What A Cartoon! - X-Men: Evolution "Operation: Rebirth"

You know what else aired in this block?? OZZY AND DRIX, you guys should do that show lol.

Nathanial Miller

I’m surprised Henry didn’t bring up probably the best X-Men team, the “Outback” team, that was comprised of mostly women! Storm, Psylocke (before her transformation), Rogue, Dazzler, Madelyne Pryor, Wolverine, Colossus, and Havok!

I just checked and sadly in Canada D+ does not have Evolution :(

Listening to these clips made me realize just how much Wolverine DNA is in Brock Samson from The Venture Brothers. The breathy pauses in his dialogue here felt especially Warburton-y to me. I kept expecting him to refer to Professor X as "Doc".

Lucas Dooley

As someone who grew up with both reruns of X-Men '92 and new episodes of Evolution, and has a LOT of fondness for the 92 show, I think Evolution really might be the better show upon revisiting it thanks to Disney+. It has its issues, certainly, but so does 92, I just feel that the animation in this feels way less cheap and the show is not nearly as obtuse as the original (even if I love that I learned so much lore from it). Plus, it gave us goth Rogue, which definitely awakened something in many people

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

Yeah every time a witch robot god or something dating as a X-men sucks

Cossover

Yeah the image inducer was around from the very early issues to let Kurt go out in public, but he abandons it because he's comfortable being a "fuzzy elf" after he gets a GF (Amanda Sefton). As you may have guessed, his girlfriend's mother is a powerful witch who fights the X-Men.

Chris Dobson

On the many names of Magneto: Like Henry said, at first he was just Magneto, one-dimensional badguy with no need for a backstory. When he started to get fleshed out in the 80s, the first alternate name he got was "Magnus", but it was never clear if it was a pseudonym or not. This was around when Claremont introduced the concentration camp survivor backstory, with the implication Magnus was Jewish, along with his first (and meant to be permanent) redemption arc. As it goes with superhero comics though, for every big change to a character, there's going to be the next creator that wants to roll things back to the status quo they're nostalgic for. Such was the case in '89 when John Byrne got to make Magneto go full supervillain again. Here's where the names come back into play. The corporate interpretation of political correctness of the day was such that Marvel was worried having a villain that happened to be implicitly Jewish would be construed as antisemitic. They could make him evil again, but couldn't erase the backstory that was made to make him sympathetic. So it dropped that Magneto's REAL name was Erik Lehnsherr and his heritage was Sinti, another group persecuted by the Nazis, because apparently in the 90s it was still totally cool and not racist to have villains that were Romani. Unsurprisingly, that soft retcon didn't sit well with other fans. People felt like Magneto being one of the most prominent Jewish comic book characters was important regardless of him doing "evil" things like ripping the metal off Wolverine's skeleton or running a space cult. So in '08, we got Magneto's Jewish identity re-established along with his really for real this time name of Max Eisenhardt.

Ryan Kertai

I have to imagine that this show and Ultimate X-Men were in development at the same time, because it feels like a similar premise. The characterizations are not the same, Wolverine is basically homicidal in Ultimate X-Men, but I find it hard to separate one from the other. And I think Henry noted that the costumes eventually changed in the later seasons to reflect Ultimate X-Men. I think Wolverine's second costume on the show is basically the same as his second Ultimate costume. Similar in a way to how I can't separate this show from Ultimate X-Men, I can't separate it from Batman Beyond. There are just so many similarities and since they were network-mates it makes the comparisons even easier. Like the Fox days, I think Batman was better served by his show. This one definitely surprised me in how watchable it is. That first season is a bit too "teen drama" for my taste, but the second season and beyond is worth a look. I checked the show out when it first premiered and then forgot about it and only really gave it the time of day when it was made available on DVD. There's certainly plenty of dumb to be found, and I think it writes down to its audience at times, but it does a good job of portraying the X-Men as teens, which honestly is more interesting than a team of adult super heroes. I'll never warm up to this more heroic Wolverine though. I definitely like my prickly, short, Canadian loner, but this is basically the Wolverine we would get in the films and also the one who would helm the later series Wolverine and the X-Men. At least his costume looks cool and I'm always down for some Scott McNeil. And I could be wrong, but it feels like most of the characters who had their nationality changed to just "American" are villains. It's probably a good idea to not have your sole representation from a part of the world be a bad guy - just make them all Americans! The obvious exception is Magneto, but there's no changing his background. And I guess Sabretooth is Canadian in this show? I don't really recall if this show spends much time on his background. I've also always been curious how this ended up on WB. Maybe they did simply outbid Fox, or maybe Fox thought the superhero cartoon was dead. Following X-Men and Spider-man, they ran Silver Surfer and Spider-Man Unlimited which were both one and done so maybe they felt burned by Marvel, even though they were about try to launch the X-Men film universe.

Joe Hodgson

Has any other total loser pedant jumped in to say “BUHHH ACTUALLY Kirby Morrow was the THIRD Goku after Ian Corlett and Peter Kelamis.”

Nick Grayson

Think it goes back as early as the 70s. Forgot when Nightcrawler stopped using it regularly.

Bradford A Barker

The best thing about Spyke is the version in X-Force comics, where he's an explicit spoiler thrown in to make the team fight with each other more for TV ratings

Zachary Adams

oh also since Henry talked about how powerful Magneto was and how important it is to know he's a serious threat. Here's a good video to show the true scope and power of Magneto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5-JVvCrGC8

Devin Hoffarth

nightcrawler had something to make him look not blue in the comics. stop around 90s look like Errol Flynn I think they say

Cossover

I was a bit too old for this show, but I thought it was pretty cool how they picked characters that were done relatively dirty by the 91 cartoon (Nightcrawler and Kitty, mostly), and made a version of "they all live in the mansion but also have a normal life" somewhat interesting. The idea of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants being the Reggie to their Archie worked out surprisingly well, and it was the first time we saw a lot of relatively obscure characters on-screen. I'm sure a lot of it has aged like milk to chase trends of the late 90's and early aughts, but I'd be curious to see how it holds up today.

Chris Dobson