Wolverine and the X-Men, which tragically lasted only one season

Wolverine and the X-Men is TEH AWESOME!

August 2012

I recently finished watching the complete series of Wolverine and the X-Men on DVD. I used to watch this show fairly often on Nicktoons until I moved to Japan, but Nicktoons never shows anything in order, it seems. Consequently, I have seen much of Avatar: The Last Airbender completely out of order as well. I swear, even when they show two Avatar episodes back-to-back, they are still selected completely at random. It's annoying. What's even more annoying is that Wolverine and the X-Men only lasted a single season before it was cancelled.

Wolverine and the X-Men sort of vaguely follows the premise of the X-Men movies, making the series easily accessible to those who've seen the movies, but aren't familiar with other X-Men materials. The show begins with the trajic deaths (or maybe just the disappearances of) Dr. Xavier and Jean Grey. The Mutant Registration Department (MRD) is now in full force, rounding up any and all mutants and imprisoning them. Sentinel technology is now in full swing, tracking down mutants. Magneto has built up a kingdom called Genosha, a sanctuary for mutants. One year later, Wolverine is now endeavoring to reassemble the X-Men.


The team in the X-Jet
X-Men First Class!

As with many others, the notion of Wolverine being the leader of the X-Men didn't sit right with me at first, since he's a loner who basically does his own thing. The show has Wolverine chewing out Cyclops sometimes, telling him that he needs to shape up or leave the team. The opposite is what every X-Men fan would expect, since Cyclops is who we always know to be the X-Men team leader. Choice #2 would be Storm, who was also the leader for a while. But actually, the show clearly demonstrates Wolverine's leadership shortcomings, with him showing any real lack of attachment or responsibility in the very first episode, Rogue losing all respect for him, and him making bad decisions and being a bad judge of character. Obviously, with the popularity of the Wolverine character and a Wolverine movie that was due to be out at the time, it was purely a business decision to have him become the leader of the X-Men. The premise of the show sets up the unlikelihood of him being the leader of the team, and the show stays true to character by showing him as being rather lacking in leadership qualities.

The show's main characters, besides Wolverine of course, are Beast, Shadowcat, Angel, Rogue, Emma Frost, Storm, Iceman, Forge, and Nightcrawler. The show also squeezes in some other characters from time to time, such as Gambit, Sabretooth, Psylocke, Silver Samurai, and Spiral. Plus, dozens of other cameo appearances are made, for fans to identify, such as Dazzler and Firestar.


Gambit is a recurring character
Psylocke makes an appearance, too
Character designs are fantastic, harkening to the '70s Chris Clairmont-style designs, rather than the late '80s designs that were featured in the '90s Saturday morning cartoon and the Capcom games. My only gripe is with giving Cyclops a trenchcoat, which to me seems rather impractical. The show focuses a bit on Scott Summers's emo side with the loss of Jean Grey, so I suppose the trenchcoat fits. Still, trenchcoats suit Gambit's style much better.

This show features fantastic action sequences, and the animation quality is far better than the beloved X-Men Saturday morning cartoon from the '90s. Fight scenes such as between Nightcrawler vs Spiral are intense, and one episode involving The Hulk features very awesome action. For the most part, Wolverine's claws are mostly for show, since they couldn't get away with him slashing and stabbing people. However, there are scenes of implied deaths that I really did not expect, such as Sentinels shooting helicopters out of the skies. The show leads up to the rise of the Phoenix, but instead of rehashing yet again the tragic fate of Jean Gray, in an interesting twist of fate, another mutant commits self-sacrifice to prevent Jean from becoming the Phoenix. I really did not expect a main character in the show to die.

This show is really, really cool. The writers are true fans of the comics, and it shows. They do such a better job with the source material than the movie writers do, such as not letting characters go to waste (Cyclops, Psylocke), or inserting ridiculous innuendo equating mutantkind to homosexuality. Unlike the movies, this series shows just how Rogue is possibly the most valuable X-Men with her ability to absorb others' powers. (Although in this show, Rogue doesn't have Ms. Marvels' powers of flying and such like she did in the comics, after nearly murdering Ms. Marvel). While watching the show, it's obvious that the makers are real fans of the comics, from inserting the Rover storyline, Wolverine sneaking up on a deer just to pet it, and


Rogue shows how to get stuff done.
The Hulk episode is spectacular.
It is a complete shame that this show did not survive past one season. It was unveiled that the second season would include characters such as Havok, Colossus, Jubilee, and Deadpool. And who knows? Perhaps Gambit could have joined the X-Men in the second season. It was reported that they were unable to secure funding from the financing studio. However, the show died in 2009, the same year that Disney bought Marvel. To me, Disney is the Evil Empire, and I bet that they let this show die, the same year that Spectacular Spider-Man also died. I think maybe a part of this was Marvel wanting to reign in their properties, even at the cost of disillusioning their fans. Another part of it was that probably Disney wanted to kill licenses to channels such as Nicktoons so that they could have all the Marvel licenses on Disney XD ...although they allowed the terrible Iron Man: Armored Adventures (featuring a teeenaged Tony Stark and terrible character designs) to continue on Nicktoons. It seems that it's also possible that they wanted some "new direction" in the types of Marvel animated series to be broadcast. I did catch a few episodes of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and that seemed pretty cool. I just really hate Disney, and the company has been terrible ever since Michael Eisner became president (and it hasn't improved since he left). If it wasn't for Pixar's success, Disney would be nothing. Plus, the way they handle Studio Ghibli movies is horrible. They recycle some aluminum cans and use the money from that as their advertising budget for Ghibli movies. So with nobody knowing about it, the movie will be released in a very few theaters and suddenly disappear because nobody goes to see it. Then Disney makes up for it by releasing a high-quality DVD release. I swear, Disney sucks. Wolverine and the X-Men doesn't. So go buy the DVD and watch it.

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