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popculturebuffet · 2 months ago

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X-Month: X-Men 97 Review (Comissioned by Emma Fici)

To me my x-men and welcome back to X-Month, my look at all things of X. And we're at the biggun today as i'm finally taking a look at something i've wanted to for months: yes my mutant obessed self is finally looking at x-men 97.

So for those of you like my good friend emma who sponsored this review who only have the broad strokes of what this is or have heard the buzz but simply haven't gotten to it: X-Men 97 is a recent cartoon from disney plus, the second from Marvel Studios after What If? and the first not tied to the MCU in any way.

Instead 97 is a direct followup to X-Men, aka X-Men the Animated Series a long running series that not only , along with Batman the Animated Series, helped show what animation could achive after years of censorship, telling more nuanced stories that appealed to all ages and is one of the major things that's defined the x-men in pop culture, the movies being the other.

It was also the first X-Men cartoon in a decade, following Wolverine and the X-Men, as marvel studios head Ike Pearlmutter put a ban on using the Fantastic Four or X-Men as they didn't own them, and tried to actively kill them in the comics. I kid... only the X-men were attempted murdered by a cloud of gas that killed them. The FF were simply disbanded. So naturally after a decade of my faviorite team not being able to show up, my reaction to a brand new cartoon starring them was a resounding...

While I watched the cartoon ocasionally as a kid, what really got me into the X-Men was a mix of the movies and x-men evolution. I didn't hate the cartoon, evne watched some in college but it just didn't grab me and as my attitude towards x-men went from something I really liked to

I just never got into it heavily when 97 was being rolled out. I would've preferred a fresh cartoon doing something with the decades of material since instead of what I felt was a nostalgia cashgrab for a show I had a petty grudge against for getting all this attention from marvel. It got articles, it's being added to D+ was a big deal and the icons for the x-men on D+ are based on the jim lee designs used in the show. I did try the show again and enjoyed what I saw, watching most of seasons 1 and 2 but simply never got what the hype was about. It didn't help that 97 was seemingly being buried by marvel: little info came out, the character designs looked fine but not all that impressive. It semeed like it'd be like the Animaniacs revival and ones like it: A fairly limp continuation that just sorta did the same stuff but with a modern production style.

So....

As the show got close earlier this year, I got excited: The trailer looked slick, using 3d models but with painted to fit the original's style, had gorgeous looking animation and had Wolveirne and Gambit doing a combo move which you lovely people dubbed Cut the Deck.

So shortly before the premire because I procastinate, I rewatched the original... and I thorughly enjoyed it. The show isn't perfect, having to make concesions for it's saturday morning time slot and with it's animation being rigid in people. Yet the talented cast and crew were able to distill the x-men down into what made them work, taking the bulk of Chris CLaremont's decade long run that defined it, a bit of what was going on at the time, and some of the stuff before and make a true masterpiece. It Streamlined decades of comics into a fun, frentic show that was a joy to watch. I watched Seasons 1 and 2 again then realizing time was running out watched what episodes I thought would be key to the show or just wanted to watch, as well as a few after. While there's still a handful I haven't finished, I can safely say the bulk of the show slaps and is worth your time.

This hyped me up even more.. and while I have more thoughts as to why, X-Men 97 is one of the best reboots i've seen: it continues the original story, but in a way that's both acccesible to new fans (both of x-men in general and of this continuity in paticular), and fresh, using the old astetics, but now targeting an older audience, can get away with a lot the original couldn't: blood and sex are heavily implied, and a decent chunk of characters die including one of our leads. IT's a show tha'ts mature in the way tha tshould be, using being adult animation to tell darker stories without loosing the fun and camp that makes superheroes great. In short it's the best of the four x-men cartoons. In long.. well join me under the cut for a deep dive into one of the best shows of the year.

Re-Buliding the Danger Room: X-Men 97 as mentioned is one of Marvel Studio's first cartoons and was what Disney wanted from the get go, clearly wanting to grab some of that nostlagia dollar they love so dearly. They eventually tapped Beau DeMayo who'd written for Moon Knight, along with the Witcher, been story editor for the Originals and written the witcher film Nightmare of the Wolf. DeMayo was fully qualified for the job and being a huge fan of the original lept to it with vigor, bringing in producers Julia and Eric Lewald and Larry Huston from the original.

DeMayo and his top notch crew made sure to honor the original and in casting tried to get back as many of the original cast as possible: Allison Sealy-Smith, Lenore Zahn, Cal Dodd, Cristopher Britton, George Bauza and Adrian Hough all retuned as Storm, Rogue, Wolverine, Mr Sinister , Beast and Nightcrawler, and while they weren't cast as their original parts as Jubilee, Gambit, Jean, Cable, Morph they still made sure there were roles for Allyson Court, Chris Potter, Cathryne Disher, Laurence Bayne and Ron Rubin, witht hem now playing Abyscissa, Jubilee's older alternate cocunterpart, Cable, Valirie Cooper, The X-Cutioner and Senator Kelly. Some were to match the characters: Court willingly stepped down in an awesome move so someone who was actually chinsese could play Jubilee, leading to Holly Chou's casting, while Morph, now fully seen as nonbinary, was given to NB actor J.P. Karlak. Cable as you can tell swapped to Chris Potter, Jean went to vetran voice actor and vetran jean grey from Wolverine and the X-Men Jennifer Hale, and Gambit to A.J. Locosto. Charles Xavier's former va Cedric Smith is replaced by invincible's Ross Maruqad and the late Norm Spencer and Dave Hemblen are replaced as Cyclops and Magneto by Ray Chase and Matthew Waterson. There are a LOT more swap outs as the series uses a more modern la based voiced cast for the most part, so i'm only sticking to these as X-Men in general has a lot of characters and 97 packs in as many as possible in big and small roles.

There isn't a ton of behind the scenes: I've got some bits and bobs from the various voice actors, some of which i'll sprinkle in later, and the crew, but marvel's documentary on the series primarily focused on the fact actors came back and the production of the original show. Yet they left out the part where Stan Lee was convinced by execs that a show about Xavier and Cyclops going around in a van solving mutant mysteries was the best route to go.

I don't have time to unpack that or the really intresting history behind the original show, but I highly recommend the art of book.

Anyways the main reason for this is one ya'll probably know but needs bringing up thanks to recent allegations: Beau DeMayo, the showrunner and while not the only creative force, i've been trying to retrain myself that a shows creator isn't the only one making this stuff and a lot of great writers and animators are just as responsible, he was still one of the major ones, writing all 10 episodes, showrunning things and clearly steering the direction the show went in. And.. he was fired one week before the show aired.

Disney Sucks Suprising No One

Disney, as usual was vauge about it, with DeMayo himself playing quiet. The most he spoke up was after episdoe 5 , Remember It, to provide some context as to why the episode played out the way it did and what the goal of the show was from his initial pitch, something i'll save for when we get there. Disney apparently didn't like this and stripped his credits for season 2, which he'd already written all of when he was fired. They also barred him from the Emmy's after Remember It was nominated.

Disney CLAIMS it was sexual harassment while DeMayo called bullshit, saying Disney made things hostile and wasn't happy he was a black gay man who wasn't demphasising his queerness, having an only fans and dressing as cyclops. They also apparently didn't like he wanted to adapt stories outright which I don't get but given marvel hasn't been doing that as often, makes sense.

Now as for which side I belviie.. it's Beau. And i'ts not because I like the show: Warren Ellis and Joss WHedon both wrote things I loved and I cut myself off from their work as soon as I learned who they really were this whole time. But Demayo... seems like he's simply outspokenly queer and horny as fuck, which as an adult man is his right. Disney has a history of soft homophobia, trying to quitely cancel the owl house, which backfired horribly, supporting anti gay legslation and generally not allowing protaganists in their shows to be openly gay. They've failed as all it's done is make the bulk of their leads bisexual, which is fantastic as we needed more bi rep anyway, but their history leans towards them being full of shit. Not only that as my good friend Marco pointed out when we talked about this.. Disney waited a LONNNNG time to make these allegations without any proof. So either they covered up sexual harassment to cover their own asses and only revealed it when they were being sued for being shitty, or they tried to remove a queer man's credits for not being their token black stamp of approval like they wanted (Demayo's words) or toning down his queerness and then having the "gall" to actually talk about a show he wrote in a way that didn't disparage the company or reveal why he was fired. Disney did all this because DeMayo talked about the show and had him sign a nda that apparently told him he coudln't that's HIGHLY illegal. Ther'es nothing about Disney's defense that isn't shady as fuck and filmsy as hell and I hope they get sued. The fact their legal team, probably the same one that advised this tactic, tried claming a man couldn't sue for wrongful death over his wife dying of allergies because he signed up for disney+ maybe a week or two before all this dosen't help.

So yeah tldr version: Beau Demayo was most likely wrongfully terminated and Disney once again is trying to screw over a queer creator. Fuck em. Now with that elephant shooed out of the room we can get to the actual series.

Kinetic Strut

While the show keeps the designs and astetic of the original to a point, 97 has style of it's own and i'ts pretty good. I was a bit antsy when I first saw the art style in stills and productoin deisgn, cg puppets instead of traditional animation. I'm not against 3d animation as it can be really gorgeous and sometimes fits better. Fellow reboot that slaps Fairly Odd Parents: A New Wish uses a style similar to the peanuts movie, cgi models but used to mimick stop motion and it rocks. But this style felt cheap.

As it turns out while budget was why they did this it was for good budget reasons: with not the biggest budget it was easier to do action in this style than try to do hand drawn again, while also still keeping the astetic consitant enough to feel like a sequel to the original.

And this pays off: There are moments here or there where the animation feels stiff during dialouge.. but there drops in the bucket of an expressive show and allow the show to just pile on the action set pieces. In the first ep alone we get cyclops using his powers as a parachute, storm turning a desert to glass and using it to shred sentinels into fine pieces, beast hyjacking a sentienel, and our final circut: Gambit charging wolverin'es claws, Logan then bouncing off Morph transfrormed into the blob lik ea trampoline to destroy master mold. And that's just episode 1.

The show delights in letting the mutants really flex, something budget and groundendess only let the films do once or twice, to show just what their capable of. Magneto lifts a giant chunk of the UN into the air to make a point, then tops himself later with a massive emp that's given the scope it deserves, Madline Pryor shows just how deadly her/jeans powers could be by filling Magneto with pieces of a stain glass window, Jean herself later getting to use a whole bowling alley as a weapon, Jubille's future self shows her colorful deadly pinwheels, Rogue gets to go sickhouse on the military using every move from marvel vs capcom she has and we see inside nightcrawlers teleport. It's not all but damn if the show dosen't make our heroes look good, every last one getting a showcase of just what they can do. Morph in paticular gets a fun new gimmick of changing into past characters: While I do wish we saw some of these characters, paticuarlly Magik, in the actual flesh it's a fun way to amp up his moveset and make fighting with him more than pretending to be a mook but suprise he wasn't.

97 has a kintetic strut, a term x-men writer grant morrison used to describe what they wanted for their book new x-men when pitching it. A sense of style that's gorgoeus to watch, fun to have and shows off the characters personalities. Even if not everyone gets a major plot this season, everyone gets to show off and it is glorious.

This applies to the writing too: the show leans into it's comic roots, and rather than try to downplay the goofiness, reminds us why we love it: the costumes are kept as they were (Though we may be getting the New X-Men costumes next season), Things are taken seriously, yet there's still plenty of character based humor, my faviorite being in the second episode, Mutant Liberation Begins when a very Pregnant Maddie/Jean says "it's coming", wolverine gets ready for an attack and then has to be told "The baby you idiot" while he has the most "oh fuck bub" expression on his face. There isn't a ton of humor and it's sparse in the second half as the stakes go all the way up, but it provides nice breaks from the dramatic soap opera that's going on.

So with the shows style out of the way, what's in it. Well before I can tell you that story, I have to cover the original a bit. I won't be recapping every single episode as not every episode is relevant to this show and it's , while a great show, not the one I came here to talk about. If there's intrest, and let me know in the comments, i'd be happy to another day. But for now i'ts just the easiest way to get some informatoin out that's important in 97 so I don't have to say "in the original series" every five sentences.

So...

Previously On X-Men: It's the early 90's and mankind is dealing with their next evolution: Mutants, people who usually at puberty gain super powers ranging from looking like a mole man to "being able to shut down all power on earth when they have a bad enough day". Naturally humanity is handeling this calm, rationally and of course, forming angry racist mobs of frothing bigots.

In this frought time enters the X-Men. They are:

Charles Xavier: Omega Level Telepath, meaning he has no upper limit. The founder of the team. Has less of an accidental god complex here, instead being a kind mentor who took in several mutants with nowhere to go. He can be stern and hard to move but is beloved by most of his students.

Cyclops: OPTIC BLAST! A stoic man raised by xavier to be his perfect soldier and to have a titanium rod jammed up his ass. A good tactician but hard to open up emotoinally. Said Jean a LOT

Jean Grey: Said jean. World class telepath and telkenetic.. in the revivial. In the original she was a decent telepath but mostly got knocked around a lot and got her name said a lot.

Wolverine: The best at what he does. Healing factor, adamantium skeleton given to him by a sketchy program of the canadian goverment, and a bad attitude. Wasn't aloud to drink, smoke or murder but still got the point across that he probably did those things off screen. Bad tempered, impulsive and ready to ride scott's ass at any moment. Metaphorically and literally as the sexual tension is palpable. Has a deep crush on Jean he never fully let go. Got a lot of screen time because

Rogue: A southren belle with the power to steal memory and powers from whoever she touches. Naturally this leaves her desperately wanting a cure or workaround, but spends the rest of her time as a sassy badass. She was once a supervillian, adopted by super terriorist Mystique after she traumatically sent her first kiss into a coma and was thrown out by her dad. Mystique.. wasn't much better, not helped by the fact her wife wasn't allowed to be in the show because lesbians, a ruthless monster in this continuity who gleefully used Rogue to steal the powers of superhero Ms Marvel (Carol Danvers), leaving Rogue stuck with the woman in her head. Charles did his best to partion carol off and try to help both women. She's fun loving, badass and the best.

Gambit: A cajun who can charge any object to blow up real good. A red eyed ladies man who constantly hits on Rogue who turns him down, but is clearly intrested because it was the 90s, though he has no trouble getting women. He has a shadowy past, having worked for a guild of theives and had to run out on his wedding, among other stuff we haven't gotten to, and is cagey about it but loyal to the dream and his new family. He may be snarky as hell and the second most likely to rebel behind logan but he will be there when you need him.

Storm: Has power over the weather and can do pretty much anything with it and knows it. Keeps her emotoins mostly in check as them going out of control could destroy everything around her, but is kind and empathtic. The series didn't do a ton with her apart from a few two parters, but she was memorable and unlike the comics hammy as hell. Allison Court could really belt it out and still can .

Beast: A blue beast man whose attempt to cure his mutation made him into the furry we all know and love. THe face of a hulking brute, the mind of a scholar, Beast has never met a quote he can't blurt out or a villian he can't face kick. He was intended to just be a one and done for season 1, an x-man to get captured and be the center of a trial subplot in season 1. Instead his peformace, general dmeanor and everything was so awesome he was kept on as a main character for the rest of the show.

Jubillee: A feisty teen with the power to make colorful explosions. She joins in the pilot for reasons we'll get to, and due to her birth parents being dead and her step parents being not all that great, she comes to see the x-men as her family. Tends ot get sidelined at times, and is the only one Wolverine really seems to like in the main cast.

Season 1 is seralized, something Fox put a stop to as episodes sometimes woudln't come back on time so the story got scrambled. The season largely deals with the Mutant Control Agency, a goverment subsided group of assholes that ask people to report mutants to them then send giant mutant hunting robots named sentinels to capture and imprison them. Their ran by Henry Peter Gyrinch, a bigoted asshole who was a bigoted pain in the Avengers side in the comics before graduating to running the anti-mutant project wideawake. So really 10/10 nailed it. He is the worst and works with bolivar trask, an inventor who created the sentinels.

The MCA picks up Jubilee because her stepfather dosen't know how to handle her powers and thought this was remotely okay. Her step mom at least is rightfully pissed. Jubes runs away, gets attacked by sentinels and later picked up with them and we get a great excahnge that sums up both series well

Jubille: What'd I eve rdo to you? Gyrinch: you were born.

It's the core of the x-men and why I tilted my head at so many chuds saying "X-MEN WOKE NOW". X-men always was, I won't spend forever debating the obvious, but it was. Last year I covered a storyline where the x-men fought a televangilist and his secret assasians who then tried to shoot them on live television. This isn't new. Not to this series, not to this franchise, fuck off good sir fuck off.

The X-Men meanwhile break into the MCA as they realize both how dangerous they are and how their using the records. This.. dosen't go well. While they do destroy the print records, Beast gets left behind while destroying the digtial ones, and the x-men are attacked by sentinels.. and forced to abandon another. See the pilot added one more member, Morph, a loveable jokester Wolverine was close with who could shapeshift.. and who seemingly died. They were left behind and Wolverine was left devistated. This was meant to mimic the death of thunderbird early in chirs claremonts run, changed to a white guy as executives rightfullyr ealized "maybe having the only native member of the team killed is.. fucking awful?". It was done for the same reason: to raise the stakes and give the illusion anyone on the tam could also go. morph ended up super well loved though and thus lived on. We'll get to that.

For now the X-Men save jubes and bust up the sentinels and the goverment pulls out.. but senator kelly, an anti mutant politican, plans to run for president. Later in the season Gambit, Jubilee and Storm go for a vacation in Genosha, a seemingly welcoming island to mutants.. that instead uses them for slave labors using power nullifying collars. These collars are a neat horrifying addition that are only found in x-men the animated series. Anyways, turns out Genosha also has sentinels, but thankfully our heroes are able to break out thanks to Cable, a freedom fighter from the future whose in the past for reasons that will never be explained as his backstory in the comics was finally flehsed out between seaosns so they just went with that. So he's from the future now.

Things come to the head when Mystique attempts to kill senator kelly. Thankfully our heroes are tipped off about it from Bishop, a man from a dystopian future ruled by the sentinels who took way too long to realize their the baddies and with help from Forge, a mutant who can make any invention he can think of, comes back to our time. Bishop would return a few times to help our heroes, almost causing an apocalypse till cable sets him right in the stellar "Time Fugitives" two parter, and going from an uneasy ally of the x-men to one of of their closest.

Sadly this dosen't stop Senator Kelly whose more radicalized than ever, and is easily recurited by Trask. Unforutnately for Kelly turns out the Sentinels evolved a mind of their own, with master mold realizing the obvious thing Trask and Gyrinch couldn't: Mutants.. are still human. Granted they decide to do this by conquering humanity by replacing their elected officals with robots

But the x-men save them and Kelly is an ally of there's for the rest of the series and the only one of his incarnations I can think of that really gets to reform and not die for it. Granted he'll make some huge mistkaes in 97 but for the rest of TAS he's a staunch ally of our heroes if only seen occasionally. His biggest role was exonerating beast.

During the season the x-men would also encounter a nother major player for this series and the next and my faviorite Mutant, Magneto, master of magnet. He tried to free beast during his incarceration but Beast refused wanting his day in court and soon fought the x-men. For the rest of the series he's more of a wild card: He will fight the x-men but usually for some good reason or what he thinks is a good reason. Magneto fights to secure a future for his people like the x-men do, but knows sometimes the peaceful route may not be the most paltable. That isn't to say he dosen't make mistakes ,he tries to hyjack a nuclear plant early on and has a habit of trusting the wrong people in some of his later ventures we'll get to, but he's for the most part a noble man.

The other major threat is Apocalypse, Mystiques boss in this incarnation and rather than a social darwanist, he's an immortal monster planning to conquer earth. He's hammy, terrifying and hard to put down adn it takes four seasons for our heroes to finally beat him, the x-men only surviving one encounter because Cable went back to save them. They finally seemingly beat him in the massive intended series finale beyond good and evil, only for him to use the body of greasy buttcrack pooflap fabian cortez to escape death. He'll.. be back but won't appear in the main story of this season.

So with season 2 our heroes get two more big bads to tussle with. The first is Mr Sinsiter, a creepy genetscit from the 18th centruy who hoped to help his wife life.. and she did.. but at a cost and at the cost of several mutants lives. Sinister went from a man who genuinely had good intentions if horrifying methods and was shuned by society as a charlatin, to a horrifying monster who wanted to perfect mutantkind no matter the cost. Our heroes fought him primarily in season 2, as he lured Xavier and Magneto away to the savage land, a patch of anartica that still has dinosaurs and also some mutants magneto made out of the natives there that still hasn't been properly explained. In the comics he just wanted more minons because prior to the 80's magneto was a pretty standard mustache twirling super villian and it was adapted here because

While Xavier and Magneto have a savage land vacation, Sinister sends a devistating weapon against our x-men: Morph. Brainwashed by sinister, Morphs resetmment over seemingly being left for dead and rescued by sinister is amplified and he nearly destroys the x-men. He also fake marries scott and jean. They get married for realizes a few season later. I assume it was a network thing who knows.

The x-men are able to stop him, and he runs away. They eventually are lured to the arctic by sinister at the end of the season and despite being stripped of their powers at first eventually win. MOrph however decides to stay away out of guilt. He eventually doe smostly recover with the help of dr moria mactaggert but after an encounter by a leftover master mold that isn't remotely explained in this series but 97 reveals trask and gyrinch built backups, realizes he's not ready and stays away again till the finale.

The other big bad for season 2 is Graydon Creed head of the friends of humanity, a group of bigots who in the comics lasted about a few years but here become a major thorn in the heroes side for a season. Our heroes CAN punch them but it dosen't quite solve the issue and Graydon is clever using fake mutant attacks, doctored footage and other creepily realistic tactics. Their eventually beaten down for now when it's revealed Graydon himself.. is the son of a mutant, Wolverine's arch enemy sabertooth, distablising the movement when he has a breakdown just seeing a hologram of the guy.

Season 3 is mostly taken up by two big five part serials adapting two of the x-men's biggest stories: The Phoenix Saga and the Dark Phoenix Saga

The Phoenix Saga has the x-men forced to hyjack a space craft to save it from Eric the Red, a mysterious alien meance who stalks the team. They save it.. but Jean's forced to nearly sacrifice herlsef to shield them from the cosmic rays on the way home. She gets contacted by Phoenix, in this continuity a powerful entity and guardian of reality itself and specifically the M'Kran Crystal, a powerful gem that can alter reality and that the emproror of the massive shiar empire D'Ken plans to use to become a god.

To stop him his sister Lilandra has been telepahticly dming xavier and he likes what he hears. She quickly gets kidnapped by the Juggernaut bitch and after dealing with him the x-men head into space and battle a legally distinct version of the legion of superheroes before defeating D'Ken. Along the way Scott meets his daddy guy: he'd assumed he was orphaned but instead his dad had been stranded in space, his mom had been killed and daddy instead became space pirate corsair. Whiel the two roughlyr econciled, it left Scott with a LOT of abandoment issues that will be important soon.

For the Dark Phoenix Saga phoenix did her job.. but won't leave jean, wanting to experince everything.. and leading her into the clutches of the hellfire club, called the inner circle here but since we're not having to get past fox censors hellfire club it is. They plan to add jean to their membership, but instead their member masterminds manipulations cause phoenix to go insane and take out an uninhabited, in this continuity, solar system. Lilandra comes to kill her before that happens again, the x-men end up fighting her in a trial by combat, and phoenix sacrifies herself for jean.

Season 4 is, thankfully mostly one offs but a few important events happen: The biggest involve our boy magneto: Magneto goes absolutely through it this season. He first decides

And creates a giant asteroid, asteroid m for everyone to live on inviting all mutants. The goverment is dicey about this while mutantkind is ready to pack up and get the fuck out of a world that hates and fears them. He goes the extra mile and frees Genosha something the x-men honestly should've worked on sooner. In the comics at least they simply didn't have the resources when they first found out and had a possible legal avenue to beat them theyw ere waiting on. Then when captured.. simply tore up the place because at that point why not. Here it smacks of the writers genuinely forgot it existed till this two parter.

Sadly the dream dies as one of his liteutants is greasy buttcrack pooflap fabian cortez, who betrays him and tries to conquer earth. This gets the asteroid shot down and the dream dies.

And because God somehow hadn't kicked Erik in the crotch enough what with surviving the holocaust, loosing his wife, loosing his utopia and mankinds general pettiness, he finds out his deceased wife fled because she was scared of him.. while pregannt with his two kids, The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. And neither want anything to do with him when they find out.

So while Magneto gets ready for depression, Bishop prevents a dystopian alternate timeline where xavier was killed with the help of wolverine and storm from an alternate timeline. There 50's trip leaves a sliver of nimrod, a powerful sentinel with a less than ideal name, which will again be important later.

The X-Men also make a lifelong friend this season: Nightcrawler. While on a ski vacation, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit and Jubilee end up at a nearbye monistary after hearing reports of a monster, figuring there was a mutant in distress. It's there they meet one of my faviorite mutants Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler, a former circus star who found home and peace in religion and is a kind, thoughtful man. Despite Wolverine's doubts and issues with religion, he quickly befriends kurt, helps defend him from a racist and in general the two hit it off.

He soon finds another connection in Rogue in his next and final apperance for this series: Bloodlines. It's there his tangly family tree from the comics is laid out: he's the son of mystique and a baron of some sort, though we can probably saftely say like the current comics it might actually be destiny and mystique herself, be gay do crimes incarnate and something we'll get to later this month. She is however bi and had Graydon with sabertooth so being a racist and in hot water with his hate group, Graydon tries to kill his whole family. Heartbreakingly kurt genuinely TRIES to reach Graydon but can't get past his hatred and bigotry and leaves him to his fate.. left on Sabertooth's porch. Somehow he survivies this. The upside though is Rogue gladly embraces her new stepbrother and vice versa something the show didn't have time or budget to do more with but 97 will.

Finally the x-men invade a goverment base because one of there x members girlfriend joined a goverment team of mutants, x-factor and instead of calling him or anything left making it look like the kidnapped her. The important part is that X-Factor is, as it was at the time in the ocmics, headed by Forge's present day counterpart who will be important in the next show.

Season 5, the final season, is thankfully short, only 13 episodes they weren't expecting, so there's only a few episodes I haven't touched on of importance. We find out captain america met wolverine once and has returned from the time vortex he was stuck in in spider-man the animated series.

More importantly, Magneto is depresed: The failure of his utopia, his kids not wanting to talk to him and presumibly the shame of having trusted apocalypse for more than one second have left him out of it. It's only when Beast comes for help with an alien invasion that already got the rest of the x-men and pietro that he agrees to help. And doing so nets him someKarma as while it sadly dosen't come up in 97, Pietro warmly acccepts his dad back.

The final episode, and thankful end of this recap, comes to us with Graduation Day: Xavier is doing a confrence for mutants when an off model Gyrinch shows up and shoots him with a weapon intended to kill mutants. It both outs charles to the world, only 5 years before he'd be outed as a mutant in the comics, and leaves him on deaths door. The X-Men try to contact the shiar but are having trouble with that. Morph returns to play charles to help but his possible death has lead tensions to boil over worldwide. In this chaos a bunch of mutants beg magneto to lead them and while with his past failures in mind he rejects them at first.. he can't turn his people away.

Eventually the x-men find a solution but it's going to be a hard sell: Magneto MIGHT be able to keep charles alive long enough but he has to abandon his army, his finally getting what he watns. And unsuprisingly for the love of his life.. he does. He leaves to save chaarles and the shiar are able to save him. Charles gives each x-man some tender parting words and departs with his space girlfriend to hopefully not die, his fate left ambigious.

So that's where we left off: Charles is in space and thought dead to the world, Magneto is in a less nefarious place but still himself and Morph has rejoind the team. So ... one year later... and a bunch more in real time...

New Episodes, New Era

We can finally talk about the plot of 97 which thankfully won't take as long before I can dive into the show proper.

97 begins one year after the finale and a few things ahve changed: Morph has switched from his old design, a generic white guy, to a new one, a pale mostly featureless face that debuted in age of apocalypse and was used for the longrunning alternate universe series exiles version of the character, who combined the two to create something awesome.

The bigger change is Jean is pregnant, with a lot of tension coming from Charles death and Cyclops riding everyone even harder than usual.

The series properly kicks off with the rescue of Roberto DeCosta, one of my faviorite mutants making his debut to this continuity, a spoiled rich kid who dosen't comprehend racists don't want his money and whose saved by the x-men. He's hiding his gift because he assumes his parents will reject him but ends up hanging around the mansion occasoinaly as he finds Jubilee super hot.

His captors are the friends of humanity who now have access to both the nullifer collars and power gloves based on sentinel tech, their so bad. Jean invades Gyrinch's mind to get info after he naturaly refuses to cooperate and gets both some haunting foresahdwoing for what's to come and a location for Trask. After a dope as hell fight, the x-men beat trask, solidfiying their partnership with UN Head and xavier ally we're just learning about now Valarie Cooper. In the comics val was a goverment liason, intitally working on project wideawake and with myistques team , who sold out to the goverment as freedom force. When that failed she became head of x-factor and is pretty neat all things considered.

Cyke and jean prepare to leave the x-men, to wolverine's disgust and jubilee's worry.. but this gets put on hold when the x-men get an univited guest: Magneto who got sent a copy of Charles last will and testemant:

"Everything he built now belongs to me"

Foxy Grandpa does do his best to take the role seriously: While he's still himself, battering some friends of humanity who captured the x-mens sewer pals the morlocks (they refused the x-mens offer to live at the insittute), but not killing a one, and being arrogant as hell just kinda.. assumign the x-men should accept him after fighting them once or twice, he does try, getting the morlocks sent to genosha which is close to getting recognized as a nation state again and is now ran by mutants. Cyclops is grumpy about both his dad seemingly not trusting him and this whole thing and refuses to leave right away.

This is good timing as the UN arrive to arrest magneto. He willingly complies and most of the x-men go to his trial. His trial.. then gets january 6thed.. not even subtly as they plan to kill the un court for even giving him a trial. Magneto was doing well mind as he pointed out he never acted in outright agression only in defense of his poeple. The x-men fight this but have to face the x-cutioner, a foh member who put on a costume and rants about how "MUTANTS COMPLAIN ALL THE TIME BUT YOU DON'T HERE ME WHINING. YOUR SO WHINY. SO WHAT IF WE TRIED TO KILL YOU STOP WHINING"

Thankfully morph shuts him up but Rogue and Cyclops have to leave as the doctor as jeans in labor and Rogue has to do it since the doctor is an idiot and won't treat her. While it's because of her powers... she could do a LOT more damage not sedated and in a lobby than she could do in an operating room you ass.

The baby, little Nathan Charles Summers, comes out just fine.. but the UN Meeting ends badly. Trying to protect him storm dives infront of X-Cutioners gun, a special one he made using the collars.. that removes her powers. This pisses off Magneto entirely and he lifts the un court and the asshole into the air, making a damn good speech

Bigot, ingrate, sycophant, worm. So small I could smite you with a step. (he holds his boot over the X-Cutioner's face) There was a time I would smite you all for what was done to Storm. (pulls his foot back) But today, I have saved you from your own, for an old friend has challenged me to remember this view of Earth. How vast it is versus how small we make it. Charles Xavier entrusted me with his dream, and it does not ask you to love or embrace my kind as your own, but merely to accept that this is a shared world with a common future, and that my kind, like yours, have the right to live in it. I am trying to be better. Please...do not make me let you down...

Sadly they will.. but for now he's exonerated and Cyclops plans to leave, live a normal life trusting the x-men to Magneto. Storm also decides to leave, leaving only a note for Jean. With no clear way to get her powers back and no idea who she is anymore, Ororo leaves. And her timing couldn't be worse as on the x-mens doorstep.. another jean arrives.

Turns out this is the REAL jean. The Jean we've been following is a clone, later called Madlyn Pryor who comics fans saw a coming as she got an action figure. The x-men.. are dicks about this all backing away and not getting that maybe Maddie didn't know she was a clone and Scott's refusal to help her just causes her to storm off. Beast finds out too late who made Maddie: Mr Sinister, who quickly hyjacks her and has her turn the place into a murder house, a nice workaround to adpating the inferno storyline. I"ll talk more about how this series adapted various stories in a bit. For now it's a smokescreen to take baby Nathan who Mr Sinister pumps full of a technoorganic virus to make him indestructable. They follow and have a fight with maddie that's cinematic as hell but goes poorly for them as unlike jean she isn't holding back. Jean however wakes up and visits her soul sister, who has all her memories, and convinces her to back down. They save nathan but sadly in saving him he's stuck with the virus killing him as Sinister leaves.

Thankfully Bishop's been here the whole time. I haven't mentioned it as they never reallye xplain why he's staraneded in the past, when he joined, or any of that and he dosen't really contribute to the plot outside this episode. HIs time jump can take the two of them.. but just them and only one way. Cyclops refuses not wanting ot turn out like his dad... but like his dad has no real say in it and Maddie says goodbye to her son as he flies into the future. She leaves to go find herself and the x-men are left pretty torn up.

So next episode, we'll get to this ones stinger in a moment, is a two in one, two 11 minute episodes, as Jubilee turns 18.. and is bummed by both all the change going on and Magneto refusing to let her celebrate. She gets sucked into a video game by Mojo, a grogesque blob of a man whose naturally a network executive who fought the x-men twice before and wants to make jubes a star. The episode is a fun breezy break between two pretty heavy episodes, and mostly serves to let Jubes realize she dosen't need to fear change after meeting her beta test version, absycca, voiced by he roriginal va. She and sunspot also kiss and likely do much much more.

So leaving the lovebirds alone, we go to a diffrent pair of them: at the end of the previous episode Forge found storm and offered to restore her powers, leading into Lifedeath, an adaptation of the same story from the comics. The two work on it with their efforts seemingly not working.. but the two get along quite well, horse riding and other stuff. We also get to know Forge better: he was an inventor, worked with the goverment, is chynene, and we even get to know his name. We also get his name later, Daniel Lone Eagle, which somehow is the first time he's had a non code name in the history of the character and is one Chris Claremont came up with but never used. Nice.

That goverment past bites him as he eventually reveals the truth to a horrified Storm: he created the neturalizer tech: he quit over it, not wanting to do more and sought her out. Naturally she's pissed the man she's slowly fell in love with lied to her and tries to flee.. but instead encounters a demon. Which is normal for the x-men in the comics but a complete 180 here. We'll get back to this.

So we've come to the gamechanger for the series: Remember It. Most of the episode plays out normally as Gambit Rogue and Mags head to genosha now a mutant paradise resembling krakoa from the comics: a council of familiar faces running it (Former enemies sebastian shaw and emma frost from the hellfire club and longtime allies Moria Mactagert, her boyfriend Banshee , Maddie and Nightcrawler), propserity and music all around. Rogue is enchanted while Gambit is mor esupscious of the hiked prices.

But bigger thigns errupt: a love triangle has grown between the three as Rogue used to date magneto and is tempted to go back to him while Gambit has been buthurt about their attractoin and apparently private time all season. This comes to a head as Magneto is offered a seat at the table by the council: he's a big deal, has made more peaceful strides lately, and all of mutantkind respects him. He agrees.. but wants Rogue to be his queen. an offer she's considering turning down based on how creepy it is, but he makes a solid offer not just to get in her pants but in wanting her in this role.

Gambit and Rogue have things out over it, and Rogue seemingly chooses erik. Their not the only ones having relationship drama as we see Cyclops have a psychic convo with Maddie... only for themt o make out and Jean to interrupt. Whoops. Yeah Jean is insecnsed Cyclops was making out with, and these are her exact words "My clone"

I mean she's not wrong to be hurt but she not only nearly made out with logan before this, having experinced HOW rich his feelings where when she woke up, but Scott points out he and Maddy did share a child and othe rexperinces. He could've.. not gotten implicitly back together with Jean but still. Point is everybody done fucked up.

So far so normal x drama.. until they have a gala. Rogue and Magneto have an erotic dance, Gambit perpares to leave and maddie goes outside to find Cable, screaming for her to run and being pulled back by time before he can do anything. She realizes he's nathan.

And then.. dies in a flash of bright light. The Sentinels have arrived, specifically a massive three headed tri sentinel spitting out more. Mutants die left and right as our x-men and those aroudn them try their damndest once they come to. IN a blink of an eye the world changes: Genosha is left destroyed, thousands die including named characters with Maddie, Sebastian Shaw and Banshee all biting it and Archangel and others left with an uncertain fate. It's a true nightmare , modeling itlsef afte rthe feelings Beau Demayo had after 9/11 and the pulse nightclub shootings. I'll dive into it more in a bit, but needless to say it's horrifying to watch, you canot turn away and this episode got an emmy for a reason.

In the melee, Magneto tries his best even whipping a sentinel with a bullet train, so badass but seemingly dies protecting the morlocks. With our heroes beaten and more to die Gambit gets kidnapped by one which jams some rebarr in him. With one final push of all he has left Gambit lights the thing up... and gives his last words, quitely, cooly and definatly

"The Names Gambit, Remember It"

The Sentinel explodes.. and Remy is left dead, Rogue devistated after realizing who she wanted all too late. The x-men have lost a member, mutantkind has lost a home and things will never be the same.

This was the intention: the first half is more buisness as usual but still updated and slick.. and the second... changes everything in a way there's no going back from, largely being one contiained story.

Before we tackle that though back to Storm, who we'll tackle first as Lifedeath Part 2 deals with her and another face who left the x-men. The Demon is the adversary. In the comic, he's an ancient evil trickster god. Here she's a less impressive but still terrifying and memorable demon who feeds on fear. She reveals part of why Storm's powers haven't kicked back in is fear: fear of being a mutant again, her secret hope of WANTING ot be normal. Storm must face these fears, going into a damp tunnel to save a poisoned forge facing advesary. Storm beats it as she would: by admitting to hserlf she did want to be human and escape, accepting her mutant side for what it is and that she can't repress it and frying the bitch, escaping, saving Forge and forgiving him, dawning her first and one of her most iconci outfits in the process.. and growing her hair back because she can do that now. She and forge plan to take a vacation still, since while Storm is an x-man... she could use the break with her new beau. It's then.. she gets news of Genosha.. and everything's shattered. her family needs her and Forge is right with her. This story was taking place right after Remember It For most of the time.

So winding back the b story for this episode follows Charles.. as he's abrubtly revealed to be alive in space. Now to me whose familiar with the comics, this is just tuesday. But to many a casual fan, including my friend Jess I watched this with, they were thrown off and understandably so. The series acts like charles is dead up to this point, that maybe the shiar stuff didn't work and never mentions the shiar. THere's no hint to this so it feels out of nowhere.

Thankfully the story itself is decent: Lilandra wants to make Charles her consort but even here he faces racisim and her jealous sister blackbird who wants the throne wants him to mindwipe himself of the x-men. He reluctantly agrees: he can't move the captial to eartha nd should try to think for himself, adding tension for us as we know hwo bad things have gone. Thankfully.. he can't do it which Deathbird figured adn tries to do a coup. But in an awesome moment Charles refuses: no more bloodshed. He gives an awesome lecture on colonalism, something the empires powered on and has a decent shot at reforming it.. but like Storm... life wont' let him have peace; he gets a psychic death call reciting one of my faviorite lines from the comics

So xaiver must leave the love of his life as his children.. need him.

And after all this we find out someone.. sinister is involved.

So onto our finale lead in bright eyes It's a week or two later: the us isn't helping refugees, tensions are high and the x-men visit genosha, with a spectre of war hanging above them. With Jubes encouragment Roberto realizes he could die easliy and comes out to his parents who accept him.. but want him to keep it hidden.

Meanwhile the x-men visit Genosha with Jean feeling guilt over maddie's death and the x-men only able to find emma. Any othe rsurvivors are gone. While this goes on the rest of the x-men have Gambit's heartbreaking funeral, with Nightcrawler naturally serving as preist and one notable absence: Rogue is missing. Rogue is on the warparth tearing apart the miltiary to find Gyrinch and tear apart those who took remy from hern. Captain America TRIES to get her to back down... but his whole "lets wiat and do it proper" bullshit gets his shield understandably thrown into the distance.

She finds Gyrnch and absorbs his memories, having gotten far less forgiving and far more vindcitive and understandably so. The X-Men find her after this and Kurt gets her to greive.

The x-men, minus jubes and berto, reunite, finding trask who reveals whose behind this: OZT, aka Operatoin Zero Tolerance, a secret anti goverment group ran by bastion, a creepily monotone man in pink who plans to out xaviers survival and almost space marriage to the world. And he has much more dastardly plans than shaving magneto while he sings one eyed one horned flying purple people eater: Rogue lets trask slip, horrifying her frineds.. but he gets up. Bastion has turned willing volunteers and unsuspecting civlians into omega sentineals, unstoppable killing machines with the x-men barely able to put down ONE before a group swarm them. Thankfully cable arrives and saves them and lets them know not only is bastion worse than they can imagnie but this gets so much worse.

So next episode Rogue is left in a coma after that right and Cable is rallying the x-men, woh are under fire for the xavier thing. So they split up: Cyclops, Jean and Cable have an awkard family reunion as they go to investigate Bastions mom, while Wolverine, Beast, Nightcrawler (now part of the team) and Morph stay behind. Jubes is with Roberto getting pissy with his mom.

It's reveald Val Cooper, who was at the massacre but wasnt' expecting what happened, is alive and Bastion explains his evil plan: he created the omegas using sinisters virus, Nathan being his payment. He's had help from various other figures outside the un specificaly Doctor Doom and Baron Zemo, both of whom aren't happy with the genocide. Bastin's non plussed as he has a plan.. and a plan to get rid of the x-men. he activates ALL the omegas.

This happens as our heroes get Bastion's backstory: a bit of nimrod goo got into his father in the 50s, and his mom raised him knowing he was diffrent. And having sentinel programming in his head the poor boy became the bastard we know.. and made his own mom a sentinel. They attack the x-men at all three palces they are: bastion's hometown, the mansion as trish tilby, a reporter into hank also turns out to be one, and at the mall... again. Jubes really needs to lay off malls and swears them off. Good for her.

Things don't go great. Cyclops and Jean are barely able to survive their army, the mansion is torched to ruins though Rogue is kept safe by the remaning x-men, and Jubes and Sunspot are handed off to an omega sentinel playing nice by Roberto's mother, shattering the poor guy.

Having enough Valarie freed magneot nd declaring something chilling

"Magneto was right"

He awakens.. and blacks out the world with a massive emp. While this saves the x-men and countless others it's also, as Logan correctly figured, a declaration of war. Just as Morph misses xavier, Charlie arrives.

Thankfully Charles Xavier also arrives.

The x-men all regroup with Storm and Forge rescuing Jubilee and Sunspot. While most are willing to at least tolerate charles Cyclops, while willing to put up with him, is pissed, wanting to know why he left magneto and somehow blaming charles leaving magneto for Magneto's emp.

Thankfully we don't have time for Scott's daddy issues, but we do have time for Charles' as Magneto approaches, rising asteroid m from the sea and making it clear that yes, war were declared. He TRIED it the nice way, genuinely gave it his all.. and humanity responded with a genocide they fetered over and ignored> he's done and invited any other x-men who are done to join him while he waits for his emp to kill everything: in 48 hours it's going end everything.

And shockingly .. two x-men do. Rogue goes with him, pissed at Remy's death and the goverment's half assed response not helping, and Sunspot, while not really an x-men yet, joins too, pissed his mom left him.

So the x-men regroup at muir island, their backup base at some point offscreen and put on some new/old costumes while getting ready for war, with the exception of Storm who was way ahead of them and Jubilee who switched to her 2010's outfit last episode: Cyclops and Jean put on their 70's costume, wolverine his 80's john byrne designed brown suit, morph some generic outfit, beast er.. same as he ever was, and Cable gets his late 90's outfit wether he wants the thing or not.

So with Magneto declaring war and Bastion still a threat to be dealt with the x-men split into blue and gold teams. Cyclops blue team of himself, charles, Wolverine, and Jubilee will go deal with Magneto and friends, while Storm's Gold Team of her, Jean, Morph, Beast, Forge and Cable to go to bastion island and stop him using a modified nulifier collar.

Both plans go south: While Gold team intially makes a splash and does well storm and forge are eventually shot down, and while Jean beats the shit out of sinister for both her and Maddie, he hyjacks Cable as Beast apparently didn't think "Maybe we take just a second to check the guy who was in sinisters grasp as a baby for gene traps", with the rest of the team held down in bastion's power.

On Asteroid M things go considerably better despite the smaller team. Charle's plan of "Let me talk to my boyfriend we'll sort it out".. fails as you know.. when has that EVER worked with him Chuck? Especially after a mass genocide. A fight breaks out and the x-men do manage to beat magneto... but jean lets out a psychic scream that alerts Cyclops who fucks up and stops wolverine and charles from winning. This allows magento to just plunk his helment on charles, since it now has the psychic blocking thing from the movies and works both ways and rips the metal out of wolverine's skeleton.

Part 3 begins and Charles has escaped the helmet and is now tearing Magneto's mind apart, having used him to restore power to earth. But unlike the comics not wanting his friend's mind to end up broken to pieces goes inside it while the rest of the x-men wait outside, having patched up things best they could.

Back on Bastion's Island, Jean reconnects with the phoenix somehow, and uses this handy deus ex machina to Collar bastion, restoring his army of prime sentinels that just woke up and what punched spider-man and a bunch of other cameos to comaland where they can hopefully be helped. She reduces sinister to a shrivled husk, removing all the mutant dna tha tkept him young. As Morph basks in that the x-men have other issues: The goverment was giving xavier time to resolve this.. but decide to be their dickish selves, with only Captain Ameirca and Black Panther wondering if this is a stupid idea. It was and the misles instead knock it's engines off.. and Bastion, being pissed and vengeful decides fuck it i'll just murder you all! So Cyclops, Jean, Storm , Morph and BEast head up to join them, Cable sticking around to keep an eye on things and on forge whose in no shape to go with them.

A fucking glorious final battle enseus as Bastion takes his final form, Rogue beats the shit out of him for Remy, and Roberto formally becomes sunspot and kicks the fuck out of him. The team eventually beats him and Scott, wanting to make up for how Bastion could've bene one of them as Xavier tried to reach out, tries to reach out a hand. Bastion laughs at this and dies and the x-men unite all their powers to try and stop the meteor from hitting earth. But while they do their best.. only one of them can do it, with Charles convincing magneto he can let go of his pain, his anger and hurt and do the right thing. So with a hearty MAGNETO LIVES, the x-men save the world.. and vanish.

6 months later and Forge is operating out of what's left of the mansion. Cable, Jubilee and Sunspot, who weren't on the meteor at the time , all scattered and Forge is trying to build a new x-men out of whose left avaliable. Before he can though, Bishop shows up. While Forge is suspcious as apparently he didn't read the x-mens files , Bishop knowing his real name helps calm him down.. as does some Info. The X-Men aren't dead. It's not where they are but when. They've somehow bene scattered in time by some third party and Forge might want to keep his board out as it might take a new x-men team to find them.

For now we find out where almost everyone ended up: Cyclops and Jean end up in the distant future where they find nathan, as he and bishop got seperated over time. Storm, Wolverine and Morph are MIA, likely in their own group we'll find out about next season. And the rest of the group end up in ancient egypt, saving a young mutant. En Sabur Nur... aka... APOCALYPSE.

And if that wasn't omnious enough in the remains of Genosha, the modern day Apocalypse has returned... remarking on so much pain his children.. so much.. death.. and as he says that.. he picks up a playing card.

And with that omnious teaser for next season, we can finally fully dig into this one.

Hated and Feared

X-Men as an allegory can be frought. It works most of the time as it's easier to get a book about mutants trying to survivie hate and fear than queer people and in modern day many a mutant is queer, going all the way back to Chris Claremont not so subtly making Mystique and Destiny wives and only not saying it outright because the EIC didn't want gay people refrenced. Chris Claremont used it brilliantly in god loves man kills by using Nightcrawler to perfectly speak against the bigoted revered stryker, with kitty pryde

Other times.. it's get tricky like the Legacy Virus, a transparent metaphor for AIDS that no actaul gay people were affected by, Kitty Pryde calling two seperate black people the N-Word to equate mutant racisim to real world racism and that time Wolfsbane was beaten to death for "Hiding" she was a mutant in a clear trans allegory. The mutant metaphor is lovely and can be used awesomely and Chris Claremont was right to expand it... but some writers don't know how the hell to be subtle.

Beau Demayo however tackles it well not hiding from it but treating it realistically: the bigotry isn't just howling assholes in the streets but often the passive bigotry seen all the time, the small steps that make life hard. The big rioting assholes in the street exist, guys like Bastion plotting genocide exist.. but so do people like the doctor Jean turned to to give birth only to refuse simply because "a mutant could hurt people", again not thinking of the lives that could be hurt or the life that could be lost if the delivery wasnt' done right. The kind who'd turn someone away. You have President Kelly who on paper is a friend to mutants.. but when push comes to shove will sacrifice them to save himself and in doing so nearly doom us all. And you have Trish Tilby, who keeps pressing Cyclops when he tries talking about nathan and when he reveals the whole weird story, then goes off on her when she talks about how muants are hard for "normal people" to relate to.. when Cyclops TRIED being normal and lost his son for it through no fault of his own, but because of a mad man who decided to kidnap his son.

And of course the center of this kind of racisim.. is the DeCostas. Roberto is panicked, afraid to reveal who he is or really trainup his powers, only doing so as a gift for Jubilee. And when he finally reveals it.. they seem accepting.. but then refused to have him come out publicly. IT's this casual bigory the kind that could see you cast out just for who you ar, that 97 captures so well.

The more overt stuff still hits well from Magneto's booming speech to the un, making a simple powerful statment in the middle of the speech "What must we do to be good enough? is this the high road's destination?" how poeple who geninely try to do good or help people or help their own get stomped on just for trying ot do it the way society wants them.

It also gets into the systems: Bastion gets a ways do to his powers.. but also do to the system. We see him off center two episodes before his introduction in one of forge's photos, OZT has heads of state and the head of the UN herself in it's pocket. While Humanity is trying to be more accepting at the start of 97 far too many are willing to turn their backs when it's no longer convient. Far too many were willing to give a mad man the keys to genocide then act shocked when he uses them.

When the Genoshian Genocide happens, it's not quick like the comics. It was done quick there to belay it's speed and horror.. in an instant millions die, and the x-men could do nothing, Cassandra Nova, who did it in the comics, having already pulled the trigger before Cyclops and Wolverine could break free.

Here it's still fast and painful.. but we see it from the ground. Gambit waking up dizzy to impromptu triage, several mutants dead or injured. It's not as fast or instant.. but that makes it worse. The X-Men are there.. but they can't do anything. One is captured and broken by the events while another dies stopping it. We feel how powerless our heroes are two of them some of the strongest the x-men has. Rogues next apperance has her easily tear through the military like butter.. which makes it all the more heartning knowing two episodes ago she couldn't stop this. She tried, Erik tried, Remy tried.. but none of them could stop this.

Yet people ina merica... brush it off, refusing refugees, Kelly acting like the x-men have to fix optics after the xavier reveal is more important. It's all too realistic. As Val Cooper notes in her speech humanity says "that's terrible" then moves on with their day. It's not happening here, it's not happening to "Us". Things like the isreal hamas war or the invasion of the ukraine are known to us and some try to rally to end the bloodshed.. but we also tune it out because it's too hard to take. Or worse just don't care. Around the same time these episodes aired, you eerily have senators declaring "there are no civlians" in Gaza, that a goverment is their people when that's never the case. This series calls out that kind of easy thought, that it's easy to other people and put your surivvial above theirs, yoru wants above theres and the series.. offers no easy answers. It champions for hope, for compasion, that it's better ot fight for a better tommorow than lash out.. but dosen't make that fight easier: Remy dies for it, Magneto and Rogue both turn away from it, and the x-men nearly die for it as a whole trying to save a humanity who was all too happy to sell them out.

It's a good message though.. that we don't have to be "fuck you got mine" or bigots... that it's worth fighting for a better tommorow even though it's hard and while a world of pure peace and tolerance is a dream.. it's a dream worth trying to make real. To get as close to it as we can. We may suck.. but we CAN be better. All the bigots in x-men show us at our worst, our pettist.. but the x-men are our better, fine people who fight hard to protect a world that hates and fears them that sold them out simply because letting innocent people die, is something they can't fathom. That the world isn't so broken they can't fix it in ways. That even when the dream seemingly dies with everything they find out.. they fight on. For tommorow.

From the Pages of Marvel Comics

One of 97's other great strengths is adaptation, and it's something i've been chomping to the bit to talk about. Like most superhero adaptations, 97 takes the best parts of the comics then streamlines it down. The Civil War adaptation for instance left out Iron Man's many, MANY war crimes and bits of petty dickery in favor of honoring the spirit of two heroes and close friends reaching an impass over an issue neither is entirely in the right over. Black Panther uses some of the broad strokes of killmongers arcs from his original debut and the Christphoer Preist run, but refashions him to ask serious questions about Wakanda's habit of isolationsim. It's fine with me to pick and choose what works best as some things are just harder to adapt. Even Invincible, a pretty close adaptation to the original, changes a lot to update the work to better fit the modern day rather than the early 2000's it started in, diversifying the cast, giving debbie, amber and eve more agency, all good stuff.

What I like about 97 though is it does this.. but still adapts the stories for more than parts, something that's rareer. The original usually used the parts approach, x-men continuity is both lovely and terrifyingly complicated and some things were added as they were just being brought up in the ocmics, but a few bigger stories like the Phoenix Saga, the Dark Phoenix Saga, the Proteus arc, or days of future past got a full adaptation.

So the crew of 97 ran with that: the bulk of the season is an adaptation. The season adapts Trial of Magneto, Lifedeath, Inferno, Endgame (X-Factor 65-68), The Crunch Conundrum (Wolverine 51-53), Fall of the Mutants, E is For Extinction, Operation Zero Tolerance, and Fatal Attractions. Some are used more for parts, but most of these stories get fully adapted in some way shape or form, simply streamlining it.

These are also the kinds of stories that take advantage of the fact 97.. already has a fully fleshed out universe to play with. As the long recap shows, they had a LOT of table setting already done in the original and thus could jump into stories that would take a movie or two to set up. It'd be hard to do a story about Jean Grey's clone when you don't know jean first or care about the fall of genosha without being invested in whose on the island. With 5 seasons to go off, 97 is pre loaded with most of the setup needed for these stories and thus can do them justice, while still streamlining them to fit in their limited runtime.

So i'm going to break down these adaptations best I can. I won't be doing so for Endgame as it really only adapts Scott sending his son into the future and I barley remember it and the Cosmic Crunch Condndrum as I haven't read that yet and would like to read the rest of hama's run leading up to it.

Trial of Magneto: This one is way better than the original. THe Original had a good concept, put magneto on trial, have the x-men deal with a false flag attack in the background. But it gets cluttered fast: Magneto has reformed but while they try to play the defense that, because he was literally reborn after he was regressed to an infant then aged up by a mutant he what made, he was a diffrent person and those exempt from all his crimes minus blowing up a russian submarine. Problem is comics mags.. has way more baggage as pre chris claremont and early into claremont's run he was a pretty standard villian, plotting, scheming and making his daughter dance for him because he didn't know it was his daughter which I wish I could forget about and now so will you. So they kinda have to use the insane defense they do and his speech, while well done, comes off slightly more hollow: he does want to change.. but it's not really a kangaroo court like in the show.

He also gets attacked by the Fernis Twins, incest nazi nepo babies, who use aformentioned false flag attack as a smokescreen so they can attack the hauge and get revenge on magneto for killing nazis. Chris Claremont is a great writer.. but the guy could easily get lost up his own ass in some issues and this was one.

So 97 streamlines it: the incest nazi nepo babies are replaced with the friends of humanity who already existed, and Magneto's defense of himself is way more self righeous as while he did try to cause a massive disaster in his first appreance most of his apperances are "just leave my people alone motherfuckers". And while the original had Magneto's backstory be some generic wartorn country, 97 makes it clear like the comics he's a holocaust survivor, so he knows what he's talking about and talks circles around the court,only lifting them into the air when the x-cutioner depowers Storm.

That segues into our next adpatation, done over several episodes, Lifedeath. This compresses a long subplot into a slightly shorter one, mostly using the titular issue. And honestly it's the closest of the adaptations here. The context is changed as in the comics Rogue was being hunted by the goverment for her criminal past and breaking into a shield hellicarrier when Carol breifly took over, both things that would make no sense in 97. So they had Storm jump in front of a diffrent reformed rogue. They also removed the fact Forge made the gun to defeat the diar wraths but otherwise his quitting over the tech, hiding it from storm initially and being the one to help her recover/romance her is all accurate. The cartoon improves on this by having Forge be the one to confess what he did, a small step but it makes their romance easier to swallow when he genuinely confesses to what he did. I'ts still.. not great but like the comics it's protrayed as not great to form a relationship with her whil ehiding this and their working thorugh it feels more earned as he didn't make a mutant depowering gun and expect the goverment not to use it, but made tech that was yanked out of his hands without thinking the implications.

This leads into another adaptation as the adversary from fall of the mutants shows up but as mentioned in the recap is a demon instead of a trickster god as the story's simply grafted onto lifedeath, with Storm forced to confront her demons and the demon in her ear. In the comics she was tricked into trying to kill forge, both were stratneded in a new world as adam and eve and she restarted her powers for the greater good. Again not claremon'ts best work but still far more meaningful and well done than the incest nazi nepo babies. Her regrowing her hair from her mohawk was also part of it

Before we move on, they also had storm in her mohwawk and , post leaving the x-men, punk outfit. IN the comics this is easily my faviorite storm storyline. early on she was regal and reserved, innocent as while she'd had a rough childhood in cairo, spent most of her teen years in africa being worshipped for her powers. But when Cyclops left the x-men, she was thrust into the leadership role and slowly had to deal with her dark side: getting into a knife fight to the death, having to make harsh decisions, and forming a gay as hell friendship with yuirko, wolverine's ex. Chris was not subtle and I respect that. So she took a punk look on to match who sh'ed become: still kind and gentle.. but far more pragmatic. Moral but realistic about the lines the x-men sometimes had to cross.

So scooting back before we finished storm's story we have Madelyn Prior. And strap in because this one.. it's a lot. So here Maddie's story is pretty easy to understand: Jean was swapped out with a clone at some point so Mr Sinister could have control over the summers grey baby. Maddy is for all intensive purposes also jean grey, but has the baggage of not being the "real" jean and having her friends be dicks and not consider her jean, though Gambit and Rogue at least got better about that. She and scott have an affair. it's simple. Scott's KINDA a dick for not supporting maddy and for not breaking up with jean to be with her, but a more resonable one as the shock of this clearly got to him and the later affair was because again, she is pretty much jean... and shares a child with him. Still fucked up but understandbale.

In the comics... oh me mow. The comics. This is going to be a complicated one. See in the comics.. Maddy was never intended to be Jean's clone. Chris Claremont created her , but her looking like jean was initially juts a concidence: She was an alaskan pilot with her own life, feisty, and blunt, and Scott liked that and the concidences matching her up with gene were either just that, or Mastermind, one of the x-men's foes, fucking with Scott's head to get his revenge on the x-men. He also broke up wolverine's wedding for similar reasons.

So when it was all cleared up Scott proposed. Now granted proposing after knowing someone a few months.. is not smart, but it seemingly worked out. They had a child and Claremont fully intended to have Scott retire.

The problems were two fold: the first was the writing itself: It felt like Scott ws more.. settling for a happy married life because the x-men no longer needed him and he no longer felt home there, and staying with Maddie out of responsiblity to her than out of true love.

The other was editorial.. did not want to keep Scott off the shelf, a common issue in comics as characters simply cannot stay retired. The only time this has happened is Jack Knight, the best starman and he only escaped this fate because his creator James Robinson made DC put it in writing. So wanting more x-books, editorial launched x-factor and brought back jean.

And this.. ended up making Scott look horrible as he got a call. And rather than explain it to maddie, tried to hide why he was fleeing from her, then ignored her ultimatium that if he left it was over. God dammit scott. Granted he did TRY to go back and fix things, but by then editorial had decided Maddie needed to get out of the way of Jean and Scott. Nathan vanished, his disappearnce being a major subplot in x-factor which thankfully got better, with Jean confronting everyone over hidding maddie from her and Scott feeling actual guilt.

Things got worse for Maddie, though thankfully Claremont also got her back and did his best with the orders given. He wasn't happy about it, but had Maddie process her trauma: she suddenly had her identity erased from all databases, her child stolen and the marauders, assholes for hire who would end up being revealed to be hired by a debuting mr sinister. Maddie grappled with her husband's abandonment, finding out about jean, her sense of personhood and eventually a relatoinship with Scott's brother Havok, everyone's silver medal.

Eventually though she had to be written out for some rason, so inferno happened. And Inferno.. is fucking nuts. So a demon takes na intrest in maddie, makes a deal for her childs soul and turns all of new york into hell. She becomes the Goblyn queen and then tries to kill her kid for reasons. Louise Simonson who wrote x-factor and wrote that part is also a great writer, but did not write maddy well.

So yeah the show just.. made the demons telepathic and like more recent comics, got the hint that maybe maddie wasn't some super bitch because she got abandoned and manipulated. Her posisble ressurection was a major subplot of the excellent hellions series, and it lead into her return for the okayish Dark Web event that ended wit her, now queen of limbo, having a hell embassy in new york. She's living her best life.

So the show is an improvment, as it knew it was going to have maddie be jean and thous could plan instea dof trying to constantly salvage demands to kill a character the creator clearly liked, then various writers who hadn't read anything but the end of this long story arc pissing on Maddie's grave.

New X-Men is one of my faviorite x-men comics, one I intended to cover in full and may try to again someday. It's one of the most recent things 97 takes from the comics and Remember it Adapting both the genoshan genocide and the psychic affair was a refeshing sign the series wouldn't just be adapting storylines from the 80s and 90s. The series is even, thanks to widespread reports about season 2 footage from comic con, using the iconic costumes from this era, using the leather astetic from the movies, but making them still pop with big yellow x's. I want one of those jackets, so, fucking, bad. I'd even take a dark phoenix version as while I hate dark phoenix they dapted them well.

The series only takes a few pieces from this legendary series, but their vital ones. The Genoshan Genocide is the big one, an event that changed the x-men and was New X-Men writer Grant Morrisons big statment that the realtive stasis the x-men were trapped in was broken. It severs the same purpose here: the happy nostlagic trip back that started the series with some trauma, if still excellently is gone, and the x-men now live in a new world. They adapt it almost as is: the tri sentinel resembles the wid sentinel used and while i wish they'd used the wild sentinels in full, monsterous sentinels that absorb things from the environment, it's still a massive disaster the us dosen't care about hwere emma frost mutates further getting a diamond form, millions are dead and Magneot is seemingly killed. The basics were all it needed

The mastermind is changed to fit into another adaptation we'll get to in a moment, but it works better for the story told than Xavier's sister he strangled in the womb but survived as a psychic parasite. I just.. love getting to type crazy shit like that and I love even more than unlike the nazi nepo babies or abandoned clone wives, this bit.. was written entirely coherently and meant to be as bonkers as it is.

Nova could show up as Wolverine and Deadpool has came and went, it just didn't fit for this version of the story. Bastion worked better for the metaphor they were going for and was easier to set up in the context of the original series.

So then we have the psychic affair. So in the comics Cyclops was emotoinally repressed even more than usual at the star tof new x-men, having been possed by apocalypse and come back from the dead, pulling away from jean. New teammate emma Frost offered him therapy.. then used her position as her therapist to sleep with him. Then jean caught them and no one ever really adressed the fact that scott was manipulated into it at a vunerable time in his life and it's treated like a normal relatoinship aftewords. Which can work but I feel like no one ever wants to bring this up. And I say that up as an emma fan what the shit. No one ever brings up the relationship started in a pretty fucked up place except Joss Whedon and even he only factors in the fact they started dating for real after jean died. I didn't even fully scan how fucked up this was for years. Good lord.

So instead Scott still cheats on jean in his mind palace, but with.. jean. Maddy is basically her with a few extra experinces, so while Scott is more at fault here, Maddy din't push him into anythign. I still say scott fucked up in new x-men with how he treated his wife, he's not BLAMELESS, but the bulk of the affair was him being agressivly persued by someone who framed their affair as therapy. Here it's an affair but with someone scott never techniclaly broke up with and him avoiding the issue is the problem.

So back to Bastion. Bastion was introduced during the Onslaught saga, a whole mess I don't want to get into. Short versoin, Charles tore magneto's mind apart, and was SUPPOSED to simply have his darkest impulses released but instead they merged with magnetos because executives didn't want this to be all xaviers fault and back then treated Magneto as satan for some reason.

So as a result the goverment got charles, and the avengers and fantastic four were presumed dead but put into a pocket dimension for an ill advised attempt at a reboot of the avengers and fantastic four. So everyone blamed mutants for their "deaths", and thus Bastion was clear to start operation zero tolerance. Bastion was nimrod, a sentinel from the future that got merged with a modern sentinel that hyjacked him then sent through the seige perilous, a magic portal created by merlins daughter that can basically reset a person. No memories, new life. So he became bastion, and due to his sentinel programming set up ozt. There was also some good build up as sine he was using graydon creed as a puppet he killed a reporter.. and it was one of J Jonah Jamesons guys. So JJJ became a major recurring character, refusing bribes of tasty info on the x-men to chase him down.

Sadly the payoff.. was a mess, spread across most titles at the time. Half the x-men were in space, long story, the other half got captured and were shunted to wolverine adn the main story focused on a returning iceman. The plot for the main books was decent, bobby forming a team out of desperation out of marrow, former enemy with bone powers and Cecila Reyes, a surgeon who didn't want to be a superhero but got thrust into the life, as they fought the omega sentinels.

Then the ending was just... the goverment calls it off thanks to senator kelly, bastion fucks off and outside of the mansion getting scrubbed of all it's tech and a few new members this just kinda.. happened to the x-men. As the recap showed this verison dosen't do that. It beefs up bastion's backstory, makes the omegas a huge threat, and has all the x-men involved. It's a massive improvment over the original and only keeps the bare bones premise while grafting on the genoshan genocide shockingly well.

It also grafts it onto another storyline for the finale, Fatal Attractions. There's no boiled bunnies and I have no idea why it was called this. Fatal Attactions like Operation Zero Tolerance, has a goo dpremise: Magneto returns and does an emp on the earth while giving his new followers the acolytes sanctuary. The actual story... blows. Magneto is treated like a cardboard cutout of a villian instead of the complicated figure claremont made him into, only punishing a foe for killing hospisce patients with disablities because he didn't allow it. It... it really shoudn't be that hard to knwo Magneto wouldn't tolerate ethnic cleansaings of mutatns who had down syndrome. As such the whole things muddled, not very fun to read and really only notable for it's climax: Magneto tears out wolverine's adamantium, revealing his skeleton to be boneeeeeeee while Charles relatilates by mind blasting mags into a coma.

Like OZT 97 takes what was a very good premise and uses it well: both versions of FA have an x-men defect but while Colossus defection is clumsy, his sister died but it still feels horribly out of character, Rogue's was set up through the whole season, with bright eyes showing just how bad a place she was in. Sunspots is a bit flimsier, but still fits well enough. It dosen't waste the idea of magneto coming to the various mutants to recurit, something the comics at the time did with no one but pitor accepting.

It also has mags pushed father and still kept in who he was: this is seen as a nightmarish action even for him.. but it's after humanity subsisded the genocide of his poeple and after he genuinely tried for better. So him going this far and doing what he doe sto logan fits, especially since here Logan tries stabbing him in the heart... which also feels more on brand and Logan never trusted the man unlike the comics.

THey do do a nice swerve though: While one would assume charles would leave Magneto a vegetable leading to onslaught next season, though I wouldn't mind a better version of that.. instead Charles only hyjacks magneot out of desperation then works to restore him. As a result instead of leaving his best friend a vegetable, he saves him form himself. A better ending to a better storyline.

The end of the season hints at one or two stories, Cyclops and Jean's adventures rasing nathan in the future and Gambit's stint as Apocalypse's horseman death, but for now it adapated a fine crop of stories well.

So with the overarching story, themes and connections to the comics out of the way, let's dive into the cast starting with my boy

Magneto Was Right

Magneto is my faviorite mutant. Said it before, will say it again into infinity. A complex tragic figure who can be a compelling villain and an anti hero tortured by what his long war of attrition with humanity has cost him. This series does both and does them well. David Hemblen is probably the best animated Magneto, and one of the best up there with MacKellen and Fasbender.

97 gets mags just right, having him be arrogant. He slides into the series not happy to be an x-man, only doing it as a favor to Charles essentailly and berating the x-men for not thinking to relocate the morlocks to genosha which... to be faiiiiirr.. is entirely on point. Yet it's clear he's done some shit. The series leans into the retcons from later in x-men the animated series, that cyclops and the original x-men fought him. He's never portrayed as nearly as bad as he was in the silver age, enslaving teenagers who ended up being his own kids, but it allows for the deadly threat magneto presents to be amped up. It's very clear he's holding back. He'll pummel the friends of humanity but he will not kill.

It allows the full Magnus: terrifying ot his enemies, but having nobility. While he treats it at times like a frustrating errand his best friend/probably boyfriend at some point, the sexual tension is palpable and remains a constant for x-men adaptations, he does geninely try. His speech to the un isn't just a veiled threat that "I WILL go back to hunting you assholes for sport" it's that he dosen't want to. He dosen't belivie in charles dream.. but WANTS to see it acomplished. He lost his best friend to his space girlfriend, and WANTS to try and acomplish what charles couldn't. Not to one up him.. but because it meant so much to charles. In the original cartoon he may of seen the x-men as fools at times.. but respected their idealism. Same with the comics: he may see them as lambs to the slaughter.. but respects that they will fight anyway. So he will join them, he will lead them and he tries.

Magneto... is not a good fit for leader of the x-men though. He can't put aside that arrogance. While Charles was demanding, XTAS dialed down his control freak nature. He dosen't demote jubilee to a junior squad or yell at cyclops for treating a group of adults like adults, and that's not even getting into his many horrible deeds later retconned in, he is commanding but will listen to his students and learn from them. He lets logan wander off or cyclops leave in a rage because while he'd prefer they stay he can't FORCE them to, as much as he's capable of the act. Magneto is more used to worshipful masses who hang on his word. The X-Men.. can manage themselves. It shows most glaringly when Jubilee has her birthday. Everyone else understands the need for a day off. But Magneto, who sees every action as a war and lost his childhood to auschwitz, can't fathom why Jubilee needs that break and denies it for her out of a combination of that and not being able to meet the x-men at their level. While Cyclops has that issue at the start, constantly being on guard, berating the x-men for relaxing and Gambit for not going on a mission he wasn't really NEEDED for in the first place, he realizes he was a tight ass trying to roleplay his dad and backs off. Magneto never gets the chance. Magnus is a good man.. but he has too much ego to ever see the x-men as more than his soliders instead of his teammates.

I do wish we'd gotten more of him as leader, the clachses inherent in that, and that motendo actually called him out as while Jubes wanting to ignore change isn't good, not letting her relax is still not great.

We do see just enough though: he is trying, does take this seriously and does want it to work. When rescuing the morlocks he's kind with Leech, their youngest, smiling at the boy and assuring him he'll be okay. He tries to assure scott less out of ego and more because he wants the man to get to livfe his own life. Despite his shortcomings he tries to lead as most of the team dosen't really want to and the most capable (Scott, Jean, Storm) are all going thorugh some stuff and not in the headspace till much later in the series.

Magneto tries to be better. He even finds a good compromise between dreams: Genosha. A place of peace for mutants that would be easier for humanity to adapt to some day if they so choose. Mutants have a homeland and saftey without bloodshed. It's not Magnus dominon or Charles full acceptance but it's nicely in the middle: Saftey, security, and peace. Just as Magneto dropped his dreams twice for Charles, Charles could not begrudge Erik taking a peaceful path to his own. As much as the UN has a hardline "hell no stance" to the idea, Magnus/Erik/Jimmy The Reach almost had his dream. A bunch of hardworking mutants forming the future of their kind.

And then... the dream ended. Bastion killed millions and leech, who was in genosha thanks to him died. Despite his power... Magneto could do nothing. He fought, he gnahsed.. and he only survivied because Bastion wanted him as a trophy. And in the aftermath he finds mankinds allies like val had a knife to their throat this wohle time, Bastion was merely the one to plunge the blade in.

And as Warned.. magneto lets them down, plunging earth into darkness and planning to let it die. He's lost the hope he had and i'ts replaced only with rage. The rage of a man whose parents were murdered, who saw his people lined up in camps, and who sees the same all too close to happening. And he has onlyone word for it.

ENOUGH

He takes Rogue, i'll get into that whole mess of a relationship and roberto and has.. no real plan. When you look at his other apperances in the OG.. he had genuine thought. Destroy a plant to make them pay, get away from humanity so they stop hounding us, end times war. They weren't always stable plans, but he had one. Here he just plans to wait until everything else dies and figure otu the logistics later. It feels like Magneto has no mission, that this isn't another grand strike against humanity, but a murder suicide: he's taking the planet with him content to rot on an asteroid with those few he can take with him.

It's why charles plan to talk to him.. dosen't work. Granted "Talk magneto down" has NEVER worked for him, but Magnus dosen't want to talk... he wants earth to die. While Charles microwaving his brain isn't plesant, it's the only way to get through to him. To remind him who he was: a kind empathetic german man who'd been thorugh so much.. and who isn't alone. As reluctantly as they were to accept him, the x-men welcomed him into the family and tried to let him in. He accepted them in turn. His kids, including Polaris. He's not alone and thus he backs away from the abyss with a rousing MAGNETO LIVES and saves the world. Granted like most of these stories it's not over, there's more ground to cover next time, and the comiccon footage apparently featured another trial. But at least a man who lashed out at the world constantly and angrily, and often justifably, has found peace. Will he be able to keep it? We'll see.

Rogue and Gambit: A Romantic Tragedy

So Rogue and Gambit are one of the premire love stories in x-men... two people with checkered pasts drawn to each other but who can't touch less Gambit die. Granted man a fan will tell you "worth it", but I get Rogue not wanting to murder him with her vagina. Understnadable. Thankfully they've found workarounds and after a decade or so apart married and despite various obstacles, have stayed that way up to the current run of uncanny x-men.

In the show.. we're still in that will they or won't they. XTAS danced at the edge a few times but while it was allowed to have continuity, they weren't allowed to pull the trigger on something that big. 97 decides rather than do that to add some good old fashioned xavier's brand suffering on top of their already hard lives.

The Gambit Rogue Magneto love triangle.. is bad. In the comics it wasn't great: Initially Rogue and Magneto was done and done quick: She was attracted to him during their savage land adventures, it's implied since she was depowered at the time they slept together, she turned on him when he slaughtered some people.

But then age of apocalypse happened, a reality where despite the age gap, they married, and canon tried to make it a thing, first with his amnesic clone joseph then in x-men legacy when it happneed but when the writers switched, Christos Gage wasnt' itnrested and slowly broke it off. And before that it was clearly more just physical.

So yeah.. it wasn't exactly the best idea to begin with. She's about as old as one of his children and writers coudln't quite make it work when tried. 97 couldn't either: In hindsight Magneto comes off more as the hunk you have a character in a romance series get with for a few episodes, the sexy bad boy to contrast the guy she ends up with. Other guy may also be a sexy bad boy, as is the case here, but he's the less destructive one. As Chandler's mom on friends put it "He's a complication you put in then kill off".

And look that idea.. kinda works for me: Rogue finds someone who an bypass her power and thus it puts her need for phsyical intamacy against her emotoinal connectin wtih remy. It's a good foundtation. The problem is Magneto ... does not make the best sexy bad boy romantic false lead. He's a foxy grandpa, we all know this and accept this. He's got abs for days. Magneto being sexy is not the problem. Magneto has been a sex machine since the 80s.

The problem is the age gap. Rogue is in her late 20's early 30's. Doing the math since the comics have him born in the late 20's, I went with 1928, and subtracting that from 1997, when the show takes place we get

Which is nice, but also means he's twice her age. The two's romantic past is teased at and then revealed later: Sometime in her 20's Rogue took her to magneto.. and there in lies an issue in itself as the timeline for Rogue in the OG is very vauge. She was 13 when she kissed her childhood sweetheart, comaed him, and was adopted by mystique. XTAS does use an adult model.. but more for budget reasons, making it very hard to know when this happened or when Magneto wooed rouge, making many think he was a pdeophile. He wasn't, the writers cleared it up she was 20.. but he still would've been 50 or 60 by that metric. It's still a bad look. I love Magneto but my god is it a horrible idea to have him boink a 20 year old who was also vunerable and hadnt had sex before. Saying he groomed her... isn't entirely inaccurate. She still got out and was older, but he's still old enough to be her grandpa. This was not thought through at all and instead of this possible rugged sexual romance it comes of as

I don't know how the hell they got this far with this storyline but ti's bad.

The actual Rogue and Gambit stuff works better. She wants to be touched and while she was willing to play along with gambit's flirtations, it's a genuinely hard choice between a romance where you can never touche the other person , and not just sexually, and one where you can have that.

Both Rogue and Gambit are trapped in this stupid love triagnle for four episodes, with Remember It paying it off... and while I hate what they did with magneto, the whole focusing on an overwrought romance storyline.. works. With how much it's firing up you dont' see the hammer coming till cable arrives and by then it's too late.

So we've come to Gambit's Death. And it .. is amazing. It was a shock, as I went into the episode blind and while my smug ass had predicted the genoshan genocide would happen this season, there were plenty of hints with the fact genosha existed at all, the sentinal spooky jean dream. But I give it to DeMayo: He had this twist planned, and hits you like a truck.

As for why Remy that's simple: it'd hurt. It'd hurt bad. He was the sarcastic playboy of the team, making bengets in his bitching crop top. As much danger as the x-men get into no one thinks they'd kill one of their biggest characters. And yet.. they did.

His death is perfectly done. Remy gets stabbed with rebar, and rather than go down easy.. he simply cooly delivers his one liner and lights up the whole damn snetinel, knowing it'll kill him and likely the only reaosn he hadn't tried this trick before. There's no way he could charge something up that big and be healthy enough.

Now again Remy could come back, but a sa ghouslish zombie it makes it more platable, a mockery of what Remy did.

So as the recap covers, Rogue handles things poorly, putting all her energy into getting revenge going on a sterling archer level rampage tearing apart the military , throwing Steve's shield into the distance and getting colder and angerier with each action. Instead of letting herself greive she's thrown herself into her rage, and while unlike many a senseless death she can in fact punch those responsible, it's not going to bring him back. She's forced to reckon with this after brain jacking gyrinch, who is summiarly murdered by bastion as a sloppy loose end

But it dosen't help.. but even her brother's support, getting her to greive.. dosen't fix the pain. So when Bolivar trask, who while coerced into it by Sinister and Bastion still has remy's blood and the blood of millions on his hands, reveals he dosen't have anything else.. she lets him drop. And when questonied on it by everyone else, is unapologetic.

It's here I have to give Lenore Zahn all the props. Out of the returning cast she gets the most to do this season, the most challening material and she nails it, nicely oscelating between pure grief and pure rage. The grief she sadly had help with: her niece died and she channeled that grief into Rogues, and it makes it all the more raw and painful. The rage.. is all her and well done. It makes Rogues eventual if brief Heel turn, and a mild one at that, all the more belivible. She hasn't had time to proces and unlike most whove lost someone actually CAN blame someone. It's a miracle Gyrinch made it out of their encounter alive and likely ONLY because the memories overwhelmed her.

So it's not a remote shock when one brief coma later... Rogue joins magneto. There's no romance left, thank god, just pure rage Erik gleefully accepts. She's willing to turn her back on all she's belivied in, a better world, the dream.. because the dream.. let her down. It killed remy, humanity has given barely a fuck after genosha, and humanity gladly funded their extinction. She's done. It's horrifying to see.. but every step we saw coming. The best and hardest part.. is that it's not because she was with the brotherhood once. They put her in her brotherhood uniform from the comics, her first uniform as an x-man there too.. but this is soley because of who she's been as an x-man: The love of her life who she realized too late she was ready for died fighting for the dream she truly belivied.... and all it did was wake her up.

She does fight her friends when they arrive, too blinded by grief and rage to see "wait are we the baddies" versus Roberto who is clearly regretting this decision. But it says something to who Rogue is.. that she turns back pretty quickly. Once Magneto's down she snaps back. You could say this is a bit convient.. but the x-men really don't have time to hash things out with her. She's family.. and not the kind who will lambast you for being part of the woke mob, I mean the kind that's built so heavily, that's such a part of you it's hard to let go. Neither side had trouble fighting, but when the world's at stake and she's had time to realize, Rogue snaps back to being a hero. Because heartbroken , pissed off at the world or a little of both.. that's who she is. There will no doubt be consequences to her actions and more recriminations later. Turning her back on her found family can't have gone down well.. but when they needed her she returned to the side of good and fought hard. Granted she also got to beat the shit out of bastion for killing Remy, so that helps, but it's still nice. And again like with Magneto and most of 97.. things aren't really wrapped up. They knew they had at least one more season. We can unpack those consequences next year in another large review that will drive me to the brink. For now it's a solid ending. So now for

The Summers Piror Howlett Knolastname Love Pentagle

Yes I'm covering 5 characters in one section as outside of morph, whose mostly wolverine's best buddy whose secretly in love with him this season or there for cool cameos, their story arcs for the seasons are entwined with this tornado of romantic drama. even Morphs one real personal moment gets thrown in. Scott apparently go one reality without falling ass backwards into a love triangle, diamond or in this case rhombus. Except that time he was in an open relationship. God I miss Krakoa. They never did fully adress if Wolverine and Cyclops boned. LIke even if it was a threeway they had to have made out once. I mean right? Right?

Anyways this big ole love rhombus comes from a set of complicated circumstances only something this gloriously comic booky could make work, something so soapy only the x-men can rock it. So we open the season with what we thought was Jean and Scott having a baby. This is actually Maddie and for the sake of clarity we'll be using the name. But as I brought up in the recap this maddie is really more a second jean grey: she has all of jean's memories, feelings, relationships, all of it, and had NO idea she was replacing her.

So the first two episodes are about Maddie wanting to try for a normal life and Scott being reluctant. And the reason is simple: He's never had one. His dad is a space pirate, he has two brothers he dosen't realize exist, and his mom was killed by an alien emperoror for refusing him. Being an x-man is his life: charles recruited him from the orphanage at 15. While he didn't have to murder a diamond man in this continuity who charles rescued him from, he still had a life of not being accepted as a mutant with his family presumed dead till his new dad showed up and gave him purpose: A shiny new team to lead that ended up helping him meet the love of his life, a noble goal.

The problem was while Xavier MEANT well, he also trained Scott as his most loyal soldier. He realized too late that he'd made Scott's life entirely about leading, being the x-men being the best because it was all he ever had. Scott was the son Charles never had ,as far as he knew legion could still pop up, and he treated him well.. but he also gave Scott the same singular drive to put the dream over everything else that destroyed most of Charles personal relationships and will again. Despite their own doubts.. the x-men WOULD have been fine without him. Storm has proven at this point she's a great leader, if she wouldn't I'm confident Rogue or Beast would've stepped up. (for the record, Morph dosen't want the role, Wolverine's too much of a loner to lead the team full time even if he has the potetial, Jubilee isn't ready and Gambit dosen't want the responsibility. But he's too busy trying to BE his dad to notice; to be charles: exacting, loyal to nothing except the dream.. but shutting everyone out. The first episode is all about how Scott's let the stick go further up his ass than usual, getting Mad Gambit skipped a mission.. .that they handled fine with just three x-men, one of which is easily their strongest. Logan lays into scott with a purely cutting line that despite Maddie trying to assure him he did fully mean

What Gyrich did was pretty horrible, but you wanna know the worst part about the professor being gone? YOU

Frankly.. he's right. Scott is trying so hard to be charles he can't be himself. We see him doing best as leader during "To me my x-men" when he's being himself: in the opening he's tactical as hell, but respects storm and bishop during the rescue. In the climax of the episode, he has the team work to their strengths and let sthem relax. Scott isn't a bad leader, but had to accept leading isn't barking orders but trusting your teammates while knowing them well enough to use their skills.

Speaking of skills let's talk about Scott's glow up in this series. Now Scott Summers still fucks up plenty perosnally. We've got way more to cover, you've seen the previous seconds, he's a fucking mess. But that's.. normal for the comics. Most of Scott's fuckups are taken from there: Scott emotoinally repressed himself to a painful degree and thus isn't good with relationship stuff. He can love, he and Jean and later maddie clearly love each other, but it's hard for him to open up and actually.. talk about his problems, so he buries them for the good of the mission till they explode and smack him in the face.

97 captures that well while ballancing it with his other sides; Scott can be funny on occasion, gettin ga few good quips, the best being when his son whose older than him complains abou this uniform "what'd you expect black leather" he can be quippy and have fun, while still having severe issues. It's never over the line that it's not scott, but it's enough to reveal the dork underneath the layers of trauma.

Previous adaptations have not been kind to scott. It's why Scott's known as the boring one for most casual x-fans. Even as a kid I thought that. It wasn't till reading Gilleon and Claremont's work I saw what scott could be. Many a writer in and out of comics focus on Scott the tight ass: XCU Scott , despite being played by the talented James Marsden, is a pretty dry guy whose entirely personality is "get your hands off of my woman mother fucccckeerrrrr" and then he dies. The second scott had potetial, but was reduced to Jean guy for Dark Phoenix, and his actor was one of many who had just given up by that point and I still dont' blame them. In the predecessor to this series, Scott isn't as bad but is still stuck to being the killjoy in a cast of more intresting characters, not helped by Jean being so much worse. And wolverine and the x-men makes him into a morose man with a Jean obessesion. YOu get the pattern now: outisde of evolution most cyclops are jean simps with little else to go on. XTAS is better, having episodes focusing on his orphan past and a neat solo episode or two. While he can be dry, the series did try to flesh him out and give him more than saying his girlfriends name a lot. He did say it a lot but he had ore. Evolution got him right before this as while him pining after jean is his main subplot he does get reuinted with his brother, have a close friendship with kurt, and show he IS A GOOD LEADER.

97 on the other hand shows all of scott. He can be funny, troubled.. or a total badass. 97 Relishes in letting the cast show off and Scott really gets to flex. In said first episode he takes out racist with a not joke, uses his powers to clear the field alternating between his optic blasts and good old martial arts for the colose quarters and cumilates it by , when lacking a parachute, USING HIS OPTIC BLASTS TO MAKE HIS WAY DOWN WHILE SCREAMING. This one episode does more to show how capable scott is than any previous adaptation and honestly does more with his powers than the comics often do.

So back to the summary and Scotty let's go, and plans to leave. Then his dad throws a well meaning but tone deaf curveball: he gives the school to magneto, meaning Scott refuses to leave because Magneto's in charge even though everyone's dealing okay and this isn't an evil plan. Maddi'es frustrated, but has bigger issues as during the assualt on the un she goes into labor. The labor goes fine once Rogue steps in and Scott's there for it, and gets a break. He gets to see his son born, Nathan Charles Summers and despite what happened with storm, is ready to move on. He can trust magneto.

Then of course, as usual for scott Life kicks him in the balls 37 times: Jean shows up at the door.

It's here we can talk about Jean and Maddie a bit more. Maddie wants to leave, but i'ts clear from Charles gifting the school to magnus the original wanted to too.

So after Jean arrives, Beast determines she's the original and Maddie isn't. And the X-Men. ... handle this poorly. I've talked about this a little but in one of the weakest parts of the season, they ALL turn their backs on her. They just kinda.. stand their gaping, not really willing to talk to her, and while she could be an imposter.. they don't know that. Someone could've faked it or "real" jean coul'dve been kidnapped years ago. They don't know enough to not say anything and it's weird. I feel Storm was shoed off so early, besides pacing, partly because with all the talk of her and jean as sisters, she'd actually defend maddie.

And Scott.. fucks up the worst. He says nothing WHEN directly asked. When Maddie needed him.. he froze. And this.. all goes as plan as Sinister was banking on the x-mens being immotinally tone deaf and confronts maddie, stealing Nathan and turning her into the Goblyn queen.

The back turning does work a bit though as it makes Maddie's rage, amped up by sinisters brainwashing similar to what he did to morph, entirely beliveable. Her family turned on her despite the fact that, as we find out.. she'ss also jean. She has all the memories, all the attachments everything. And her family turned on her for something she coudln't know. While her reasoning for working with sinister is brainwashing, I suspect he barely had to push to get her to fight her family.

And like Scott.. this series does jean better through both of herselves. Jean also gets the short end of the stick: Her XCU counterpart is pretty good up till last stand, ditto for her second version played by sophie turner for apocalypse and is one of the few bright spots of dark phoenix. But her others... not so much. The XTAS jean was often helpless, screamed a lot and got kidnapped.. not as much as you'd think but still more than someone of her power set should. Jean gets reduced to one of two things too often: a sexy lamp for scott to angst about, or PHOENIX.

97 has her realtionship with Scott AND her status as phoenix crop up, but it's not all of her. We see who jean is, kind, compasionate, well loved.. and badass. Maddie gets to show off first, her fight with the x-men in an old church being a through curbstomp and before that her mind grab of gyrinch. Her using stain glass to fill magneto with holes is the highlight.

It's ironically Jean that beats Maddie, but through said compassion. Jean is in a coma after escaping, or being let go to cause chaos, and only wakes up thanks to Logan. Logan had a not at all subtle crush on jean throughout all of XTAS. it was honestly deeply unhealthy and not really reciprocated. It was implied once she had feelings but that's about it, pretty much lke the comics before new x-men.

Yet now.. things change as what wakes her up is his deep feeling. Am I saying this message is healthy, that just pining after someone's wife and one day they'll notice you? Fuck no, I don't think they thought that through, but a later part shows thorugh all his moping about jean leaving, Logan loves HER, and wont' stop her happy. He could've said he didn't want her to go or done something.. but he didn't. Well Maddie to go but he thought i was jean and so did she

Logan.. is left ot the background in 97. He's not out of focus like Beast, Morph and Bishop, he gets this subplot with jean, plenty of great interactions with Kurt once he joins, and is often his usual surly voice of "just stab em already." he's also happy to celebrate Jubilee's birthday and I feel we were robbe of seeing logan play laser tag and arcade games. This isn't a bad thing as he still gets to snikkt, be put on merchandise (including an x-men 97 i'm wearing right now), and get stuff to do and while cal dod's voices is ntoicably lower it dosen't really hurt his performance any. We get all the wolverine we want.. but he also dosen't take up the oxygen.

Before jean can process that though she has to help her clone, heling Maddie realize she's a person too and has one thing jean dosen't: Nathan. Maddie snaps out of it, she was tricked, we were over this and after bidding nathan goodbye.. leaves. Jean does offer her to stay.. but she needs her own life. Her friends already made it clear they don't see her as jean with their inital reaction, and as far as she knows, Scott would choose "the real jean".

So a month or two passes offscreen

Maddie has moved on with her life: She's joined Genosha's quiet council which has people she knew as Jean but won't constnatly compare her. She's doing something good. She's also dooing scott.

Yeah I mentioned the affair earlier and like I said it's a bit better here: Scott isn't manipulated into it before setting into things and there's more shades of grey. While Scott SHOULD have broken up with Jean, we established from his freezing on maddie in the first place that Scott.. is bad at emotoinal stuff. It dosen't make it okay for either of them, it's clear he realized maddie was still a person and what they shared was still real.

Thing is while Jean's right to be mad at Scott for not just.. breaking up with her... we didn't really get into how much of an asshole jean comes off. Keep in mind sh'es being cheated on with her husband... yet moments before in episode.. she tries to kiss Logan. It's clear she also has feelings for someone else, tried to cheat, and only didn't because Logan knew it'd be wrong. Granted he also projected that her and scott's relationship is going great when it very much wasn't and it's also very weird he just kinda.. tunes Maddie's existance out. There's a second Jean out there and he just.. has no reaction. Guy either has major tunnel vision or really does think he's that unlovable that any jean would prefer scott. Probably both.

So while Jean is right to be angry.. the fact she nearly cheated and what she sasys about Maddie drains the sympathy out of me. She says "Run off to genosha with my clone". Again Maddie had NOTHING to do with what happened to her and was technically with Scott too. I'm once again not saying the cheating was okay, Scott should've broken things off with Jean but was too scared to. It still wouldn't of been great for Jean to be left at bad time in her life... but if Scott is intrested in someone else, let alone another Jean he should tell his wife and actually talk about it instead of waiting for it to blow up. He's honest about how unhappy they clearly are after everything when Jean fights with him.. but only AFTER he was caught. Neither Summers comes out of this looking good: Scott couldn't be fucking honest, and Jean is a hypcorite who unpersons her literal other self simply because it's now convient to do so.

But like most of the romantic drama in this series, genosha hits it like a brick and in a heartbreaking moment... Maddie is wiped out with her son failing to save her. And as we find out later, Nathan has tried this again and again despite knowing it's a fixed point in time. And while I feel weird about bringing up kamar tahj, as it's a wholly mcu thing, I'm fine with this mcu point being added here. The idea some things happen and can't be taken out without destroying time. Genosha is so foundational to this timeline now Cable can't save his mom. And yes we'll be throwing nathan in here too.

Maddie's death wakes Jean up and she feels genuinely terrible for how she thought of her, realizing they were sisters.. and now she's gone. Granted Maddie COULD pop back up, though I mostly feel that's possible since we never saw the body or the death onscren. We saw sebastian shaw and banshee get desntigrated. We saw Remy's corpse and even that's not going to stop him from coming back. I do get the reason for Maddie's death, the suddeness of all this potetial storyline and her whole life going away... but I do hope she comes back as she was a great addition.

Jean and Scott's crumbling relationship is tabled for the rest of the season, their sorta together, but simply don't have the time to talk about how damaged their relationship is. Instead Jean while getting some awesome fights, mostly takes a back seat for

THE SCOTT AND NATHAN SUMMERS DADDY ISSUES HOUR!!!!!!!

Cable is back for the end of days and cold to his dad for sending him into the future. Scott puts all the blame on himself, when he had no choice and Bishop and Nathan got seperated. Scott Summers worst enemy as always is Scott Summers, unable to forgive himself for something he coudln't stop or see like his own dad he didn't abandon him on purpose: Corsair thought Scott died, and Scott had to send nathan away or watch him die.

Thankfully he lightens up as he goes, with the blaack leather quip and all, realizing it's likely not all his fault. It woud've been nice if we had this revelation on screen but still. Scott still has daddy issues to spare though as his dad is back from space.. no not the pirate the psychic bald man.

Charles returns, more on that later, and while for most of the x-men it's a relief, Scott feels once again abandoned and pissed about Charles trying to give him a normal life. Which.. is fair. While a lot of it is Scott almost had one but turns out Sinister would never let that happen, Charles.. coudl've left the WHY he left it to magneto in the will, especially since you know Scott read that thing front to back ten times to try and figure out why Daddy seemingly didn't love him anymore. He also did so without Scott's consent. Granted blaming Charles for Magneto is a step too far as .. no Scotty, erik tried. It was genocide what drove him to try and destroy the planet.

So the couple seperate to go do what they need to do: Jean takes Nathan to go after Bastion, Scott goes into space. And Scotty leaves the season with one more fuckup, if once again one you can understand. When he hears Jean almost die, he stops the team from finishing magneto to give her more time... which results in logan trying to murder Magneto and Erik ripping out his metal. It's something that will likely fester, as it's hard to see Logan forgiving this entirely. Yet at the same time... Cyclops words to logan as he's fighting to repair himself.. make it clear he know who jean REALLY loves now... and it'd break her if he died. "SO live".

Scott in this series is engaging: He's a badass.. but also all too ready to fuck up.. but instead of being because "he's the leader maN" like the past it's because.. he's mortal. He's fallable. He fucks up but it's in ways you can understand from his guitl complex to his issues with charles. He's TRYING to do the right thing but his need to do so combats with the fact life is complicated and mutant life doubly so. He ends the season in a place of peace shockingly.. when thinking he'll die he has jean let him contact nathan, making peace with his son and himself. He dosen't and may get that chance to raise the boy he thought he never would, but I can't wait to see.

So onto Jean, who at the same time had an awesome fight with sinister, throwing a whole bowling alley at the motherfucker. Sinister activates his tramp mutant old man and Cable nearly kills her... but then we get a conviently timed deus ex machina. Now look.. Jean getting the power of the phoenix again.. dosen't make a ton of sense, comes out of nowhere, and is a pretty giant ass pull. That said... Jean collaring bastion and then stripping sinister of his dna leaving him a withered husk, after everything he'd done to the summers family. Cathartic as hell. Jean's story dosen't get a bow or anything, but this series does her well.

So that leaves us with two more to tackle. The first is Nathan whose not in hte love triangle for obvious reasoons but is the result of it. Cable is just kinda there to resent his dad, give us exposition and be a tease for next season. He's played well, fun to watch and that tearjerker with his parents hurts. But he's there. Look foward to seeing x-force next time. Not a super fan of the team but it might mean getting to see sam again.

So that leaves just one more: Morph. Morph mostly sticks to the background, his role early on being "Logan's best friend". But it's a fun role to see as with Nightcrawler not coming in till mid season, this Logan.. doosen't have many friends left. He's sorta friends with Storm, Gambit and Rogue but keeps all three at claws length, figths with scott constnatly, pines after jean and sees Charles as his dad but won't admit it despite being way older than him. Jubilee and Beast are the only ones on the team in the og he really seemed to like and actually admit it to himself. Hank, similar to nightcrawler in the comics and this series, breaks through and makes him laugh and Jubilee is like a daughter to him. Morph was his best friend, the series shows just how close there are and when Morph ran off, Logan ran after him till it was clear Morph didn't want to be found. When Morph returned to the team, Logan helped him face his fears.

So here we get to see them in their natural state... and Morph helps. He instantly sees Logan's pining moping about jean and mocks it, but in a way to get Logan out of it. When it seems like Jean's actually leaving, he offers him beer and when that dosen't work, turns into Sabertooth for a round of horseplay. You see how much care and trust is there.

Morph does get a LITTLE more to do. While their main role is using their upgraded powers to give us cameos for characters they coudln't squeeze into this season, but to tease them for presumibly future adventures in cases like Magik, their clearly rattled by sinister and gets the last laugh when the motherfucker is deaged. When Sinister has the nerve to ask for his old face... Morph gives the new one and clearly takes delight. Morph is great here and Karlak is an improvment over the original.

That said there is a tease for next season as it's revealed Morph isn't just friends with logan.. their in love with him, saying so while shifted as jean to get him to fight on. They likely knows Logan dosen't feel the same way, either because he's straight or simply dosen't feel that way if he isn't but wants him to get better and I hope next season they gets more to do.

Lifedeath: A Love Story

Storm is in a weird place in x-men 97: She's both the center of a major arc, one of the seasons best.. but as a result is gone for most of the season outside of said arc and takes a back seat in the finale, with things being so dire she never gets a chance to react to the maddie thing and being on defense during the raid on Bastion's Islan means she isn't really a factor in the final battle. While most of the team still concious get to kick bastions ass, I don't remember Storm getting ot do much .

That said it ends up working and was sadly necessary: The cast of X-Men 97 is MASSIVE with the main cast containing around 15 major characters, some of hwom are only main for a few episodes but still get focus like Cable or Forge. Even taking them and Roberto out and sticking them in recurring, that's still 13 x-men to juggle. The show does so decently: Nightcrawler dosen't show up till halfway through and joins the team in the wake of Remy's absence, they split the team in two for the big climax with two members having joined team wait to die slowly, they juggle decently with only Bishop feeling like a plot device.

So Storm gets plenty of presence in the first two episodes, takling with Jean and cementing their friendship. It was implied in the original series but 97 does a good job making it feel real in a short time. She calms down maddie (Who both parties think is jean at that point), and admits her own wants to be human once upon a time. It's a good idea to struggle with: that your proud of who you are, but can wonder if it would be easier if you weren't. I'm a proud bisexual, but preferring women and not dating a lot in general it'd be easy to hide that. I never HAD to tell my family.. I just wanted to. I wanted to be who I am. Not every queer person gets that option, and it's that pull of living saftely and being who you are.

And storm gets the option.. in the most horrifyign way possible. Taking the energy ray thing for magneto, she looses her power... and is devistated as anyone would be. For many mutatns their power is a curse: Rogue can't touch anyone, Scott can't look anyone directly in the eye without decapitating them, Beast accepts his but hates how he gets prejudged for what he is. There's even that mole guy from XTAS who gets beaten to death by a mob despite having no powers except looking like a mole.

For Storm it's a gift: not feeling the currents, the weather... it feels like one of her sense are gone. THUNDER, startles her because she can't sense it. It's a metaphor for someone loosing a sense in an accident, something that could make you you like your sense of hearing. I"m not sure I could take loosing mine and loosing music.

So Storm realizes she can't figure out who she is NOW and be an x-man and leaves and finds in a texas bar Forge. As I covered before Forge.. was barely a thing in XTAS. He was mission contorl for bishop, head of x-factor, who he left between series, and helped out during the phallanx covenant two parter.. but really never bonded with most of the x-men or did anything.

97 takes advantage of that to flesh him out: He has a small house with a big lab taking up the basement, left x-factor, has been in the goverment a long time and is clearly attracted to ororo. Their chemistry feels natural here, both strong capable people who are drawn to one another by their free spirits and reliance on their gifts. Forge is everything to him too. He also has lost something and had to get used to a replacement, something not usper called attnetion too but still present in his prosetic leg. Granted this being a superhero universe, his leg is a super leg he built himeslf, but it's still not the same.

As discussed.. he's also the one who in a way is responsible for Storm's predicament. He's able to counter the neutralizer tech.. because he built it. The scene where he reveals it is powerful, and again a massiv eimporvment over lifedeath, with Forge admitting it and his guilt and rightfully being called out for lying.

Unlike the comics though... Storm's forced to work through her issues with forge right away. She plans to run.. but then the adversary shows up, forcing her to fight her inner demons.

It's revealed that desire to be human.. is what's holding her back. It wasn't a thing of the past and the idea she can avoid the cycle of death and destruction that comes with being herself has held her back. The device worked.. but she can't stomach it. Storm has to confront this hidden part of her, something i'm sure a lot of ppeople deal with: a thought about yourself you can't stand because it's so vile.

It's only by facing this and her issues with forge, going to get Daniel a cure, that she can be free from her literal demon and metaphorical ones: while the adversary tries to taunt her.. she realizes she was scared, it was tempting.. but she can't fall to that idea, that dream. Being a mutant.. is who she is. She can hide it but she can't change it... and she dosen't want to hide it. A moment of weakness dosen't make you weak, it allows you to become stronger and Storm soars out gloriously in her 70's costume. Sadly she does try to take a break.. but as we discussed... there's no time for that. But her development allows her to be what she's always been: a pillar for her friends, while acknolwdging she dosen't have to be just that.

Forge is pretty great, taking what I always loved about the character and throwing out the creepy undertones and bits of accidental racisim. His cheyne heritage is present, but not overwrought, he feels genuinely guilty about lying, and in general is a better guy. He's also a setup for season 2 as loosing ororo he tries to carry on her dream... only to find he may be able to save her yet. Also his name is daniel Lone eagle which is neat.

Jubilee and Roberto: Out and Proud, Closeted and Afraid

So for 97 Jubilee got a plot i'm shocked never happened in XTAS: Jubilee got a boyfrined. Part of this might of been a fear of serilization by the editors: Beast's one romance arc, while powerful and painful, was a one off episode, Gambit and Rogue was will they or won't they, and I get the sense they didn't want Cyclops and Jean to stay married after the proposal that ended season 1. The closest Jubilee got was Longshot, and he was still a grown man with hollow bones like a bird and not really intrested in her as more than a friend. Thank god.

So 97 uses this gap to help bring in a new face, one who was totally on the table for the previous series but was never used for some werid reason: Sunspot aka Roberto DeCosta

So cards on the table: Roberto DeCosta is one of my faviorite mutants. Hearing he was not only getting adapted but to the main cast was my main reason for checking out the series before the trailer dropped. Berto has been adapted before, but in very small parts with New Mutants being the exception.. and new mutants is so eh he wasn't really given anything resembling a personality.

Roberto was around before Jubilee as part of the new mutants, Xavier's previous class I planned to cover this mutant month but then this review took several days to get done. The New Mutants were the next generation of mutants, various aged teens thrown together with the intention of guiding their gifts but since the x-men existed, not with the intent of them being the x-men like last time. This didn't protect them from danger but gave us some of mutantkinds best like Magik, Wolfsbane, and two of my other faviorites Cypher, a teen who can decypher any launguage and Warlock, a delightful alien from another planet whose dad is trying to kill him

Warlock can and does use english, and is a good selffriend.

Only Wolfsbane, Cannonball and Warlock showed up in XTAS, as a bulk of the new mutants were out of the picture in the comics at the time: Dani moonstar left, Karma was left in comic book limbo for a while, Magma was written off and Warlock was throught dead but came back during the 90's. Wolfsbane got a voiceless cameo but the other two did get full episodes, Cannoball a decentl set up but badly animated episode about a shady goverment agnecy trying to recruit sam, and Warlock the center of the phallanax covneant two parter.

Roberto was nowhere to be found and thus fair game and honestly a perfect fit: With age fluctuations, Roberto and Jubilee have never been around each other or the same age long enough to date, though now their both nebuously in their 20's maybe Gail Simone will make that happen. Do it gail. Do ittttttt.

97.. just drops him in at 17 or 18, same age Jubes is as by this point. You see why the two click: Roberto is also prideful, fashionable and a smooth talker with tons of sass. It's no suprise he's visting just one episode after this and their making out and implied to go further what's implied to only be weeks later.

Yet they also contast nicely: While Jubilee was uneasy with her powers, by this point she's a proud x-man, in decent control of them and trying to guide Roberto through those rough early stages. She had disaproving guardians when her power woke up but soon found a new family in the x-men.

Roberto... has his birth parents but is dead afraid they won't accept him, something even queer people with the most accepting parents (raises hand) have felt. MY moms reaction was pretty much "Okay good for you", and I was still terrified of telling her, never mind my dad whose argument against gay marriage was "I guess I can marry my cat now". He was also shockingly accepting and at worst told me to make sure I use protection... which feels mildly insulting but compared to the rejection I was expecting i'll take "well meaning homophobia".

Roberto hiding it from his parents isn't taken from the comics.. but tha'ts only because his x gene activated during a football match after a racist winged him. Not for being a mutant, but for being afro latino. And yeap this adaptation once again falls into the trap of not making Roberto dark skinned. It's annoying and there's no excuse for it. Admtiely his skin color DOES fluctuate, but I still wish writers and casting remmbered this.

Anyways, Roberto is terrfied so he avoids the subject, though he sees a cronneberg of his mother during the nightmare sequence in episode 1. Gambit also saw Magneto and Rogue reinacting the finale of society.

Roberto's parents are changed slightly from the comics. Their barely being around for their son is accurate: in the comics his dad was a succesful 80's buisness scumbag and his mom a rainforest advocate. Their marriage could be best described as "He tried to kill her once and failed because the new mutants were around then tried to brush it off to his son as a whoopsie". Here they don't seem to be trying to have each other killed at least, but still aren't around.

One thing that is accurate to the ocmics is tha tin the long run, only one is important. In the comics it was his 80s buisness scumbag dad who later joined the Hellfire Club. Here it's his 90's fundraising scumbag mom. She seemingly accepts him coming out, having figured it out as he set a boat or two on fire. Classic Roberto. She accepts it.. but wants him to stay closted for optics.

So before we get to Jubilee starring daggers at her so hard it's suprised Mrs Decosta dosen't bleed out already, let's talk about Jubes one episode, Motendo. Jubilee dosen't get a ton of devleopment, most of it being simply the transition between series and into adulthood. Thankfully Motendo does a lot in only 11 minutes to give her an arc.

So it's her birthday but Magneto dosen't want to celebrate because he dosen't understand childhoods. Understandable given everything, but as we discussed he's still a tad dickish for his main reason for not doing this: he'd look rediculous. Still bummed we didn't get magneto doing lazer tags

So Jubes throws a fit in her room, as she do, mad at this and all the changes: clones, magneto, morph's distractingly bald head. She wants to escape into nostalgia. It's a nice bit of commentary, especially from a show that exists because of nostalgia yet chooses not to bank soley on it.

So naturaly mojo gave her a video game console and she ends up reliving her past hits. She clearly wants to stay while Roberto is like "babe we're kinda in mortal danger" and only him nearly dying snaps her out of it. Thankfully Jubilee can rescue herself.. or rather Abscissa, a copy Mojo made to playtest the game who both shows Jubilee her full potetial of her powers, a setup for the finale, and shows her living in the past.. isn't great. The future is scary.. but it's also full of hope. So Jubilee leaves, looses her virinity and all is well

Then genosha and that attempt to come out happen and Jubes is back to being pissy, but this time entirely righeously as Mrs Decosta is throwiing a ball , is salty at the x-men for the xavier thing and generally a dick. So Jubilee decides to spend her not mother in laws cash. They get captured.. and instead of defending her son, Mrs Decosta bascially tells him to go with them and had the emp not happened, Roberto may not of lived much longer. It's a horrifying scene and one all too painfully real: sometimes.. a loved ones love is really that conditional.

So roberto dosen't have time to process his pain and anger when Magneto shows up. Roberto joining him does feel less earned than Rogue, as he was more "Scared to be a mutant".. but still makes sense. Roberto knew his mom was ashamed of his gift.. but didn'tk now how far she'd go and hasn't had time to process this before a big scary man shows up and says "let her die son". It's very clear from the confrontation on Asteroid m his mood is "WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO? OH GOD OH GOD" and seems mildly relived to both reconcile with Jubes and get out of that.

He does level up, if offscreen, training before the three part finale and taking on bastion, finally taking on his comics name. While Jubes is served well enough by the season, though I wish she had more outside her boyfriend, Roberto's arc feels mildly rushed. They can do more going forward with my boy, including a possible evolution into the strategic badass with a love for the mission impossible theme he is now in the comics, but Roberto's one of the characters who got whacked hardest by the writer having to cram all this story into 10 episodes, knowing they'd likely only get 30 max and only had 20 to start. Roberto isn't done dirty but he could do more and hopefully his and JUbes mia status leads to that next season. So speaking of doing more

And the Rest

We have three x-men left over, all great but all out of focus.

We'll start with the boy: I love beast, and this series dosen't write him bad, he still quotes stuff and is voiced perfectly and gets to hyjack robots twice... but it's also very obvious they didn't have much for Hank to do, and thus one of hte best x-men gets sidelined the most out of the cast. He gets a sorta romance with Trish Tilby which is nice, and frankly her turning into a robot and trying to strangle him is an upgrade from her comics self's excuse of "I don't want to be accused of bestiality because you look like aslan now". Still while Trish is left in a robot coma, and we can find out if she willingly consented to being a murder robot and is thus a racist poc or if it was just bastion spreading it around next season. But frankly i'ts just kinda there in a seaon that already has a romantic subplot for every damn x-man. I'm hoping season 2 gives hank an actual plot ,they really dropped they ball with him.

They never even picked it up with Bishop, whose there soley as a plot device. In previous apperances he was fleshe dout and had a goal. Here he's just waiting for Hank to fix his ride. We never find out WHY he's in the past, why he and cable got sperated, and why it took him as long as it did to come on back. I know season 2 will fill in a lot but while he gets a neat moment or two with his powers, Bishop feels like he's mostly there because fans wanted him to join, but the creators only had two episodes of material for him and couldn't write him out because he's needed to get rid of nathan and set up next season. Like Hank he deserves WAY better next season but given he'll likely be integral to rescuing the others, we have a better gaurantee than hank.

Next is one of my faviorite mutants, the man, the myth the fuzzy, it's nightcrawler. And Kurt fans.. we ate good here as while Kurt's only in half of the series not only does he finally join the team in this continuity, he finally picks up a sword. See XTAS focused more on Kurt's spirtual side, which has always been present.

XTAS choose to simply focus on that over kurt's other aspects: his fun loving nature, razor sharp wit, his love of old errol flynn movies, his love of swordplay and adventure born out of that love, dating his adopted sister for several years in universe.. okay maybe that last part can go die in the heart of the sun.

It wasn't a bad take on kurt: It still got his friendship with wolverine and kind empathetic nature in, with as we discussed him trying badly to save his racist brother when most would understand not trying to redeem the guy trying to kill you for what you are. The fact the religious angle was present at all was groundbrekaing for the time and something the Lewalds had to fight the network for.

So 97 keeps him as a preist and former monk, but also allows other aspects to play out: being on krakoa allows him to be more playful and being with the x-men allows him more opportunities to kick ass and triple wield swords using his tail. As a result 97 continues the good groundwork.. but getting Kurt out of the guest sport allows him to be a fuller kurt wagner. He dosen't get a romance subplot because bigger things are hapening and we already have 10 of those, but otherwise he gets to be both a man of faith who can scare dracula and a swashbuckling elf.

He also gets to be the heart of the x-men like in the comics: while Storm also filled that roll in the comics, Kurt was often the voice of peace and a bridge. When Colossus broke up with Kitty Pryde because he found someone who wasn't 13, thank god, Nightcrawler went with him when Wolverine took him into town for a drink to make sure no one got stabbed. Here he helps his sister best he can, helps logan and jubilee process their grief and is there for his friends. I can't wait to see how he meshes with the rest of the team as asid efrom rogue most of the group he's stranded iwth in ancient egypt are characters he hasn't got to interact with in this continuity. Also seeing him join the main credits... god that felt good.

Finally we have Charles. Charles is only around for a few episodes, and the show's handling of him is mixed. The characterization is spot on: he's kind, open and can't let his students go, wanting to relocate his girlfrien'ds bird colonlist empire to earth, something even she knows they'd never accept and gently turns down. Like scott he puts his duty over his life. He TRIES to reverse it, and get the brain wipe.. but he loves his kids too much. He's willing to try for a new life among the stars, but he won't give up his students. He will howeve rschool birds in colonlism, pointing out the empire just takes and homonginzes like any empire. He also stuffs an apple in his sister in laws mouth. Charles is great in his intro.

The issue is.. the first part of the series dosen't clarify if he's dead or not: Scott has his death certifcate, the world thinks he's dead, and Magneto acts like he's dead. They KNEW Charles was coming back, so while the world thinking he's dead is fine... there was no where they could hint at him being in space? It is a nice swerve he's alive.. but it's confusing as fuck for people who haven't watched the original. They explain he recovered but it's a bit much to go from Genosha to "Charles xavier in space with his bird wife". I was numb to it because i'm used to how weird as shit the x-men are. I Proudly reviewed the time they fought dracula and almost did again. But my good friend @jess-the-vampire was deeply confused and I can't blame her. The shows accesible for the most part if you know the broad strokes of x-men... but the shows and films after x-tas leave out the weirder shit so ther'es no aliens or demons. So introducing the shiar is a bit much to take. I"m not saying leave them out, I MISSED that weird shit, but maybe mention them offhand. It'd still be weird a sfuck but we'd be expecting them at some point. It spoils the suprise but when the suprise takes most of your audience to google to find out what th efuck is going on, it's not worth it.

It also takes some of the sting out knowing he was alive. That said him being alive wraps around well as it also means Charles..c an't just avoid his actions. Like Scott and Ororo, he throws away his chance at a happy life away from strife to go help the x-men. And Scott is there to yell at him for it. He meant well with the will.. but his refusal to explain just hurt his son and it's a rift that hasn't quite healed and will likely fester in season 2.

Charles is decent here though. Ross Marquand is good in the roll nad after years of seeing xavier at some of his worst in the krakoan age, it was very nice to see Xavier be a kind mentor and idealist again. No secret deaths or enslaved danger rooms. Just a man hwo can fuck up but means well. And is also very much in love with his best friend and arch enemy. And that's lovely.

Humanity would rather DIE than have kids like US!

So we've come to our final character section

Yeah this review.. has been a lot to put together. Bastion is our big bad for the season, but hides for most of it, only vaugely hinted at in Lifedeath Part 1 before his debut in Bright Eyes.

It works incredibly well though: We have no idea the goverments funding him or that the sentinel program is even THAT robust. We ssee Trask with a few leftovers, the hint someone's funding him, but that's it. It seemed more likely Sinister was the mastermind.

But that lack of info is what makes him terrifying: out of semeingly nowhere a man the x-men had never heard of creates an entire shadowy genocide operation. It has the same effect Cassandra Nova did in the comics, this new big bad coming in and having been there far longer than they could've prepared for. It's hard to pull off but x-men 97 does so with style.

What helps is that Bastion like the best x-villians is given layers. In the comics they tried this a little with his mother, but mostly defaulted to hateful racist man. Here he's still hateful racist man.. but the chilling kind who tries to make it sound resonable. A shouty demagog is angerous sure, at the time of this article one is running for president again. But someone who appeals to the "logic" in hatred, the petty fears of people without just screaming them is often more terrifying. Bastion is the project 2025 to the friends of humanity's january 6th: changing the system to destroy it for those he deems lesser.

Bastion has a smooth demanor, the perfect counterpoint to our heroes: he's cold, calculating and dosen't care who dies as long as among the bodies are mutantkind and the rest made into slaves. He makes big speeches about how right he is, smugly assured he'll win.

Yet behind all this.. is a pile of self loathing. Due to being flooded with nimrod, Bastion is essentially a mutant himself. He may not have an x gene far as we know, but he's technopathic, had bright red skin, and was ostracisted. He's not much diffrent from our heroes.. yet his mother refusing charles help meant Bastion never realized mutants weren't that diffrent and let himself become a monster, become what the sentinel programming wanted: the perfect weapon. Like many a far right extremist, bastion becomes what he is because he's lashing out and found an echo chamber telling him he's right. IN this case it was robot programs in his brain but still.

Bastion is not forgivable. Scott tries to get him to join the x-men.. but this feels unwiedly. Well meant, but given all he'd done, no way in fuck that should happen. But I get the point: To try and save the villian rather than let them die. Bastion committed genocide.

Yet he's pitiable.. his last words are "Humanity would rather die than have kids like us!"... the truth laid bear.. he did this not because deep down he thought humanity was superior, he tried to hyjack them, or the sentinels were.. but because he hated what he wasand coudlnt' stand people who were happy with who they were. He couldn't stand being a mutant.

Odds and ends

A few last things before we go. Chris Britton's sinister is great nad terifying. Good stuff. He steps right back into it easily.

I loved all the various marvel cameos. From Spidey, both in and out of costume, to iron man, to cap it was nice to see all corners of the marvel universe. I especailly loved getting a zemo cameo.

I do wish we'd gotten an actual pperance of magik as somehow between the og and now, she's both now a teen and has been kidnapped by demons and all that. Probably setup for next sesaon.

Cap's a bit of a dick here. While yes in the 80's and 90's, cap would abide the goverment more, this dosen't feel like a thing he'd hold back on. He DID quit over trying to exert more contorl, he'd work that red tape.

Conclusion:

X-Men 97 is excellent, both in i'ts own right and as a love letter to the x-men. Well scripted, animated and acted, it's the best of the four x-men animated shows and possibly the best adaptation of the work. This is a true masterpice and while it took me nearly a week of work on an doff to get this done, it was well worth it

Next Time: Kurt Wagner finds out he has too mommies as we look at x-men blue origins

#x-men 97 #x-men #wolverine #cyclops #jean grey #storm #magneto #bastion #rogue #gambit #forge #comics #animation

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popculturebuffet · 1 year ago

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Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Retrospective Part 1: Breakout (Episodes 1-7) (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Assemble all you happy people and welcome to the first of many looks at one of the greatest cartoons in marvel history, an adaptation that honors the source material while streamlining and improving it to create something impressive. One of the best adaptations and one of the last before the MCU was in full force. It's a show unlike any other, it's Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

And the timing isn't concidential. While i'm a few months off, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the avengers, the first time the team assembled and hulk was a clown for a bit because the 60s. And since I both hadn't really talked about the Avengers on this blog despite being a massive marvel nerd and because i'd rewatched this very arc a few months back, I was happy to jump on it when Kev suggested this. He won't be sticking around for the rest of the retrospective, but I plan to cover this series on and off for the foreseable future as i've only seen about half of it and hadn't rewatched it in years and it was about damn time I did. And i'm glad I am as this is one of the sharpest shows in marvel history.

For those less familiar Earth's Mightiest heroes was a cartoon that ran for two seasons from 2010 to 2012, and was a fan faviorite for most comic nerds like myself, as what I caught of it I love. It's not hard to see why either: EMH is a giant love letter to the Avengers history and Marvel in general: Ciro Nireli, Christopher Yost and Joshua fine, who developed the show, all were clearly fans and thus try to cram as many iconic foes for each of the avengers as they could into this show, from cameos to arc villians to our big threats, just about every major avengers threat you could want makes it's way into season 1.

It's also a smart remix: The show takes after the earliest days of the team, starting with the original roster of Iron Man (Tony Stark), Ant-Man/Giant Man (Hank Pym), Wasp (Janet-Van Dyne), Hulk, and Thor (Odinson), while soon adding cap as happened in the comics, as well as adding longtime mainstays hawkeye and black panther soon into the season, with many of season 1's episodes adapting early avengers tales and the art style is a very stylistic jack kirby style art, while still being it's own thing with a bit more expression and some anime styling in the eyes and how the action unfolds.

That said it's clear the crew was also aware those early tales could use a coat of paint and thus the series takes from all across the heroes histories, combining Kang's first apperance with the later epic kang dynasty for instance, or setting up Carol Danvers becoming Ms Marvel as soon as Captain Marvel debuts. It's a streamlined approach that feels like what the ultimates should've been: honoring the past but looping in the present, with the classic avengers being assembled using the breakout arc from the new avengers. More ont hat later. The result is a fresh take on the cast that feels awesome.

It also feels unique as this was before a LOT of change swept through the marvel universe and productions: the x-men and the ff still show up beofre their LONG unecessary hiatus due to marvel being dicks about not owning either's film rights, the mcu was just budding so only iron man is modeled after that version as Cap and Thor's films would air the same year as EMH, and Black Widow is a recurring character rather than part of the team, though it was hinted they might have her join up eventually.

It also happened before a lot of comics biggest events of the 2010s, which like the MCU stuff isn't bad at all, it's just neat to see just how diffrent things were: Carol Danvers wasn't captain marvel yet, next gen heroes like Ms Marvel or Miles Morales weren't around, and ideas like Jane as Thor or Sam Wilson as Cap hadn't happened. It's an intresting time capusle of a comics brand before it changed forever.

So opening this capusle is a treat. As for this batch of episodes, EMH started in a unique way: With shorts. See at the time cartoons were just starting to captalize on the concepts of minisodes, tiny shorts in continuity usually distributed via youtube. Most shows just have some skits, like Lapis trying to destroy her phone thinking Steven's trapped or Tilly Green getting buried in cats

EMH decided to get ambitious with theres: TWENTY shorts, all from what I can tell intended to be repackaged as full episodes, all setting up important stuff for the series and serving as introductions to our main cast before they all assemble properly, including later additions Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Panther.

It's an approach I respect: much like the MCU was doing around the same time, it allows the writers to set up each character, get to know who they are as a person, what their deal is and put them into place for the series proper, essentially giving them their own solo series like they had in the comics. It's a great idea and makes these feel like characters who had their own lives and plenty of adventures BEFORE we step into them, and makes the idea of them coming together all the more awesome. It also fits the avengers well: the x-men and fantastic four are largely their own spheres of the marvel universe and most members of those teams were created for them. With the avengers it's marvels' best and brightest all assembled into one massive dream team, so showing said team's adventures. We even get setup for later additions to the team: Black Panther gets a short detailing his origin story and Hawkeye is a key part of hulks before getting his own.

I have only two gripes with this setup: the first is that it's long. It's well done and important but it's still a LOT of setup, and both times i've found myself happy to get to the end: Glad I took the journey but thankful we can get to the main event.

The other is the structure: as a result of them being shorts every non-thor episode here has one segment that serves as an epilogue to the others.. but really dosen't lead as effortlessly in. It feels like the episode ended and we're now just in an extended post credit's sequence. Not a bad one, all of these are necessary and important, it just shows why this type of structure wasn't repeated: it has it's limits, and they show at the end of almost every episode. You could for instance cut out the kang bit that starts the cap one and the kang segment that ends the cap ones and have a cohesive story. Their still GOOD shorts, it's just clear they don't quite work as a cohesive episode, which woudln't be an issue if these shorts also weren't clearly part of the season order.

Still I admit these are minor complaints. They drag the presentation down slightly.. but not enough for me to not have enjoyed this episode pile. So assemble under the cut as I break down the first 7 episodes of Avengers: EMH

Iron Man is Born! (Micro Episodes: Iron Man is Born!, HYDRA Lives, Behold, The Mandroids!, and Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

So our first episode. .is third on disney+. Getting this out of the way if you watch these on disney +, start with this one, as disney mildly messed up the airing order. It isn't as bad as say Ducktales was at first, which was so bad the creators had to ask directly, but it's still very noticable disney coudln't be arsed to.. move two episodes on the list they gave people down a few slots. Then again this is the same company who won't give us the weekenders dammit, so i'm not surprised, just mildly in convinced.

Anyways this short follows Iron Man and as we go through our mightiest heroes, I thought it'd be fun to give my own personal history with each character. As I said, I really haven't gotten to dive into the avengers on this blog. I've covered Avengers #200 and Avengers Annual #10 this year but the former is more a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants story guest starring Ms Marvel and the Avengers, and the former.. is a nightmare from which there is no waking where only The Scarlet Witch and the Vision are remotely in character. Neither were really a time to talk about the team, the members of said team, or anything besides deep hurting and an antidote for said deep hurting that involves Carol Danvers verbally bitchslapping the avengers. Which is awesome, but not really a time to go "Gee this is why iron man is so great".

So starting with the cool exec with a heart of steel, I'm a pretty big iron man fan. I love Tony as a character a guy whose arrogant and overly macho at times.. but deep down is a man who just wants to make a better world after helping burn it to the ground for a profit. Someone who can be an arrogant know it all ass.. but also someone who once you've got his loyalty, he'd die for you. A man struggling with addiction, but whose also a poster boy for getting better.

I became a fan of Tony's around the movie, as before that I only really knew him as "that guy who was on spider-man once", "that weird cartoon I watched once or twice" or "That fucking asshole who ruled the superhero community with an iron fist and kicked every dog he could find post civil war".

Thankfully the movie changed that, and along with finding out his fascinating history and the utterly awesome run by Matt Fraction that launched alongside the movie, something I badly want to cover in some form at some point, I was a fan of shell head for life. My favorite runs for him aren't anything suprising: Fraction's run with invincible iron man, Dennis O'Neil's awesome epic run that sees Obdiah Stane break tony with every intention of having his enemy relapse and see's tony rebuild himself while Rhodey puts on the suit, and of course the classic Layton and Michillne run that introduced Tony's Alcholism in the first place.

The movie is important to this series as it not only launched the MCU, but said MCU incoming is likely why it happened, and while it was still young enough at the time to not impact this series heavily for most characters, that wasn't going to happen with tony. Tony, his CFO Pepper and his best friend and military liaison Rhodey, are all heavily modeled after the movie versions. That said given said versions are entirley accurate to the comics and all the MCU did to Tony was give him even more swagger.. this isn't remotely a bad thing and making sure kids had the iron man they were familiar with dosen't hurt the series. The suit's still more designed after the then current bleeding edge suit from the comic, one of my favorites. I have no issue with using stuff from the MCU, the mcu is mostly great. My issue is when latter stuff kinda.. ignores the comics except to bring in more people to punch.

Iron Man is Born gets tony down pat, in large part thanks to his VA, Eric Loomis. To my shock Loomis hasn't done a ton outside of play tony in this show and various video games but damn if few do it better. He gets the swagger, the desire to do better, and the stubborn ass refusal to let people help him down PERFECT, as does the writing. This is tony stark. Leading with him was also smart given, again the movie would be fresh on everyone's mind.

What's also neat about this one is it dosen't put tony up against any familiar foes. We'll still see some in Breakout and like the other heroes here he's already well experienced by the time the series opens up. The only thing close to it is Ultimo, a giant robot he fights in cell phone footage at the start of the episode, and even then that's just to establish Iron Man Slaps.

No instead it sells Tony's obession with his tech not hurting people by putting him up against some HYDRA robots using his tech. For those less familiar with marvel stuff, HYDRA are a bunch of snake themed nazi offshoots who are everywhere and generally the go too mook to punch in the face in the marvel universe. Who dosen't want to punch a snake nazi? Except bob. He's just there for dental. Oh bob.

The fight with said HYDRA bots is awesome: not only are they well designed, but it's classic iron man stuff: his suit running out of power, and tony having to use his brains, and hold out against his suit rapidly draining. Been used before? Sure. Helps establish how Tony fights and how his suit is both super strong and has a logical weakness in battery life? Yup.

And the best part is.. while HYDRA are his main threat... the real conflict simmering underneath this one.. is Stark vs S.H.I.E.L.D. the world's top super cops and shady assholes. Wether their being actually helpful or being obtuse and trying to obstruct the hero largely depends on the day, with the MCU making them more helpful and less greasy.

See SHIELD is mad Tony stopped making weapons. Tony is mad they won't quit bugging him about that, as he simply.. dosen't want to be an arms dealer no more. Which is fair. He made their weapons, and as he makes clear to Rhodey who also wants him to work closer with SHIELD, he's still HELPING them. He just won't build weapons. As we find out in breakout he built the Vault, one of four supervillian prisons , this one specializing in tech criminals. So he hasn't STOPPED helping them, he just wont' give them tech to go kill people with, which is fair. While they don't give his origin, at least not yet, it's very clear whatever version of it taught him the same lesson: just because someone else fires the gun dosen't mean you won't have blood on your hands.

So naturally SHIELD"S reaction to Iron Man taking down HYDRA.. is to try to arrest him

Yeah Tony has.. done ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong here.. and Nick Fury, for all his flaws we'll see in VERY short order, is not so stupid as to fire and orders them to stand the fuck down. The fuck is implied.

Tony trying to help them.. instead gets them to fire on him as the SHIELD Agents are using mandroids powered armors using tony's tech.. and unlike the comics where he BUILT the mandroids for them as a compromise, no lethal weapons but still a way to be on even foot with superheroes, here they just flat out used his blueprints to make their own weapons and expect him not to be mad. He has no right to get mad at them for doing this, he sold them the goods and clearly gave them enough legal room to do whatever, but they have no right to be mad at him for SAVING THEIR LIVES.

And they are as while Tony takes down the last hydra bot that suddenly wakes up, when he shows up at the hellicarrier, RIGHTFULLY pissed at being fired on and having them make their own iron man.. maria hill, Nick's right hand and like the comics a total asshole, PUTS A GUN TO HIS HEAD

I mean yes she has him surrounded by shield agents and if fighting them tony would half to hold back.. but he's still a man in a mostly powered armored suit that can suplex a train, while your only strategy is "hope he's really scared of a hand gun".

Fury wisely asks her to stand the fuck down, again fuck's implied, and we get a really compelling argument with him and tony: Tony has every right to not want to sell weapons, while Fury makes the point that with supervillians ont he rise they NEED this tech to compete. Tony still wins in my eyes mostly because while yes he's witholding tech and what not.. SHIELD... isn't hurting. They made the mandroid armors, they have the tech to compete with the hydra bot likely bodying them because it has the element of suprise. THey have a giant hellicarier, tons of staff, and plenty of super powered allies help keeping the various super prisons safe. Granted all four prisons are about to become paper mache, but that's not down to SHEILD being stupid. While Tony dosen't SAY it to his face, which given this is tony is a fucking achivement... the issue isn't that Fury can't handle these or the various super powered heroes out there don't have this covered for now. It's that Fury dosen't have CONTROL over it. IT's a problem inherent in most versions of Nick: it's not enoguh to be the world's top cop he has to CONTROL the situation, the info everything. He's often resonable sure but he puts control over what makes sense and antagonizes valuable allies simply by not respecting they want autonomy.

Our backup story is really just "why nick fury is badass" and "Why hydra is super dangerous". Turns out Fury has their leader, Baron Strucker. Strucker is an egotistical nazi who frequently runs hydra and is Nick's arch enemy and opposite number. So this whole mech thing.. was a smokescreen to get one of their agents, The Grim Reaper in.

The Grim Reaper in the comics is the brother of Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man. We'll get into him more next time as he has a full episode coming up, but long story short, he died, Grim blamed the avengers, and then he tried to kill his brother when Simon came back because he'd put simon on a pedestal. Here the two are pretty much detached and Grim is instead hydra's top enforcer, single handidly breaking in and wrecking up the place, only stopped, and captured alongside strucker, because Nick Fury is that badass. He also life drains fury a bit, giving him his signature white streak from the comics.

Thor The Mighty (Microepisodes: Thor the Mighty, The Siege of Asgard, My Brother My Enemy and the Isle of Silence)

As I said Thor the Mighty is the only one of these episodes that feels like a mostly cohesive 22 minute episode. I mean you can still see the seams where the shorts were, but it's one 22 minute story instead of one long story and one short one connected to the first. It's also not suprisingly my faviorite, but not just for this reason but for having some gorgeous action, great character work and a hell of an ending.

Before all that we have to talk about the god of thunder. Thor's a character I love, I mean I have a mjonr I got a yard sale somehwere around here. But he's also one i'm pickier on story wise: you either have to REALLY sell the scope and granduer of asgard, as done by Walt Simonson, god among men, and currently Al Ewing or do something fresh with it like the start of Jason Aaron' srun, Donny Cate's recent run or my all time faviorite thor story, J MIcheal Strazenzki's run. Thor's not a bad character but there is a tendency to focus on ye olde english and not on him as a person.

EMH thankfully sidesteps that. It shows thor as fucking awesome and has him do cool stuff.. but it also emphasises who the odionson is and WHY he prefers our world over his own. We start with his daily routine: finding some supervillians to punch. He fights the wrecking crew. The Wrecking Crew are villians I like, marvel's designated Jobbers. If you need someone to get their face punched in these are the guys. They CAN be dangerous, see the avengers storyline under sige where the four of them together bodied a slightly frazzled hercules, but their primary there to show up and get knocked down: their strong enough to fight thor, having asgardian enchanted construction tools.

But still not SO strong that say spidey , the runaways or whoever needs a pick me up this week can't body these jackasses. So their the perfect starter foe for thor: powerful enough to give him a good scrap, but not nearly as strong as what he faces on his home turf.

It also serves as a handy intro to Thor's love interest, Jane Foster. The film takes her from a doctor to a paramedic, ironically years before the comics would do the same, and it's a great update: Since Thor isn't spending time as mortal doctor Donald Blake here, there's no real reason for her to be at his practice as a nurse then doctor. Instead she's in the field trying to save lives just like him, and is shown to be fearless DESPITE being a squishy human, getting out to help someone the wrecking crew hurts without any hesitation while her partner cowers in the car instead of helpign. I mean .. I get it , supervillians, but yoru a fucking emt man. Your job is to save lives even at your ownr isk.

Thankfully thor provides backup. And cleans house. The Wrecker TRIES to hold jane hostage, with Thor chastising his lack of honor.. before smacking him in the back of the head with mjonir because hammer's don't respect chilvarly. Thor and Jane hit it off, and I like how even if Jane's entirely in this series to be thor's love intrest.. they give her personality and a reason he falls for her: she's just as dedicated to her job of helping people, and Thor is awed by the fact that DEPSITE not having the powers of a god and being at high risk she does it anyway. Which for us is a normal thing but for thor.. sums up why he likes Midgard so much. On asgard heroisim happens all the time, death is an endless cycle. Here humans are fragile.. but the best of us try to help each other anyway.

Thor is played by Rick D Wasserman and as you can wager i'm mostly focusing on the main cast's voice actors for this review. I"ll point out some others, for instance Jane is voiced by VA legend Kari Whagreen whose also played Charmcaster in the ben 10 franchise and Saturn Girl in the awesome Legion of Superheroes cartoon i'm bound to cover at some point, it's just EMH has a MASSIVE cast and introduces a lot of characters in the span of these 7 episodes, so adressing every single one is a lot to ask. I will try to adress the most important ones and some in future reviews as the voice cast here is positively stacked.

Which makes it weird that once again one of the main cast is a pretty low key voice actor: like with Iron Man, Thor's va did his voice for Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and Marvel Ultimate ALliance 3, but otherwise hasn't really done much else in the main roll. And given just how well Rick slides into the roll of thor as if he was born for this it befuddles me.

But we, and the god of thunder, have bigger issues..s pecifically frost giants thor writing shorthand for "We wanted something big for him to hit" I can only think of one run in recent memory that hasn't invovled thor hitting a frost giant in the face.

Turns out their invasion is being led by Loki. Loki here is another intresting time capsule as a combination of Tom Hidelston's standout performance in Thor and Avengers and character defining runs I need to read and finish respectively from Kireon Gilleon and Al Ewing placed Loki squarely in the anti hero position. As such instead of the genderfluid trickster we know and love, this is the old school loki they were for much of their run and what loki at present is deeply afraid of becomiing again: manipulative, evil and hellbent on burning down everything his dad and brother built.. if with a dope horn helmet. He at least has that.

As such this loki gets into a badass fight with thor, with Thor BEGGING his brother to reconsider.. but it falling on deaf sweet horn helmets. Loki wants to burn it all. Thankfully Thor is able to beat him and being thor does it in the most badass way possible.. gatherting a GIANT STORM above him before focusing all it's energy into a massive lightning bolt. And those horns are really good conductors.

Odin, who sat this one out as his powers are weak at the moment, more on that in a sec, punishes Loki by banishing him to thei isle of silence. It's one of his faviorite pastimes. The other is questioning his son's life choices, wanting Thor to stay to guard Asgard while Odin takes a nap. It's why he was weak: Once a year Odin enters the odinsleep for a few months, to a week to a day. Whatever's narratively convent. It's how he recharges.

Thor.. dosen't want to as he's needed on earth and the two get into a snit and what I like is it's well ballanced: Odin isn't wrong to want his son to protect the kingdom that will one day be his.. but Thor isn't wrong that the warriors three and sif, his best friends and badass warriors, can do the job and Thor is only one call away if needed. Odin bringing up Jane dosne't help as Odin comes off as being a spying dickhead which.. he is. He entirley is. So Thor leaves in a huff.

And so we get our final segment.. which unlike the others ties in directley. We see Loki in the isle of silence, which is neatly depecited as a black and white void with no sound. Loki is visited by the Enchantress. The Enchantress is a powerful sorceress whose vane as she is obessed with thor, but dosen't understand he's just not that into her for being you know.. manipulative, cruel and trying to kill his friends. Turns out, in classic loki fashion, this was ALL his plan. ALLL of it.

He set up thor to run into the wrecking crew by spying on them taking a job for the Leader, more on him later, having the Enchantress disguise herself as a regular woman , i.e. just a green dress, and point thor their way. Fun fact: She and jane have the same VA. Funner fact: Loki is voiced by Scottish actor Grahm McTavish of the Hobbit and Outlander fame. Both do a terrific job.

Loki then pretended to be Baulder, Thor and Loki's third brother and painted what Thor was doing as egocentric hot doggin and grand standing and the Jane thing as more serious than "They just met". All of this was part of a larger scheme... all going to plan.. and neither the god of thunder nor his neglectful dad have any idea they were played. Granted Loki's scheme would fall apart of Odin brought up that conversation with baulder to the brave himself, but while a risk.. Loki still wasn't TOO reckless with this: in any other thor story this would be highly stupid. Here it's risky, but with Odin going into the Odinsleep soon and Loki's plan HINGING on his dad being in the odinsleep anyway, it gives his plan a VERY small window for fuckups.

And what is his plan?

I genuinely forgot what his grand plan was other than "conquer asgard" but we'll find out as the season unfolds. For now we move on to another hero..... some call him a man, some call him a monster.. but is he both?

Hulk Vs the World ( Microepisodes: The Coming of the Hulk! , Hulk Vs the World, This Monster, This Hero!, and Beware the Widow's Bite!)

Now we talk about the strongest one there is, the man whose wrecking the town with a power of the bull, ain't no monster clown, he's that loveable and ever lovin Hulk. And sometimes immortal, grey and what have you but point is Hulk slaps.

Yeah like Tony I love me some hulk: I haven't read nearly enough of his earlier stuff but I adore the late 80's early 90's run of peter david, one i'm just one digital omnibus away from having the complete run of at the time of this writing, and Al Ewing's recent and incomprable Immortal Hulk, which I REALLY need to cover and just. .haven't. Hulk's just a good character: A man with DID who turns into the literal represntations of the emotions he represses: his rage, his childlike innocence that his abusive dad made sure he never had, his need for a father, his hornier and more traditionally masculine traits... Hulk is an endlessly fascinating character.

And the show does him good, partly by exploring a key part of Hulk's marvel history: the fact that for the vast majority of it.. he's an outsider. Oh sure Hulk will show up for crossovers if needed and what not, but most of the time people treat him as a giant monster to be put down instead of simply an angry, powerful being tired of people trying to kill him. Hulk is oft pegged as a monster, and can often turn on his own allies thorugh bad luck or simply a poopy mood. Most people in Hulk's suppporting cast care about BANNER not hulk, while Bruce is often hunted simply because.. he has a mental illness. Granted most mental illnesses can't suplex a train, but many people genuinely don't seem to CARE that Bruce isn't responsible for what hulk does. Hulk is part of bruce banner.. but he's NOT bruce. And the poor guy is constantly hunted for something he tries to cure or control but often simply can't.

EMH emphasies this as when we meet Bruce he's deshevled, in a hat, looking like the unibomber and getting harassed by the police like one. And this is a Bruce who as we learn later ACCEPTS that hulk is part of him: he dosen't LIKE turning into a rage monster, no one does, but he acknowledges the big guy can do things he can't and that curing him simply hasn't worked. He's someone trying to manage his condition: until now staying away from population centers and only going into them.. because he's worried.

This is also our intro to our second of the four supervillian prisons, the Cube. The Cube is a heavily locked down place for radiation based supervillians, mostly gamma mutates like Bruce himself. And in a fitting shift instead of being a place to stash away or rehabilitate their foes.. the cube is basically one giant lab and Bruce fears it's purpose.. is to create a hulk SHIELD can control. It gives a reason to why he runs: Sure the Cube has facilities to help.. but one hulk is already incredibly dangerous and barely managable. Now imagine if say it goes wrong and hulk ends up with no brain or concense like the current hulk, just PURE. RAGE.

Or they succed in making a super solider with gamma power.. but he simply dosen't want to do what they ask and has all the power of a hulk but none of the restraint, and all the ingellgence to misuse it.

Or you get someone with repressed issues and DID like bruce.. but you get something darker than a cranky teenager who just wants to be left alone

Granted that last one didn't turn out so bad but Bruce's point is easy to see just looking at the comics or basic logic: Making more monsters is way too big a gamble and as we saw with SHIELD in the Iron Man episode, they aren't exactly moral paragons to begin with. Fury will go to any lengths to make a safer world... so whose to say even IF best case scenario we get a she hulk style transformation... that fury can be TRUSTED with that power.

So Banner goes to get some answers. Bruce is played by Gabriel Mann, who played Alan M in the JOsie and the Pussycats film I need to cover, and also played Bruce in Wolverine and the X-Men, which shares a universe with this show. More on that later. He does a great job selling Bruce's fear but also compassion.. he wants to CURE the target he's after, Absorbing Man.

Absorbing Man, aka Crusher Creel, is another frequent Jobber of the marvel unvierse, though unlike the Wrecking Crew he's slightly less of a joke, though like them he started with Thor. Unlike them he became more of a hulk villian and a general marvel villian. If they need someone dumb and powerful, Crusher is their go too. In the comics he also has a wife Titania, also a super villian. They have an adorably healthy and happy marriage.

So naturally Crusher.. wants nothing to do with this and wants to instead punch the hulk. He gets his wish.. but then gets plenty of punches back. The Hulk here is based more on then recent Planet Hulk Storyline: Hulk is still not super smart, but isn't thuggish like say Joe Fixit or sadistic like Devil Hulk. He's just savage hulk if given the chance to learn and evolve: all the power, all the rage.. but with SOME smarts and dry quips. He eventually flattens Abosorbing Man easily after a brief fight.

Hulk himself is played by Fred Tatiscore. Much like Thor and Iron Man's VA"S, Tatiscore is marvel's go to for the hulk for adaptations, and has played him a LOTTT: Ultimate Avengers 1 and 2, Avengers Next, Avengers Assemble, Hulk Vs(Also part of this continuity), Wolverine and the X-Men, Hulk and the Agents of SMASH, Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel's Spider-Man (Cartoon), The Incredible Hulk Tie IN game, Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, All three Marvel Ultimate Alliances. If you want someone mean and green you go with Fred and that's JUST his rolls as hulk. Fred is a prolific voice actor with a WIDE list of credits. This isn't even his only roll in this SERIES, but we'll get to that. If you want a good gravely voice, Fred Tatsicore is your man.

So Hulk is no sooner done punching his daily asshole when General Ross shows up.

So for those who haven't had the distinct pleasure of meeting this twatballoon before, General Ross is one of Hulk's two main arch enemys, the other one we'll meet later. He's the old man who ruins everything, a hard nosed general who already didn't like banner and hunts him and hulk like a monster, and is LARGELY responsible for both the hulk being treated like a monster (though his earlier, far shadier versions didn't help), and for Banner being hutned like one. If someone's going to fuck a situation that could've helped the hulk up, it's this fucking guy. It's shown here brilliantly as one of his men questions WHY banne'rs here.. and ross dosen't care. He can interogate banner later, not getting that bruce wont' want to help him.

Ross charges in with a bunch of smashable robots, but is ordered to stand down by the Black Widow and Hawkeye, in their classic outfits. For Nat it's .. really the same as the movies, for Hawkeye.. he has an actual costume instead of purple spandex and maybe sunglasses... please bring this outfit back.

Thankfully Clint isn't a piece of cardboard like the MCU , though he is an agent of SHIELD since Thor was in production and the Ultimate Unvierse existed. The two plan to subdue the hulk.. yes the martial arts master who is great in hand to hand and the expert marksman... think they can take down the hulk. or at least hold him off. Hulk is less than impressed but has bigger worries as Ross FIRES A MISSLE AT TWO SHIELD AGENTS DESPITE BEING ORDERED TO STAND DOWN

Seroiusly ross you fired on two fedral agents. I'm shocked he wasn't disohnorably discharged but he's gotten away with worse in the comics.

Thankfully hulk beats missle.. and we get a heartbreaking moment as Ross's stupidity and the hulk reflecting the missle nearly downs a hellicarrier... Hulk saves it.. and is taken in anyway. Always hunted, always alone with Banner's cries of having actually made the hulk work and not wanting to be cured falling on the deaf ears of Doc Sampson, usually Hulk's therapist here just a scientest.. and an asshole. Hawkeye though buys it.. unfortuantely he thenf inds out Black Widow is seemingly a tratior and she betrays HIM, framing him for working with hydra. So yeah this one ends with our heros impreioned for doing nothing wrong, the bad guys ahead and things about to get so much worse.

And if you thought we were done with downer endings well.

Meet Captain America (Meet Captain America, The Red Skull Strikes!, If This Be Doomsday!, Come the Conquerer)

Almost forgot this till I was done with this section: So I fucking love Steve Rogers. Loyal to nothing but the dream, kind, thoughtful and a badass through and through. That said when it comes to solo stuff it's hit and miss. I've come around to Ed Brubaker's run as while the winter soldier itself has lost a little impact with the fog of ages, Bucky's turn as cap is great, what i read of Ta'Nesi Coates run is fantastic, and I love Mark Gruenwald's lengthy run. I like cap, he can just be very hit and miss for me on his own, but usually if he's in a team he slaps and there's a reason he's key to the avengers.. and getting his own episode despite not being there for the origin story.

Meet Cap is a fun WII adventure, reminding me of the First Avenger despite coming first. It's got a lot of silver age charm and pep to it as Cap breaks into a hydra castle with the Howling Commandos. The Howling Commandos are Nick Fury's WWII running buddies in the comic and his dad's friends here. The roster's mostly the same, characters I don't really know and who won't be relevant to this show so i'm not going into... except one. He's still not relevant to the show.. but it's a cameo I can't not mention. One of the commandos here is...

YUP. As one of the many subtle hints this is the same continuity as Wolverine Vs X-Men and it's prequel Hulk Vs Wolverine, Logan fucking HOwlett is on the team. He dosen't go snikit either because he dosen't have bone claws in this continuity or simply to keep that under his helmet but it's still neat to see him. THey even got Steven Blum for this tiny apperance. There's small hints like that here and there, with another in the next episode we'll get to but sadly a combination of diffrent networks and Nick screwing over WATXM meant we never got an actual crossover, and Disney screwing over this series meant we never got a fully absorbed finale either. And as should come as no shock as a giant x-men nerd, I plan to cover WATXM after this show.

Anyways, cameos aside it ventually comes down to Cap and Bucky. Bucky is cap's sidekick, and unlike the mcu he' skept to being around 17. This is also one of his first apperances in animation after the landmark winter soldier story recontexutalized Bucky from "Child sidekick who really REALLY shoudln't be fighting WWII" to "that being a propoganda and Bucky being Cap's stealth man who does the stuff too dirty for america's symbol".

As a result this version, at least as Bucky, is voiced by Robin voice actor Scott Melinville, an excellent bit of meta casting given Bucky comes off as a fairly blatant robin clone. The two's banter is genuinely heartwarming as you really get a sense of their friendship.

Cap himself is played by Brian Bloom, who like most of theset voice actors continued the roll for Marvel Vs Capcom 3, it's sequel Infinite, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and unlike the rest recently in Midnight Suns. He's awesome and plays Steve Pitch Perfectly.

So the two's target is Red Skull, Naziism incarnate. He's pure evil, one of the most horrifying villians in the Marvel Universe and one of the few most other villians will nope out of working with being a literal nazi. And not just a snake Nazi, though as he does here he will work with Hydra. He was taught by Hitler himself. Fun fact that's pretty brutal: he has in fact met Magneto, Marvel's #1 holocaust survivior, who held his contempt of the guy long as he could when forced to work with him for acts of vengeance..a nd then first chanc ehe got Erik buired the guy in a bunker with this chilling as it is awesome sequence

This is just one long fun pulp adventure as Cap punches out hydra agents and i'ts revealed the Red Skull was experimenting with the 9 realms of norse mythology and marvel comics. Well 8, he's already on Midgard. His various captured norse creatures escape from fairies to a frost giant he almost kidnapped. it's fun chaotic brawl as many a nazi is eaten and we get some really cool lighting. We also get a mention of a Baron Zemo. This will be importnat later.

The Baron himself is absent though, and rather than being the one escaping on a rocket it's the red skull. And anyone familiar with the comics just tensed up a bit and really even if you aren't.. the fact that this is Cap's origin story, he's getting a full episode, and it's WWII kinda tells you this won't end well.. and it dosen't. Steve prepares to sacrifice himself.. only for Bucky to tell him "The world needs cap more than it needs bucky" and push him off. The Skull and the boy wonder apparently die .. and seemingly so does cap.

Well.. KINDA, as our last short happens: see the cap shorts kicked off with someone watching and we find out it's Kang, the Conquerer

For those who haven't heard of him or seen him thanks to the MCU, and the less said about his actor there the better, Kang is from the 30th century, a time of peace, love and no traffic accidents. And it was BORRRRRIIINNNGGGG to him, so longing for the past he only read about he stole a time machine, and ended up in a savage post apocalypse he eventually conquered and made the bedrock of his empire, using his time travel tech, vast army and genuine stategic knowhow to conquer civlizations throughout time and space.

Here though he seems to have just conquered this future, which is still a lot... but is about to be a little as it's in danger of being erased.. thanks to Cap. Kang is puzzled since if Steve DIED.. then how is he fucking up Kang's day? We get a really cool seuqence of Kang traveling through the previous parts of the episode, trying to figure out what he missed.. and finding steve frozen. Steve lived.. and thus his future will die. He plans to go back and stop this, but his future starts deteroating already, leaving him with just one warship. He TRIES to get his girlfriend Ravona on the ship in time.. but interfernce means she comes in and thus is stuck between fading out of existance. Kang's able to put her in stasis... but to save his empire steve rogers must die.. in about half a season.

Yeah Kang... dosen't come back up for a while and while it baffled me.. the more I thought about the actual two part premire.. the more i relaized why this was there.

The Man in the Anthill (The Man in the Anthill, Enter the Whirlwind, The Big House, Welcome to Wakanda) We end our slew of origin stories with the introduction of Ant Man and the Wasp, my faviorite avengers out of this intial lineup. I love all these characters but Hank and Janet are some of my faviorites in all of marvel. I became a huge fan of Hanks after reading Dan Slott's run on Mighty Avenger where Hank, follow his ex wife Jan's death, takes up the wasp mantle. He also gets into the greatest pissing contest in all of marvel history with reed richards... though in his defense, Red started it

It was a burn so fucking awesome that the rest of Reed's team were all asking him to please, for the love of god call back and apologize. He did not and suffered the consequences. Again story for another day.

With Jan it took some more time but this series and various awesome apperances, chiefly her time in Zeb Wells uncanny avengers and what i've read of Roger Sterns avengers, sold me on the winsome wasp. For good stories for each, for Hank there's the aformentiond Mighty Avengers, Avengers Academy where he serves as headmaster, and West Coast Avengers for his redemption after his mental breakdown and abuse of Jan. For Jan I recommend Stern's avengers, The Unstoppable Wasp which follows Hank's Daughter and Jan's adopted daughter Nadia but heavily features the OG wasp, and most recently the Wasp mini series from king of awesome Al Ewing and it's currently running Followup, Avengers Inc, both things I intend to cover some day.

So for those less familiar with them or more familiar with the MCU versions, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne were founding avengers and the first Ant Man and Wasp, going in and out of the team to retire. They were in love.. but sadly hank's obession with work, undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and Janet marrying him while he thought he was someone else because Hank having a mental breakdown was the PERFECT time to marry him, the marriage fell apart, hank had a large scale mental breakdown and well.. you likely know the rest. Both would rebound with Janet finding a new indpendence and sense of self and Hank , after hitting rock bottom.. .finding the will to live on and atone for the various mistakes he made, first as just Hank Pym then as a superhero but not wearing a costume. I love these characters, their rich history, their powers just all of it. I also love these versions of them: With the baggage of his mental breakdown and the infamous and horrifying slap gone, Hank is back to his roots as a science hero, finding his work the neatest thing in the world, while Janet is back to being hank's younger girlfriend , a social butterfly, and the one helping him get to do all his science stuff by doing the promotion, the last one a clever addition. It takes her later swagger and better writing by writers who knew how women worked as opposed to silver age stan lee who while many impressive things.. could not write a woman who wasn't some form of a sexisim. Likewise Hank ignores jan but it's more "he's a workaholic" and less him ranting about her being a stupid woman and friviolus and I wish I was making this up. It takes the best of them in the silver age, mondernizes and makes it awesome

They also each get a short spotlighting them: The first has Hank researching some Vibranium near wakanda when he has to deal with Klaw. Klaw is a recurring avengers bad guy, black panther bad guy and general punching bag. He's not yet to full costumed villian here, instead just having a giant sound canon instead of having said canon as a new hand. He and some mercs break in to steal the vibranium.. and get utterly wrecked in the best way possible as Hank shrinks, easily dispatches them in a scene straight out of a hroror film as each mook goes unconcious, tehn in an awesome moment, when Klaw uses his really big gun fulla sound to try and blast hank, hank GETS BACK UP and presses a button.. shrinkign EVERYONE present. Also while again i'm not pointing out EVERY villian's va i'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Klaw's is mark fucking hamill.

As for Hanks, Hank is played by Wally Wingert, who for once for this show DIDN'T play this character again in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 because Capcom wasn't awesome enough to include an ant man. THey DID include MODOK who Wingert also plays and got to reprise so he still got a well deserved paycheck. He's also been in Bleach and is the voice of Cubot in Sonic. Who knew. I also love the ending: Jan comes in, we get her adorably just throwing her arms around hank.. and then hank casually asking his girlfriend to go save the mercinaries before his ants eat them

The next one focuses on Jan and also shows the contrast between the two. Hank has super powers.. but prefers his research and rehabilitating criminals, not wanting to fight them. In contrast Jan recognizes sometimes you gotta throw hands, action is her reward, and gladly speeds into battle. We also see that while this hank hasn't spiraled yet.. he still has control issues, showing up wot Jan's battle with Whirlwind and telling her to back down, despite her both making the vallid point they can help people and that she can handle herself. And given she stings teh fucker in the eye and beats a guy with tornado powers with just her stingers and some inginuity yeah, hank ease off there bud.

Jan is voiced by Colleen Ann O'Shaughnessey, a va I grew up with as the Voice of Sora on digimon, a role she STILL has to this day. And if that and Jan wasn't enough she's also Jazz Fenton, a characte ri'll be looking into next year. For now though she just rips as Jan, whose the best of the founding 5. I mean their all pretty great and Hank comes close, but Jan's sarcasm, energy but also her heart and talent make her hard NOT to love.

The third short and the final one focused on our duo is the big house which reveals the third of the prisons: The Big House. Focused more on rehabilitation, the Big House was made by hank, housing a LOT of characters i know. Whirlwind tries to escape. If your curious who this schmuck is, Whirlwind is the closest thing Jan has to an arch enemy: he started out fighting her and hank then started stalking Jan who didn't take it well. He's incapaciated as the big house shrink's it's prisoners. Whirlwind is put back inside.. but is insured by the Mad Thinker that they'll be out soon. It's just a matter of time. The Mad Thinker is a long time fantastic four villian, a mad genius and.. that's basically it. He does have an awesome android though

He's a very good dude.

As for Hank and Jan theyt alk to Nick Fury who wants to recruit them. Jan's all for it but Hank says no.. that being said, it's not just Hank not wanting to be a costumed superhero: he dosen't TRUST nick, dosen't think he genuinely wants to rehabilitate criminals, and dosen't trust shield. And given what we've seen.. he's right. Jan follows Hank's lead, if reluctantly while fury.. berates hank for actually carrying about reform and building villians "Comfier jailcells".

With that we get one last standalone to set up episodes later this season: we see the origin of The Black Panther as his dad dies in comnbat fighting Man Ape, whose not NEARLY as cool or nearly as fun in the comics or this cartoon. Man Ape kilsl his dad with help from Klaw while T'Challa's people.. all agree to this trial by combat bullshit.

T'Challa not taking this shit heads off, takes the Panther Mantel and plans to find Allies. To be continued next time, same as cap. I love the animation on The Black Panther as he skulks around. So damn cool. He's voiced by James C Mathis III a voice actor primarily known for playing the character in this and Marvel Vs Capcom.. infinite this time. He's fantastic. And with that it's time for the MAIN EVENT BABY

Breakout Parts 1 and 2

So here we are, the big one. The reason we're all here> the Main Event. Breakout is the proper premiere for the show, airing before the repackaged episodes above though taking place after. And like the MCU with those episodes in mind it feels like a well built up climax to almost everything in the shorts, while setting up the rest of the season, with what wasn't setup for this being setup for later in the season like Cap, Kang and Black Panther.

Part 1 has the characters still in their own corners of the marvel universe before fate assembles them: Tony breaks up an arms deal between AIM, a bunch of super scientests in neat beekeeper suits who function as world conquerers or arms dealers depending on the day, and Lucia Von Bardis, one of Doctor Doom's minons in Latveria. Iron Man easily stops the sale, especially since it's his tech their selling and warns Doom via his proxy: do not come for his stuff again. He then drops them off at the Vault, talking to Jimmy Woo who sadly isn't as in to close up magic here but has noticed it's security is off and asks Tony for help since he designed it and it's not a weapon. Tony agreees.. but also wants him to make an appointment because Tony is a lot of things.. but he's also a massive asshole no matter where in time and space you find him.

Banner is still in the cube, trying to warn Dr. Sampson of two things: the cube is not a jail but an incubator to make another hulk, and that filling a jail full of super strong gamma mutates and gamma research is a ticking time bomb... and given bruce blew himself up with one he should know.

Thor.. is having a far chiller day of stalking Jane as she does her job since as an EMT she finds trouble and he dosen't exactly have a thor signal. And because she fascinates him, not getting how creepy that sounds. Jane finds it charming, partly because he's built like a norse god and partly because she gets this is less "I need to call shield a god is stocking me" and more "He's REALLY that clueless he dosen't get this is a felony".

Finally we have Hank and Jan on the hellicarrier, with Hank doing mods to the big house and arguing with Nick and Jane sorry she can't take maria hill's offer... only to realize hank had a point when maria won't answer a simple whose that.

It's then chaos breaks out.. as does every super villian at the 4 prisons with the Hellicararrier, which houses the big house, also going offline. Oh and Nick's house just blew up, but that happens every tuesday. You can just ignore that one, don't know why I brought it up.

As you'd guess most of our heroes are soon caught in the middle of it: Iron man flies back to the Vault, getting a heads up from Pepper that SHIELD"S in chaos, but finds all his foes have already kitted up and gang up on him including Crimson Dynamo, his russian equilveant and Blizzard, a villian i've always had a soft spot for who gets a truly awesome look here

Is his look baiscally just captain cold and mr freeze smushed together now? Sure? Does it look fucking dope? yes.

Thanks to SHIELD being stupid though, Iron Man isn't the only hero there and despite nearly blasting him earlier, Hawkeye helps for a sec before fleeing to clear his name. I like this setup for hawkeye as in the comic's hawkeye also started as a costumed criminal thanks to a misunderstanding, a nice way of meshing his mcu/ultimate self with the og. Hawkeye is also one of my faviorite superheroes, and something I can gush about later when Clint properly returns to the story. For now he's just awesome as always.

So Tony decides to escape by BLOWING THE FUCKER UP with his enemies inside

Yeah the civilians have apparently evacuated and the villians scene DO come back but you'd think after a few months after this Tony's go to wouldn't be "Cave a building on them and let god sort it out". Then again this IS Tony Stark we're talking about....

Bruce is IN one of the prisons and thus has a harder time, though there is one silver lining: Dr. Sampson.. is now fully on his side, having realized from the buildling falling apart that Bruce was right about this being a powder keg and promising to help. Granted it's a bit too late but still. The radiation abound has also given the good Doc super strength

Zzzax shows up. Zzzax is an energy being the hulk fights on and off, a big zappy man made of electricty who has a name that's as fun to say as it is to type. Naturally this brings out the other guy and Hulk fights him, winning becasue of course.

In the core of the cube and it's control rooms is the Leader. The Leader is Hulk's arch enemy and polar opposite: Hulk is pure rage and strength, the Leader is a calculated super genius with the durability of any other guy. And unlike the other villians in the other prisons.. Leader has no intention of leaving, to the bafflement of Absorbing Man and Abomination. Abomination is Hulk's other arch enemy, a KGB agent who got caught in a gamma ray blast when Hulk tried to kill the hulk with.. .the same thing that makes the hulk, being almost as strong but retaining his mind.

Leader sends the two to fight hulk as a distraction but once Hulk has them down he flees with Sampson.. and the Leader has his minons back off, explaning WHY he wants to stay in prison: he's going to change the world. And impliclity, what better lair for a super genius gamma mutate than a giant gamma based lab and former prison? It's almost like putting the lab next to the dangerous criminals was a bad idea waiting to blow up in their faces.

Before we move on Leader is played by horror legend Jeffery Combs, most famous for playing Herbet West in Re-Animator and it's sequels. Combs is a large ham supreme, a true craftsman of playing hammy bastards with no morals, and is perfect casting for the Leader, and SHOULD have played him in the mcu. Then again given how little the MCU has acctually DONE with the leader thanks to universal, it's a blessing in disguise. They can use him another way. Lots of mad scientests with no morals in marvel. Leader's story will be continued later, but I coudln't just.. pass by Jeffery Combs. I'm not made of stone.

As for Hank he gets the shit beat out of him by the people he was genuinely trying to help. Which is just.. sad... the problem wasn't hank's idea, a deluxe prison with creepy robots where he genuinely tries to reform people.. it's just most of the criminals were either people he brought in, resenting him automatically, or simply didn't WANT to change. Had he tried it on like the beetle or screaming mimi or someone who genuinely had the potetial to reform who knows what he could've done. Thankfully he's backed up by Jan and the fact he can become a really big man, a GIANT man if you will.

While this goes on Thor.. has a date. Jane gladly listens to his daddy issues, Baldur the Brave had visited earlier.. and Odin hasn't let up on the "come home thing". Jane breaks down "ancient asgardian things beyond your understnading" into what it is "You had a fight with your dad" and tries to convince him to go home and patch things up.. but then thor hears the explosions in the distance and goes to help.

So the bad news is a bunch of our heroes villians are free, with the only ones who aren't.. now running the prison. The WORSE news is that there's one more prison that didn't have a superhero on duty as Thor was out to lunch: the raft, a secret fourth blacksite prison hinted at earlier, containing the highest security cases... and one of them just woke up from a ten year nap, radaiting with power and rocking the helicarrier.

This yelling bearded man is Graviton, also played by Fred Tastiscore, whose hamming it up from here to eternity. He wants Fury dead and tha'ts where part 1 ends.. with him holdling fury hostage and sinking the hellicarrier.

Part 2 opens up with the origin of Graviton: Franklin Hall was a physcist for SHIELD before Fury tried to shut him down... for good reason as while Fury was trying to do this Franklin not only refused but his experiments blew up in his face. Then rather than help Hall.. fury locked him unconcious in the raft. Even the breakout didn't let him out it turned out ot be Baron Zemo. Baron Zemo is one of my faviorite super villians, a genius tactician and son of a nazi what cap fought. Naturally he tells franklin he's been down here for a while, then skedaddles. Unsuprisingly we'll be seeing the martial artist whose so skilled and cunning he's in the same jail as the guy who can make gravity his bitch.

Graviton is distracted by Iron man, who shows up to fight.. but tony gets a refresher in Gravity and gets bounced all the way to the endless cornfields of Kansas. Trust me having been in the car as someone's driven through them, that joke is not an exageration. Ther'es plenty of towns, intresting places.. but also large stretches of corn and nothing. So much corn and nothing.

While Tony calls for a backup suit, Thor tags in, while Hank chews Fury out, especially relevant since Fury refuses to tell them anything at first calling it classified... despite the giant exploding gravity man fighting a god above them.

As for Hulk... Hulk needs a snack. Prison hasn't done wonders fo rhis appittite so he stops at a diner, asking them to get help for Sampson... when Hulk has another guest: his brain buddy bruce who urges Hulk to help as he's the only one that can. Hulk makes the valid if misnthropic poitn that if no one's helped him, why should he.. but Bruce poitns out all the good he can do.. he can be more than the monster they see him as and he knows it. SO Hulk agrees to serve as backup.. provided Bruce make one concession: Hulk becomes the dominant personality and bruce comes out , as we find out later, only once a month.

As we wait to see the results of that deal, Thor gets plumeted to the bottom of the sea and Jan decides she isn't going to stand by anymore.. while Hank is like "NO YOU'LL GET HURT. LISTEN TO ME. " because he hasn't gotten Jan dosen't CARE she can get hurt, knows the risk, and is doing the right thing comma jackass. Jan.. actually puts on a decent showing as her stingers, small lasers , aren't affected by gravity. She is.. but Hank catches her having gotten his giant head out of his ass, while Thor regains Mjonr and tony joins back up. The avengers have.. mostly assemebled.

They still can't make much of a dent though: not only are they still very new at this tea-m thing, but Graviton is still strong enough to body a god: a scientest, a fashioin icon, and billionare mass attempted murderer aren't really going to turn the tide. Unluckily for Franky he decides to get braggy.. and gives too good an intrance cue NOT for someone to stomp in and ruin his day

Graviton: I'm stronger than all of you! I'm the strongest one there is! (BOOM) Hulk: You sure about that?

Hulk is here and easily beats the stuffing out of Graviton. We get a truly EPIC moment too as Graviton tries increasing the gravity on him which only works for seconds at a time as Hulk KEEPS, GETTING, BACK UP. With the others helping, and sometims just.. rushing him, Hulk is able to land the final blow on Graviton. My faviorite moment during this is Wasp lasering a container in half, confused someone's helping him... before Janet helpfully pipes in he's the bad guy. THe two will be incredibly close after this and given they both like hitting things and impulsive desicions, easy to see why.

Well almost final, He still has time to weakly rant before Wasp shuts him up.

Naturally SHIELD"S response to Hulk saving the day, the future avengers lives, and stopping an evil they created.. is to point all their guns at him. This time though Hulk has something he didn't have back in Vegas: Friends. Iron Man refuses to let SHIELD take him and everyone else gladly joins in, Jan naturally being the second most vocal behind tony.

Fury reluctantly gives in, and admits he could use the five's help: the various prison breaks have unleashed 74 other super villians and someone needs to round them up.

Hank.. turns him down, getting one last callout and a very damming one: they CREATED this mess: while Franklin made himself into a living god instead of trying to cure him or turn him into a force for good they locked him away an dhoped he'd never wake up, and new york nearly got leveled. I forgot to mention it somehow but motherfucker LEVITATED manhattan.

Tony does concede Fury has a point:.. not about joining SHIELD, they suck dirty ass in thunderstorms. But about working as a team:

Iron Man: One on one, we can each take down a villain or two, but 74... none of us can do it alone. Together we have a chance. What we did here, it can change things. The world needs us, but not as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. As a team of our own. Together, we can avenge the wrongs caused by all these villains. Wasp: We can be Avengers. Hulk: Huh. Good name.

And thus.. a team is born. Hulk agrees to stay for now and everyone else, even pacifist hank seems excited. And even Fury, while not exastic, dosen't really poop on their parade. He is worried about one thing though: Who was behind this?

So yeah.. the first 7 episodes of EMH, the breakout two parter in paticular, are amazing. It sets up the world, fleshes out the cast, and gives us some great hooks going in: how will this team mesh? can hulk be accepted by the rest of the world? Who caused the Breakouts? What's loki's plan? How is leader going to "Change the world"? What did steve do to destroy Kang's timeline? All valid questions we'll answer another time but for now we've got 7 pretty excellent episode an da great start to one of the greatest avengers tales ever

Sometime Next Year: The avengers loose a member, gain an icon and a king and deal with their growing pains, ionic men, dougboys, ape men, living sounds, and a bunch of hulks. See you then and thanks for reading.

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