X-Men: Volume Three and X-Men Volume Four Reviews (Spoilers)

[mattzimmer]

Upcoming Reviews on this journal include Heroes: Season 3, Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Four, Wallace and Gromit: A Matter Of Loaf And Death and Alias Season Three.

Comments

[90scartoonman]

I haven't even made it past the first season, ack, but a lot of these episodes are still fresh in my memory.

Dazzled - I forget what Dazzler's origins were, I think they may've wanted her to actually be a real singer, but she came out too late and became obsolete really fast. As for Emma, she's gotten a TON of development in the last 10-15 years and risen to prominence as one of the major good guys, hence why Wolverine and the X-Men have the benefit of all that development while TAS just has "The White Queen".

The Fate of the Phoenix - I don't like how a lot of the Cadmus arc seemed to set up stuff that never got paid off (like "Ultimatum"), but it turned out well. The Dark Phoenix Saga was kind of a mess in the comics, too. They realized that Jean killed billions and she had to die to atone, so they killed her. But...she's one of the original X-Men and had to come back at some point. It was eventually retconned that Jean had never been the Phoenix in the first place and they found her in a cocoon in the Hudson River, having actually been replaced by the Phoenix rather than possessed, and never committing any of those actions. Obviously the cartoon tried to streamline it a bit.

Orphan's End - Cyclops has always been a little wound too tight and unlikeable for his own good, that's just who he is, and he's done some really lousy things in the comics.

Nightcrawler - One of the best guest-star eps of the whole series. Nightcrawler has always been one of my favorite X-Men, but I prefer a blend of the devout and serious man here and the goofball of Evolution.

Weapon X - Okay, it's been years since I've sat through both series, but I have the opposite reaction. I feel like X-Men continuity contradicts itself sometimes (it seems like at first they didn't want Warren to be one of the originals and then later just ignored it for flashbacks) whereas Spider-Man's continuity was somewhat solid (I say somewhat because a lot of the Kingpin stuff got ridiculous). While plots in X-Men built up better than the drawn out Spider-Man stuff, I prefer the way characters grew in Spider-Man more. Peter, Deb, Flash, Felicia, and even MJ (more or less) were definitely different characters than when the show started, whereas many of the X-Men remained the same.

One Man's Worth - Love it, love it, love it. Made me a huge shipper of Logan/Ororo (which actually was carried over in the comics in the early 00's and made more sense than most of the relationships Logan was in, sadly, he had to back off when she married the Black Panther) and of stories like this, "I Will Remember You" and the episode of the Hercules cartoon which came about 5 years after this (up until "One More Day" came and left the worst taste in my mouth ever).

Courage - You're probably right about Morph. It's interesting, he was basically the tool used at the very beginning to make Wolverine the loner (he was more affected by Morph's "death" than anyone else), but he also ended up giving Wolverine a more caring side.

[mattzimmer]

Dazzled: Cool info on the comics. Thanks!

The Fate Of The Phoenix: Yeah, but you can almost understand a retcon years later. At least they didn't completely cop-out during the story itself like the cartoon did.

Weapon X: Angel is the only thing in the cartoon that doesn't jibe. And I don't find it so much a continuity glitch as untapped potential for a VERY juicy storyline that never happened. I dislike Spider-Man's continuity because the show was too fast paced for it's own good and them squeezing in flashbacks even more than was necessary made the terrible pacing of the show even worse.

One Man's Worth: I'm glad they explored it in the comics even though I like Storm and Black Panther together. I wish they had wound up together on the old show.

Courage: I think Morph was interesting for that reason. I know he was created for the series but did they ever use him in the comics like DC used Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya?

[90scartoonman]

I remember Spider-Man squeezing stuff in, but not so much fast paced...maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

I think Morph was a character from another universe who appeared briefly before the X-Men cartoon. I could be wrong about that, but about 10 years ago, there was this new X-title called Exiles that had mutants from different dimensions in a Sliders-type situation, and Morph was one of them.

[mattzimmer]

Spider-Man: It wasn't as bad in the earlier episodes. It wasn't until they got into seasons two and three that the show became overstuffed and never had an off switch. I GET that it was aimed at the MTV generation but even Sesame Street allows you to catch your breath.

Morph: Thanks for the info.