X-Men '97 Vs. The Fanboys

Dursin Was Right... Just Kidding!

With the entire run of X-Men ‘97 now streaming, I have been reading a lot of online reactions to it, and figured I would throw in a couple cents. After all, aside from a few gaps, I have basically been reading X-comics since the mid-eighties. Back when Clay and I debated about The Dark Knight, I mentioned that I have been buying Batman books for over 12 years, and I still felt like a new reader. Almost 40 years of X-Men comic reading? I feel like I’m part of the team.

I’m going to try not to spoil anything here, so go ahead and read on, but if you haven’t watched X-Men ‘97 yet… Well, what’s wrong with you? It’s so good. And that’s not the fanboy in me talking. It is literally pretty much universally adored. And here’s the thing; I never really watched the original animated X-Men series back in the day. I was in high school, and I don’t know why, but watching cartoons was somehow less grown-up than reading comics. And let’s be honest, the way the TV was back then, where there were rules like “No blood,” (also, “No punches to the face?” How do you have an action show?) the comics were actually way more adult-oriented.

The point is, I did not watch X-Men ‘97 for pure nostalgia reasons, because I have no emotional ties to the original show. If it had sucked, I wouldn’t have felt like they ruined my childhood or anything. I would have just shrugged it off as another Marvel Miss. (Like Ms. Marvel? Just kidding. She was fine. I just wanted to make a pun.) But it doesn’t suck, so I can enjoy it for what it is: great storytelling.

Which leads me to the another point (I have a lot of points): A lot of what I have been reading online has to do with the show racing through classic comic storylines in a single episode, specifically the saga of Madeline Pryor, Jean Grey’s clone who married Cyclops and fathered his son Nathan, who would eventually become Cable. And it is true that that arc was years of comic stories condensed into one episode of the show. But are we really complaining about that? The animated series was telling a different story, mostly the classic Magneto-Charles saga, the eternal debate at the heart of all great X-men stories.

The real qualm that some fans seem to have is that they are going to run out of stories before the series can go much longer. And it is true that this season saw Inferno, the Genosha genocide, the Trial of Magneto, Storm losing her powers, and even the Mojo-verse (which ok, nobody really asked for, but it was still fun), but the very notion that there aren’t so many more great stories to choose from is just silly. House of M, Age of Apocalypse, and the one they are definitely gearing up for, the recent House of X/Krakoa Era? That’s easily two or three more seasons, and I’m here for all of them. Also, do we think the writers are incapable of telling, y’know, original X-Men stories?

And of course, this article, which is admittedly well-written and echoes a lot of the points I’m making, harps on a classic comic book fanboy gripe: the fact Marvel ended the Krakoa Era of X-Men lore because Deadpool and Wolverine is coming, so they want to start at issue #1 for any movie fans who decide to jump on.My reaction to that was a simple sigh (literally. I sighed reading it.) That has been a ploy that comic book companies have been trying for a couple decades now, and it has never, to my knowledge, worked all that well. A lot of research has been done on this topic, and there is no conclusive evidence that a hit movie has increased the sales of the corresponding comic. There might be a slight bump, sure, but some “pundits,” if there are such things in the comic book world, even argue that sales actually decrease after a movie bump. Nice, huh?

But yes, the comic companies do sometimes change plans in order to capitalize on a movie release, and yes, Marvel is eminently ending both Wolverine and X-Force, and relaunching them with new #1’s, most likely due to the summer release of Deadpool & Wolverine. I would like to point out, however, that both of those series are ending at issue #50, which by today’s standards is a long run. Granted, Wolverine went bi-weekly for the last couple months to make it to 50, but still, anyone who can write 50 issues of a character that has been around that long and has pretty much done everything deserves a high-five and a raise, not fanboy criticism. As someone who used to be one of those fanboys, shaking his fist at the clouds because of Marvel’s condensed storytelling, I can happily say that now I’m just happy that I had 50 good issues of Wolverine. And when Wolverine #1 hits the shelves in September, I’ll definitely give it a try.

Basically, if you enjoyed X-Men ‘97 but you’re worried about them “burning through plot,” I say relax. If you want to know the full story of Madeline Pryor, there’s about five years of great X-Men issues you can bone up on. If you want to watch a version of it, X-Men ‘97 does a pretty good job too.

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