Looking Back: X-Men Cartoons, Part 1

It all started with a Saturday morning cartoon.  It was 1992 (maybe early 1993), and a friend of mine told me to check out this new cartoon called X-Men.  I’d never heard of it, so I took a look.  Addiction quickly set in, and soon I was running around the house pretending to be Wolverine and buying trading cards, action figures, and comic books.

The early ’90′s X-Men cartoon was the catalyst for my becoming a comic book geek, and today the various X-Men titles are still my favorites to read.  Although there are many better cartoons, the original X-Men still holds a fond place in my heart, and I enjoy going back and re-watching those old episodes.  Heck, even these days when I read X-Men comics, many of the characters still have the same voices in my head as their initial animated counterparts.

With the X-Men as popular as they’ve ever been, there has been an upsurge of interest in their cartoon escapades.  Just this week, volumes three and four of the 1990′s series were released on DVD alongside the X-Men Origins: Wolverine feature film.  Since that first series, there have been two other X-Men cartoons (one of which is still producing new episodes), and most of these are currently available to watch for free online — legally.

In this three part series of posts, I’ll look back at the three main X-Men animated series from the last two decades, as well as offer information on where you can find them online.

X-Men

The earliest cartoon had the simplest title and — with 76 episodes — is so far the longest-running.  X-Men debuted in the fall of 1992 as part of Fox’s “Fox Kids” Saturday programming.  The series adapted many popular stories straight from the comic book tales of that era, including the Phoenix Saga, “Tales of Future Past,” the Dark Phoenix Saga, Weapon X, the story of Proteus, and others.  While the quality of the animation (and sometimes the dialog) was often sub-par, the show was very popular, earning surprisingly high ratings for a Saturday morning kids’ program.

Although a wide range of characters made small cameos or full guest appearances, the show focused on a small core team of X-Men: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, Beast, and newcomer Jubilee, all under the leadership of Professor Charles Xavier.  Semi-frequent guests included Archangel, Bishop, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Cable, and Forge.

Many villains from the X-Men’s large library of foes made regular appearances.  Magneto, Apocalypse, Sabretooth, Mystique, Juggernaut, and Mr. Sinister were all frequent antagonizers.  Season two saw a lot of conflict between the X-Men and the Friends of Humanity, an anti-mutant hate group.  Throughout the series, viewers also saw much of the giant, robotic, mutant-hunting Sentinels, and their creators Henry Gyrich and Bolivar Trask.

The style of the show directly reflected the style of the comics at the time, with costumes and character designs closely matching those seen in print.  Professor X moved around in his floating wheelchair, the X-Men trained in the Danger Room and traveled in the X-Jet, and the mutant-locating computer Cerebro didn’t yet reside in a big, round room, but was rather a somewhat unassuming console on one side of the War Room.

Cool fact. Oddly, though most of the plots for the cartoon were adapted from original comic book storylines, Marvel then re-adapted the stories from the cartoon back into comics form for the title X-Men Adventures.  These stories (like the cartoons) were much more simplified, streamlined versions of the original tales and were targeted toward younger readers.  The art in X-Men Adventures also tended to be more simplified, taking its cues from the animated style of the show.  All in all, it came off a bit like the result of a game of telephone, or perhaps the photocopy of a photocopy.  Either way, regular comics fans weren’t that impressed, and most stuck to their original comics and the cartoon itself rather than a comic based on a cartoon that was based on a comic.  Even more strangely, after adapting the first three seasons of the show, however, X-Men Adventures became Adventures of the X-Men and went on to publish original stories set in the continuity of the animated universe before being cancelled shortly after the show stopped airing.

Watch it! After years of clamoring from fans, Disney has been quickly releasing X-Men on DVD.  Volumes one and two arrived simultaneously early in the summer, and volumes three and four were released together just this past week.  Since this isn’t the complete series yet, I wouldn’t be surprised to see volume five show up around Christmas time.  For Xbox owners, most of season one can also be purchased for download from the Xbox Live Marketplace.  For those looking to watch for free, Marvel.com has most of the first two seasons available to stream for free, but you’ll have to fight your way through their completely counter-intuitive system of video archives to find what you want.

Next time.  In part two of this series, I’ll explore X-Men: Evolution, a series that diverged a lot from original comics canon, but that was still one of the best cartoons in a long time.