Animation Domination: X-Men The Animated Series

The X-men are a group of mutants, whose mutations give them superpowers, appearing in comic books published by Marvel.  The team was created in 1963 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee who were building off the success of Spider-Man, The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and The Fantastic Four.  They wanted to create characters, but not have to come up with individual reasons why each had their powers.  In 2004, Stan Lee said, “I couldn’t have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion.  And I took the cowardly way out.  I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I just say they’re mutants? They are born that way.’ “ Per a 1987 interview with Jack Kirby, that lead to the idea of having a school that would school them in the use of their powers and his creation of their teacher, Professor X, a.k.a. Charles Xavier.

X-Men: The Animated Series features the characters based on the teams of the early 1990s comics by Jim Lee and consists of Cyclops (Norm Spencer), Wolverine (Cal Dodd), Rogue (Lenore Zann), Storm (Iona Morris / Alison Sealy-Smith), Beast (George Buza), Gambit (Chris Potter / Tony Daniels), Jubilee (Alyson Court), Jean Grey (Catherine Disher), and Professor X (Cedric Smith). Cyclops is the leader of the team, and each member possesses different abilities. They have trained and try to work together as a cohesive unit, but don’t always get along.  Jean Grey and Cyclops are in love, but Wolverine has feelings for her as well and his hot headedness often leads to squabbles between him and Cyclops. In the end, the team is a family, and like any family has its dysfunctional moments, but they all care for each other and would live or die for one another. The show also retained the themes surrounding marginalized group oppression and often featured storylines showing this discrimination.

The animated series was the second attempt at a cartoon based on the comics, a few years earlier a pilot entitled, X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men was made and broadcast in 1989.  The show did not get picked up. In 1990, Margaret Loesch, who had championed the pilot, became the head of Fox Children’s Network and ordered 13 episodes of the new series.  Saban Entertainment was to produce the show, but at the time did not have the staff to do in-house work, so they subcontracted Graz Entertainment to do the creative process, designing, writing and storyboarding each episode, with the voice work being done by Canadian studios and the animation work was done by AKOM a South Korean studio.  The show ran into production delays and had to push its original air date out.  AKOM was often late meeting their deadlines or submitting incomplete or error filled work causing issues between Fox and the AKOM studio. Even with the animation errors the series garnered top ratings and a season two was ordered.  The series was only supposed to run for 65 episodes but ended up with a total of 76 due to its popularity.

Although the series primarily used original stories, they did pull and adapt storylines from the comic books.  Examples include stories covering the Mutant Registration Act, the Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Phalanx Covenant, and many stories based on the Sentinels. The series finale shows a world teetering on the brink of war between Mutants and humans, with Charles Xavier being mortally wounded and his only hope is to be healed by an advanced alien race whom they have met before, but to save his life, he must leave his X-Men and the episode shows a heartfelt goodbye from their leader.  A new animated series is slated to air on Disney+ entitled X-Men 97 and continues from where season 5 leaves off.  The X-Men will need to learn how to survive on their own with the loss of their leader.