like characters, to the (naturally) Easter egg-filled background gags, and it shows how malleable the superhero genre is once you accept the fact that people don’t need to be carefully guided through a comic book universe anymore.

It has a consistent cleverness that makes its flaws easy to overlook, especially when the lines are delivered by such talented voice actors. It's just a fun world to hang out in with talented comedians in every scene.

Mostly, though, this is a cool-looking, cheerfully dark, oddball adult comedy with great voice work by the brilliant cast and strong writing in every episode. By the time we get to the shocking final episode of the first season, we’re already primed for more “M.O.D.O.K.”

By the middle of its 10-episode first season, the series becomes genuinely funny in its own peculiar way. Unlikable characters start to grow on you. And the insane plots, subplots and narrative issues — many of them inspired distortions of what goes on in the serious Marvel Cinematic Universe — grab one’s imagination. In other words, this one is worth watching too.

The voices and pell-mell references are the biggest reason why a 10-episode weekend binge of Marvel’s MODOK amounted to such easy, quickly digested entertainment. Whether or not you think the series wants to amount to more than that — and I feel like it really does, and perhaps someday could — depends on you.

Marvel dives big head first into the Adult Swim sandbox with "M.O.D.O.K.," a stop-motion animation series that seeks hilarity in exploring the lighter side of one of the more ridiculous denizens of the comics. While the show -- decidedly not for kids -- should amuse those steeped in comic-book trivia, the kick of doing something different is offset by the sheer weirdness of the effort.