X-Men: The Animated Series (Volumes 4 & 5)

I am hoping people reading this that were born before 1990 saw the headline for today’s entry and cracked a smile of nostalgia. I did not watch too many Saturday morning cartoons throughout my childhood as my siblings dominated control of the TV most of the time. The only Saturday morning cartoons I recall watching regularly were GI Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the watered down version of Doug ABC got from Nick. I also watched the topic of today’s entry, the smash hit X-Men: The Animated Series that ran on Saturday mornings on FOX from 1992-97 (X-Men vintage intro and iconic theme song).

I am not a hardcore fan of the X-Men comics. I have only read roughly around 100 issues of the series over the years and the only ones I recall enjoying were a handful of early Ultimate X-Men issues, and the first dozen issues of Astonishing X-Men that are collected in a nice hardcover trade. I am not going to go deep into the lore of the X-Men here because I imagine most of you dear readers are at least familiar with a few of the movies and should have a general gist of the background of the X-Men at the very least. I never got that into the comic book series because there is such a dense lore to the series and there are countless mutant heroes and foes to keep track of over a countless line of X-books throughout the decades and most issues and trades I have attempted to read involved huge ensemble casts with so much going on that most of it went right over my head.

That was why The Animated Series ruled, because it only focused on eight full-time X-Men residing at Professor Xavier’s school, and most episodes rotated out a couple of the supporting mutants to keep a fresh cast for each episode. This cartoon hit at such an impressionable time for me that whenever I do read an X-Men comic book or play a random X-Men game it is the well-casted voices from this cartoon that immediately come to mind for me. The primary mutants featured here are Xavier (Cedric Smith), Wolverine (Cathal Dodd), Cyclops (Norm Spencer), Rogue (Lenore Zann) and Beast (George Buza). The supporting characters on the team that were consistently rotated in and out were Jean Grey (Catherine Disher), Gambit (Chris Potter), Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith) and Jubilee (Alyson Court). There was a ninth team member, Morph (Ron Rubin), who was killed off in an early episode of the series, but since no one really stays dead in comics, Morph found a way to make an occasional cameo or two a season during X-Men’s 76 episode run.

Being mostly unfamiliar with the comics when I first saw the cartoon air, I have vague memories of having no idea what was going on in the TV show. It stood out to me because the show made Wolverine the most badass character of Saturday mornings with steel claws that popped out of his hands in an instant that he used to rip the guts out of mammoth robots called Sentinels that were a hoot to watch the X-Men wage war with! Most of the other character’s special powers also appealed to 10-year old 90’s Dale with Cyclop’s optic blasts coming out of his visor, Gambit’s electrifying playing cards and Storm wreaking havoc with all kinds of nasty weather. I recall being excited to learn that Buena Vista Home Video was going to finally be releasing the classic cartoons on DVD. They came out in five volumes between 2009-10. I kept up watching them through the first three volumes soon after their release, but the last two volumes fell into the old backlog box until these past two months when I finally got around to them.

Watching the last two volumes were mostly positive experiences. I will give the exception being almost all episodes involving guest appearances from Cable and Bishop, because whenever they appear throughout the show’s history, it usually involves time travel and alternate dimensions and I usually wind up zoning out on their episodes. My favorite volume four episode is the Christmas special where the X-Men help out a a murlock in need while out shopping in Manhattan. There is a big four part special in volume four involving a huge Apocalypse arc that would ordinarily be appealing, but it involves a lot of alternate dimension time travel tomfoolery with Bishop and Cable, so most of it winds up a wash.

The last several episodes of volume five have a slightly different animation style that looks noticeably poorer in comparison to the rest of the series. This is because according to Wikipedia my research FOX ordered more episodes last minute and they had to find an alternate production studio to animate the shows. Even worse, they remixed the iconic intro music of the series into a vastly inferior theme that I will spare your ears by intentionally not linking to it here. Regardless, there are still some solid episodes in the last volume featuring Omega Red trying to steal a nuclear sub, the only good Jubilee-themed show of the series where she helps a group of kids avoid a cave-in while retelling classic X-Men tales and my favorite episode is a World War II flashback episode featuring Wolverine and Captain America. ‘Graduation Day’ is X-Men’s final episode and it has a fitting sense of closure where Xavier has farewell messages to all his X-Men students and even longtime rival/friend, Magneto.

None of the five volumes of X-Men have any DVD extra features. A part of me would have loved even a simple collection of interviews with the voice actors and creators of the animated series reflecting on their memories, but having the episodes on DVD is fine with me at this point. As I mentioned before, there are a fair amount of episodes that dip heavy into the X-Men cannon and go right over my head, but most episodes are fairly contained within the animated show’s universe and held up rather well for me. I imagine if you are a regular reader of the comics you will have an easier time keeping up with all the references and external canon better than I did. That aside, most of the episodes I still had a blast reliving and the older non-CG animation style did not bother me one bit. I have sampled a couple random episodes of successor animated X-Men series, and they did not cut it for me, so whether you grew up with it or not if you have to go with one animated version of these classic mutants, than go with FOX/Buena Vista Video’s X-Men: The Animated Series.

Past TV/Web Series Blogs

2013-14 TV Season Recap
2014-15 TV Season Recap
2015-16 TV Season Recap
2016-17 TV Season Recap
Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series
Angry Videogame Nerd Volumes 7-9
Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1
OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30
RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13
Roseanne – Seasons 1-9
Seinfeld Final Season
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Superheroes: Pioneers of Television
The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series