X-Men ‘97 Season One (2024)
Written by Beau DeMayo, Charley Feldman, JB Ballard, and Anthony Sellitti
Directed by Jake Castorena, Chase Conley, and Emi-Emmett Yonemura
I was a big fan of the X-Men animated series on Fox in the 1990s. It just so happened that it aired at the same time as my sister’s beloved Saved By the Bell. Thank goodness for VCRs. I ended up with quite a few episodes on tape to rewatch them, which I did many times over. I can’t say I kept up with the show well after the first three seasons. I definitely never would have guessed we’d see a revival of the series and one that doesn’t just try and recreate the original. Instead, this is a slight maturation of the format and the quality of storytelling. It still reads like Saturday morning cartoons, albeit with a more modern serialized structure.
Professor Xavier left the planet with his paramour Lilandra as he is fatally wounded, and her people may be able to cure him. The X-Men haven’t heard from him in a long while and assume he’s passed. They continue to carry out their mission of showing the human world that mutants are not a threat to them.
However, the same challenges they faced in the past keep resurfacing. Bolivar Trask and his Sentinels seem like a plague the X-Men will have to deal with forever. Mister Sinister has laid a shocking surprise that might tear one couple apart. The Friends of Humanity are led by X-Cutioner, who wields a mutant neutralizing weapon that takes down one team member. Magneto returns, showing that he is the heir to Xavier’s school. And waiting in the shadows is the most significant threat the team has ever encountered.
At the start of this year, I began a read/re-read of Chris Claremont’s seventeen-year run on X-Men. When people think about the team, they think of elements created during this landmark period. I was surprised while reading these comics because many things we assume were always part of the comic weren’t true until the 1990s. One of these is the prominence of Wolverine. It’s evident that Nightcrawler and Storm were pushed to the front by Claremont and that Wolverine’s sudden popularity was pretty incidental. The team roster constantly shifts as new characters are introduced and old faces return. X-Men ‘97 does a much better job of capturing that tone of the X-Men than the original series did.
I don’t think the show is better than reading Claremont’s actual comics. They are beautifully messy & disjointed, a spotlight on a writer realizing when he wants to switch things up and completely rearrange the comic. This new animated iteration does capture the melodrama soap opera of the comics, though. The scenes with Scott and Jean being all angsty over the sudden surprises and up-ending of their lives, Wolverine’s yearning for Jean, the love triangle between Magneto, Rogue, and Gambit, the self-sacrifices made to save their friends. It’s all a love letter to classic X-Men comics.
Season One of ‘97 attempts to fold in several memorable X-Men stories. In one form or another, we get Lifedeath, the Mutant Massacre, The Trial of Magneto, and several others. The season ends with a tease for the next one, which looks to be about adapting Askani’s Son and the origin of one of the all-time great X-Men villains. We finally have Cable reveal his identity to the X-Men, which ties back to some of the personal storylines in these episodes.
Storm takes on her classic costume, Wolverine dons the yellow & brown, and Jean and Scott wear their old “graduation” era outfits. The opening titles change as members join and leave. One of my favorite moments was seeing Nightcrawler in the opening credits. He’s one of the best comic book superheroes, capturing so much of what appeals to readers about the genre.
While X-Men ‘97 was a lot of fun, and the animation, for the most part, was better than it ever was, I still think there is a better adaptation to be made. If you could get one of the animation greats or their students onboard, you could deliver an X-Men animated film that would blow our minds. My vote has been for something in the style of Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue) or Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell). I know it’s a pipe dream, but that would be fantastic.
While the storytelling is more mature than when I was a kid, it is still lacking in some aspects. In some moments, the series can take on a darker tone, such as Sunspot’s confrontation with his mother near the end of the season. In others, it feels far too silly and goes back to the original series, where some episodes felt inconsequential and filler. I’m thinking of the Jubilee in the Mojoverse story, which, while a short one-off, was probably the low point of the season, the most like the original series when it wasn’t good.
Overall, I am looking forward to season two when it manages to come out. Showrunner Beau DeMayo was let go right before the premiere, and the reasons behind this have remained pure speculation. I worry about the lack of his presence in those episodes because he has a fantastic understanding of these characters.
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