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Heroes Cast Voices Marvel Anime, Thundercats' Snarf Voiced in Japan

At the WonderCon comics event in San Francisco on Saturday, Marvel Head of Television Jeph Loeb announced the star voice actors for two Marvel/Madhouse anime collaboration projects. Milo Ventimiglia (left) will voice Wolverine protagonist Logan, while Adrian Pasdar (right) will provide the voice for Iron Man's Tony Stark. Marvel has not announced whether Ventimiglia will voice the same character in the X-Men anime adaptation.

Ventimiglia and Pasdar are best known for their roles as super-powered brothers Peter and Nathan Petrelli in the American live-action television series Heroes. Ventimiglia also appeared on the live-action drama Gilmore Girls in the role of Jess Mariano and voiced comic book character Green Arrow in an episode of the stop-motion parody series Robot Chicken. Pasdar also has a comic book role in his credits: he played Captain America in the 2010 cartoon Black Panther.

The roles are currently performed in the American cartoon The Super Hero Squad Show by Steven Jay Blum (Logan) and Tom Kenny (Tony Stark).

In a separate development on Sunday, the producers and cast for Cartoon Network's remake of the Thundercats animated series revealed that the comic relief character Snarf will be voiced in Japan. Similar in some respects to the original 1980s animated series, the new Thundercats television series is being conceived and written in the United States and then animated in Japan.

In the panel, the producers Michael Jelenic and Ethan Spaulding, art director Dan Norton, and voice actor Larry Kenney (original Lion-O, new Claudus) said that "Snarf is still in there, and he is pretty adorable in this version." Most of the characters in the new project will be voiced by American actors, but, "we're having Snarf voiced in Japan. That's something we're going to do next week, actually."

The producers added that they chose Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet, Genius Party, parts of The Animatrix) for the project since it was the most enthusiastic of all the candidate studios they interviewed for the project.