I didn't even like the old X-Men animated series so I was surprised to find I really enjoyed the first two episodes of its revival, X-Men'97. I'm hardly the first to hand it accolades, it has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, the first Marvel production to get that kind of love in a long time.
The show picks up where the old series ended in 1997--it started in 1992, when I was in junior high school. I remember Saturday mornings when it would come on I would sometimes suffer through it to get to something I liked, like the latest Ghostbusters series, Ninja Turtles, or Darkwing Duck. Duckwing Duck was an afternoon show, wasn't it? Ah, it was also on Saturday mornings, I see from this helpful schedule. Looks like Ghostbusters stopped airing before X-Men premiered. It's funny, I could've sworn there was a Ghostbusters series when I was in high school.
Anyway, looks like, early on, I'd have had to have chosen between X-Men, Back to the Future, and Land of the Lost while waiting for Darkwing Duck to come on, and X-Men was certainly the best choice of those three, even though I hated the awkward animation and the corny dialogue. And I was an X-Men fan before that! Storm was one of my favourite comic characters growing up. I read the comics from the late '80s and I gleaned a lot from other kids who'd read more of the comics than I had. Also, there was an X-Men game at the local arcade I played a lot, so I knew a lot of lore and backstory. It formed an impression of X-Men that told me it was a story that deserved better than the lousy animated series. But it must have been my first exposure to a lot of the classic plotlines I didn't read the original comic versions of until years later.
The first two episodes of the revival have fixed a lot of the problems with the old series. The animation, now courtesy of computers, is much smoother, and the opening sequence no longer repeats the same pull-out from close-ups over and over. The dialogue is still incredibly corny but probably self-consciously so. The most important thing is, when I was watching, I got caught up in the story. I wanted to know what Magneto (who now looks oddly like Richard Lynch) is up to. I want to see if Rogue is going to get her heart broken. I want to know if Jean is really pregnant. So screenwriter Beau DeMayo did his job. Too bad he's apparently been cancelled to oblivion. No-one even knows what he did but he wasn't just fired, his social media accounts were deleted. The guy doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, despite having worked on both Moon Knight and Witcher. It's like he went into witness protection. I read one article that floated a rumour that it's because he was difficult to work with. Hardly seems sufficient explanation for his social media being deleted.
Anyway, we have two full seasons of his work to enjoy, whatever purgatory he may now be consigned to.
X-Men '97 is available on Disney+.
X Sonnet #1827
A rusty oven swells with soggy toast.
A summer dream oppressed the coming spring.
Piano wire cut the dancing ghost.
The acid ant disrupts the bitter ring.
Repeated ripples scar the simple pool.
A peaceful place became a broken hull.
Another coat was made from golden wool.
A secret song was sung by someone's skull.
A data leak was traced to rabbit ears.
Concoctions ranked revealed a banger gin.
A time dispersed before the woman's tears.
To travel back would mean she'd not begin.
Nostalgic Martian strings return the heart.
Ideas were blank before the dream of art.
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