
X-Men: The Animated Series – Unlikely Story of the '90s Cartoon Hit - ALee
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/x-men-animated-series-story-90s-cartoon-hit-1052263
======
slg
For a generation of kids like me the definitive story of X-Men wasn't the
comics or the movies, it was this TV show. The complexity and the maturity of
the stories in the series might even go beyond the current Marvel cinematic
universe.

~~~
maxerickson
That's not really a high bar.

The theme of the MCU is, roughly speaking, war, with a simple thread between
the movies building towards a big one.

~~~
sdwa
True. All the Marvel films are broadly the same. They've got absolutely
nothing to say about the world or the human condition but they are of course
entertaining (well, some of them anyway).

~~~
BOBOTWINSTON
"absolutely nothing to say" is a bit extreme. The Winter Soldier had a very
clear political message, Guardians has always been about artificial family,
every origin story movie is an individual overcoming some relatable human
flaw. They aren't complicated, but they aren't Transformers/BvS.

The victory lap movies tend to fall into your categorization at least
(Avengers, Civil War, maybe Thor 3).

~~~
brightball
Very similar to people who think the Rambo movies are just action movies.
Every one of those movies had a political purpose.

------
korethr
I'm one of the 90s kids who watched this series. I'd not realized that there'd
been executive pressure to make the show into another 20 minute toy commercial
-- I never got that vibe from watching it. So, IMO, they successfully resisted
that pressure, which I'm glad of.

I was only half-aware of it at the time, but I absolutely loved the fact that
it wasn't overly silly, wacky or talking down to me. It offered serious,
mature storytelling with relatable characters, and a longer serialized plot. I
couldn't quite articulate those qualities at my young age, but at some level,
I felt their lack in other cartoons. Even if I couldn't explain why, I knew
what I was watching was good.

In that way, it reminds me of another cartoon from the early 90s, DiC's
Saturday morning version of Sonic the Hedgehog (dubbed "SatAM" by fans the to
distinguish it from the other Sonic cartoon which ran concurrently on
weekdays). SatAM also tried it's hand at a darker setting, more mature story
telling, and in its second season, a longer serialized plot. And again, I
recognized quality and lapped it up. Not to say it was without flaws; quality
zig-zagged through the show's run. But like X-men, it was neither
infantilizing or preachy, and I loved it for that.

Now, cartoons are no longer _only_ for young children; take for example
Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, or South Park. But I think there still
should be some kids cartoons that attempt serious storytelling alongside the
comedic ones. Not having kids, I've not been closely following kids cartoons.
Are there any of that latter type presently?

~~~
subwayclub
Gravity Falls was a big hit with older viewers(grand supernatural mysteries
plotline underpinning various family drama). There's also a new Ducktales -
I've only caught the premiere of that but it looks like a fitting reboot.
Steven Universe has been very good, and before that there was Adventure Time.

Good all-ages shows are definitely there in the mix, although the pressure to
cut everything down to formulaic audience pandering has remained a constant.

~~~
korethr
I feel seriously remiss for forgetting Adventure Time now. Gravity Falls has
been recommended to me before, though it escaped my memory since I've actually
never seen it.

Even though it's a miniseries, I do feel like I should perhaps mention Over
The Garden Wall for a few reasons: 1. More than once I've been told that if I
liked Over the Garden Wall, I'd like Gravity Falls, 2. Over the Garden Wall
was produced by Patrick McHale, creative director and frequent writer for
Adventure Time, and 3. It's that damn good -- the basic story is presented
simply enough that a kid mature enough to not get freaked out by spooky things
would enjoy it, and there addition themes woven in that story that adults
would enjoy it too (I know I did).

------
chriskanan
As a child, I thought Dungeons and Dragons, X-Men, Spider Man (the 90s
version), and the DCAU series (Batman, Superman, etc.) were really fantastic
cartoon series. I've seen some of them since then, and they still hold up
really well.

Most of the comic book and related shows today, including Marvel's, seem
comparatively unwatchable and immature. They are definitely not designed to be
for anyone but the youngest children. Young Justice is a notable exception.

~~~
theli0nheart
Don't forget Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! That was another great cartoon from
the 90s. They don't make these shows like they used to.

~~~
thefalcon
Gargoyles.

~~~
moufestaphio
With a whole bunch of Star trek voice acting!

------
pkamb
Interesting that the famous 6-stick X-Men arcade game, also released in 1992,
used the character designs from the failed 1989 pilot episode rather than the
1992 animated series. I remember thinking how weird it was that the video game
characters were wearing the wrong costumes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_(1992_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_\(1992_video_game\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_Pryde_of_the_X-
Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_Pryde_of_the_X-Men)

~~~
metalliqaz
I remember thinking the same thing. I thought the costumes were from the older
comics, though. I didn't know about the failed pilot. Good stuff, thanks.

------
eumenides1
"Previously on X-men", Who else hears the voice of cyclops?

I can't be the only one to have pieced together the story of "days of future
past" in a non-linear fashion because you keep missing episodes due to
Saturday school?

~~~
da02
What is "Saturday school"?

~~~
dec0dedab0de
My highschool had Saturday school for only the 4 years I was there. It was for
making up for sick days. or being late too many times.

~~~
da02
What were some of the things they taught on Sat. school?

~~~
dec0dedab0de
how to sit quietly for four hours. It was just a punishment.

------
tsilva
This was huge in Brazil, too, at the time. Though with some setbacks, when
aired in open/FTA networks. For example, the multi-part episodes were cut down
(i.e. destroyed) as a single episode -- we only discovered they were actually
two episodes a couple of years later, when cable tv got popular and the show
aired on Fox Kids without the mutilations.

Also there were some translation mistakes (specially in the first episodes).
However, the brazilian voice actors were amazing and extremely memorable --
Brazil had an incredible pool of voice actors in the 80's and 90's. It was so
memorable that the same voice actors who did the animated series were used to
produce the dubbed versions of the movies a decade+ later, a rare gift given
to fans in these lands.

As for the comics, they were also a few years behind US. Uncanny X-Men #262
was published when the show first aired. So as kids coming from the show to
the comics, we were also pretty confused about uniforms and team members.

------
gwern
> Eric Lewald : The Hollywood normalcy is you provide a number one hit and the
> money starts flowing. What happened with us was we had a number one hit, but
> it was four or five companies working on this. One of them was Saban. What
> he did after the first season was cut $500 off the script fee for the
> writers. > > Julia Lewald: Me being one of the writers. > > Eric Lewald: His
> rationale was, "it's a hit. They want to be part of it, so they'll take less
> money." > > JuliaLewald: "And if not, there's a line out the door of people
> who will."

Brutal.

~~~
mcguire
Weird that Saban doesn't address those comments in the article....

~~~
gwern
For this style of interview, I don't think they are necessarily in the same
room at the same time but I think the reporter is splicing together separate
interviews using a common set of questions. Hence the lack of interaction or
responses between interviewees.

------
viseztrance
>> There was incredible pressure to change it around and make it younger,
sillier, or give them a pet dog. To dumb it down or make it younger. Luckily,
everybody on the creative side banded together and had, "No, you'll have to
fire me" moments.

Now more than ever, I wish more shows were like this.

------
pavel_lishin
> _Disher: I remember us smoking in the recording studio. I remember because
> when I got pregnant, I had to ask people to not smoke when I was in the
> room. It just boggles my mind now, that we were allowed to light up in a
> recording studio._

It's amazing how that sort of thing gets hard to remember. Reading that
paragraph, I remember now that when I was 12 or so, we'd go out to restaurants
which had smoking or non- sections - and the only real "separation" between
the two was the main aisle from the entrance to the back.

Boggles the mind to imagine something like that now. A guy walked into a pizza
place with a pinched off cigarette over lunch, and I did a double-take.

~~~
amyjess
In Marvel's comics back in the day, they ran a one-page feature called Bullpen
Bulletins that had news, columns, and various pieces of trivia about what was
going on at Marvel. They originally did one a month, but starting with the
beginning of 1993 they started running a different Bullpen Bulletins every
week. One week a month, they ran a column by Marvel's Senior Executive Editor,
Mark Gruenwald, called "Mark's Remarks", where he wrote about whatever was on
his mind.

In one of those columns, Gru wrote about how he detests smoking and he doesn't
allow people to smoke in his office. I remember stumbling on that column a few
years ago, when I was going through some old comics, and it's just bizarre to
me that you could smoke in any other part of Marvel's offices as recently as
1993-4 (I don't remember exactly when that column was from, but it was one of
those two years) and that whether or not you could smoke in somebody's office
was up to whoever the office belonged to. And I grew up in that era!

------
40acres
The 90s were truly a golden age for TV adaptations of coming books. X-Men,the
Batman & Superman animated series,along with Spiderman and more were classics.

~~~
digi_owl
IMO WB still do good adaptations of DC material.

Marvel on the other hand too often descend into fart jokes and similar cringe
moments.

~~~
smhenderson
Yeah but Teen Titans Go? Fart jokes indeed.

I liked Ultimate Spider Man; that was not as good as the one in the 90's but
better than a lot of other cartoons from recent years.

In general though I agree, I especially think DC does a good job with their
animated movies.

~~~
digi_owl
TTGo it specifically set up to be that way.

But most of the Marvel ones are a massive dose of cringe/slapstick/fart with
the odd moment of serious in what is supposedly a "serious" series.

There is no indication that there is supposed to be a "joke" show, they just
dump so many (bad) jokes in there that it become a joke show by "accident".

And if we want to talk good Spider-Man shows we should not ignore the Sony
made Spectacular Spider-Man, that IMO ranks well above both Ultimate and
perhaps even the more recent one.

This in large part because while there were jokes etc, it enhanced the action
rather than watered it down. One example would the first fight between Spider-
Man and Green Goblin, where both had quips to deliver while both of them
proved to be competent fighters.

In contrast Ultimate was a pile of monkey screams and timeouts as Spidey
strained out some attempt at a joke.

------
AdmiralAsshat
It's a pity that they didn't get the voice actors for Professor Xavier or
Magneto in the roundtable discussion. They were the most interesting of the
batch, particularly Magneto. I don't think _any_ other version of Magneto
comes close to nailing Chris Claremont's interpretation of the character.

------
laumars
I grew up watching those X-Men cartoons and the equally good (as I recall)
Spider-Man seasons that followed too.

My favourite show wasn't a cartoon though, it was Knightmare. Which is
probably easiest explained as a very British take on Dungeons and Dragons.

~~~
sillypog
I was just explaining Knightmare to an American the other day - I assume this
was only aired in the UK. If they recreated that show as a VR app that might
finally get me to buy the hardware.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Thank you Margaret Loesch, this was my favorite cartoon series when I was a
child and it is what got me into Marvel.

~~~
heimdall
25 years later and I can still hear the theme music in my mind whenever it
comes up in conversation. As a kid, the intro just got you so pumped up.

~~~
thefalcon
Best theme music ever? Maybe.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkL2-vh2Sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkL2-vh2Sk)

~~~
Deinos
I enjoyed the X-Men theme, but I think Spiderman's easily tops it for me (I
also loved the 2nd version of the Iron Man Theme growing up).

For reference: theme songs from Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man, Spiderman and
Xmen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC43s8fSsfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC43s8fSsfc)

~~~
amyjess
Oddly enough, I was singing the Spider-Man theme to myself last night as I was
walking around the house. 20 years later, and it still randomly gets stuck in
my head.

"Spider blood, spider blood, radioactive spider blood..."

------
grifter
Couldn't agree more with all the comments on quality and maturity of X-Men,
Spiderman, and Batman series of that era. Paired with reading the comics they
really cemented the Marvel and DC universes for me.

Have add in Exo Squad! While it's not a comic book adaptation, it's a kids-
targeted cartoon from that 90s era with very mature themes. Great first-gen
action figures and genesis game as well.

I've rewatched the series recently (can purchase on iTunes and find on
youtube) and it still holds up. Would love to see it as a live-action series
and/or in cinematic form.

~~~
mizzack
Recently found some of my old Exo Squad action figures and my toddler loves
them. I'm blown away by the quality/functionality.

In a similar vein of great cartoon + action figure combos of the era, Ronin
Warriors.

~~~
grifter
Wow! I completely forgot about Ronin Warriors. I need to find and rewatch
them—I hope they're available somewhere. I had those action figures as well.
They were great.

Which Exo figures did/do you have? (I had Lt. Marsh, Wolf, Marsala, and
Phaeton or Typhonus (can't recall which).

------
Cyph0n
This was one of the most memorable cartoons from my teens!

It was dubbed to Arabic by either a Syrian or Lebanese studio and was
broadcast on MBC3, a Saudi cartoon/kids channel, in the mid-2000s. I may be
mistaken on the channel, but the time frame should be accurate.

As a side note, probably 80% of all cartoons from the 90s onwards are dubbed
by a few Lebanese, Syrian, and Egyptian studios.

The previous generation of cartoons, around the 70s and 80s, were mainly
dubbed in Kuwait. Future Boy Conan[1] and Grendizer were from this era; if you
ask an Arab about either of these two cartoons and they don't know them, they
are not Arab!

[1]: The show's name in Arabic is _A 'adnan wa Leena_, which are the Arabic
names of the two main characters, separated by the conjunction _wa_ ("and").

------
toblender
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rSw4Xl5qfs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rSw4Xl5qfs)

The Japanese intro for those of you who haven't seen it.

------
miiiiiike
If you're in this thread you're also going to want to check out Batman: The
Animated Podcast ([http://www.btaspodcast.com/](http://www.btaspodcast.com/)).

It has some great interviews with the writers and producers.

------
lowglow
This cartoon was my jam. Growing up on comics as a kid with idols like Tony
Stark, etc and all the sci-fi future stuff, just made me want to become an
engineer/scientist.

------
santaclaus
I was just thinking how much better The Gifted would be if it were animated
like the 90s cartoon. Somehow comics don't translate well into low-budget live
action TV.

~~~
humanrebar
> ...low-budget live action TV...

To be fair, it's rare that low-budget live-action action shows work well. It's
even rarer if the action requires supernatural or science fiction elements.

~~~
moomin
This is one of the reasons I love Into The Badlands. It’s got the budget to do
comic book action right.

------
kelukelugames
This is my favorite parody video.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSuvOVH0aSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSuvOVH0aSQ)

~~~
jack9
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlta9iFxQE4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlta9iFxQE4)

------
wink
Unlike many other 90s cartoons at that time I totally have no memory of seeing
this on German television. Wikipedia says they dubbed (yes, everything's
dubbed here) the first 26 episodes then didn't continue and only in 2001 as a
rerun on a different channel season 3 and 4 were added.

------
seppin
I was amazed, even then, about how advanced the story telling was.

They had one scene in the time traveling season, where Cable said something
along the lines of: "It's just like the nuclear disarmament of the 21st
century, every country kept one."

Game theory in a kids show? Awesome.

~~~
digi_owl
I think it was more a case of character cynicism.

------
staunch
When that theme song played we got so quiet and so excited. It still has an
incredible effect on me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa1RMD1f5Es](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa1RMD1f5Es)

------
oweiler
For anyone who loved X-Men as a kid should have a look at: Avengers: Earth
Mightiest Heroes. Pretty similar with regards to story telling and much more
mature than most MCU movies.

------
sethammons
Man, I enjoyed this show. The opening theme is my ringtone and has been for
years at this point. When it goes off, usually someone nearby is like, "whoa,
is that X-Men?!" :)

------
bellab
You can relate to those who think Rambo movies have no political agenda when
they clearly do.

------
jewel777
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was my favorite cartoon at the time. Cartoons
today are so lame.

~~~
humanrebar
The Duck Tales reboot is decent. Bob's Burgers is at worst pleasant. Rick and
Morty, Archer, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, ... there are plenty of good
cartoons.

And that's assuming you're not including Japanese animation as "cartoons".

~~~
digi_owl
Just checked the intro, and i love how they basically recreated the old intro
beat by beat, while having a modern look.

