Just three years after striking out with Pryde of the X-Men, Marvel went back to the drawing board and struck gold with the X-Men animated series. Running 72 episodes from 1992 until 1997, the series would be Marvel's longest running to date. Over the series run, most of the prominent members of the X-Men made appearances on the show. The main cast consisted of Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Beast, Rogue, Gambit, and Jubilee. Frequent villains included Magneto, the Sentinels, Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, and unfortunately, Mojo.
Regular appearances by time-hoppers Cable and Bishop set up some interesting alternate reality storylines. Of course, the most epic stories were the multi-part Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Sagas. Other tales were crafted around guest appearances by Colossus, Nightcrawler, X-Factor, Alpha Flight, Angel, Iceman, Warlock, and non-mutie Captain America. Other notable X-Men characters including Morph, Cannonball, Banshee, Magik, Longshot, Dazzler, Psylocke, Emma Frost, Silver Fox, and Maverick also dropped in over the course of the series. Ironically, Kitty Pryde AKA Shadowcat, the titular character of the Pryde of the X-Men series remained one of the few prominent X-characters not to ever appear in this series.
Perhaps best remembered for faithfully adapting so many stories directly from the comics, X-Men stands as one of the most influential superhero series ever produced, and as one of Marvel's finest animated products. And though it shows its age a bit, this series is the bar by which subsequent X-Men series have been measured.* The Marvel Super Heroes (1966) * Spider-Man (1967) * Fantastic Four (1967) * The Fantastic Four (1978) * Fred and Barney Meet the Thing (1979) * Spider-Woman (1979) * Spider-Man (1981) * Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981) * The Incredible Hulk (1982) * X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men (1989) * X-Men (1992) *
No comments:
Post a Comment