THE MARVEL ANIMATED UNIVERSE PART 2 - THE X-MEN

Well! It was last July that I wrote a fairly long post about my dream Spider-Man cartoon series, an adaptation of the Silver Age comics by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, and John Romita; a series that would have been set in the sixties (or at least in a pre-digital world). At the time, I said it was part one of a two-part series, and the second installment would cover my ideal X-Men animation. But, while I thought about it quite a bit in the subsequent nine months, I never got around to putting fingers to keyboard to write about it... until now.

Look, I loved the X-MEN cartoon in the 1990s. It was my companion through middle school and high school. And I really enjoyed its continuation, X-MEN 97, on Disney Plus. (Though that series is perfect encapsulation of why I loathe the current streaming model for TV series -- we had a ten episode season one in 2024 and we are still waiting for season two, two years later!! It's idiotic.) The X-Men series, at least for it's first season, took one of the most appealing aspects of the comics of the era -- namely, serialization -- and translated it to the small screen. To a kid who had never watched the likes of ROBOTECH, this was groundbreaking.

But X-MEN wasn't perfect; far from it, in fact. Even as a teen, I found it odd that the group was made up of a bunch of then-popular characters like Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee, waltzing around like they'd always been there. Later in the series, this premise was walked back and it was established that there had been at least one prior iteration of the X-Men -- but at least early on, we were meant to believe that Wolverine and Gambit were among the first X-Men, fighting alongside Cyclops and Jean Grey against Magneto. It was weird.

And as with Spider-Man, I've long wished for an X-Men series that hewed more closely to the original comics. However, where the Spider-Man show I ruminated on last year was a somewhat straight adaptation -- not issue-to-issue, but simply in terms of the major storytelling beats -- this hypothetical X-Men cartoon would take a different route, at least at first. We would begin with the same basic premise as Spider-Man; a 65-episode series comprised of five 13-episode seasons. The first two seasons would focus on the original X-Men, and the final three would cover the era of the "new" X-Men.

So season one would hit the major beats of the early years of the series, condensed much more than our Spider-Man series. The main characters are, of course, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, Angel, and Professor X. We see their encounters with Magneto, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Ka-Zar and the Savage Land, Juggernaut, the Sentinels, the Mimic, and Count Nefaria. Somewhere in there is a story where the X-Men team up with the Avengers to battle the Brotherhood, and Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch desert the evil team to join Earth's Mightiest Heroes. The season ends with the apparent death of of Professor X, though in the interest of a thematic throughline, we might change the enemy in this story from the one-off Grotesk to Magneto.

At this point I should disclose that our X-Men series, like our Spider-Man series, is running in something resembling "real time" -- so the first season covered several months in the X-Men's lives, and season 2 opens after a few more months have passed, during which time the group has come to terms with the demise of Professor X. At this point, Cyclops reveals to his friends something he himself only learned from Xavier shortly before the professor's death -- that he has a brother named Alex, and he wants the rest of the team to meet him.

Yes, season 2 is where things really get rearranged. There are thirteen episodes, and a lot of ground to cover. First, we would meet Lorna Dane and Havok in the earliest episodes of the season, adapting the classic Jim Steranko Magneto/Mesmero story and the Neal Adams Living Monolith story into a single multi-part saga. The remainder of the season would feature an ongoing sub-plot about an impending alien invasion of Earth, with its vanguard being the myserious Mutant Master. Along the way, the X-Men -- now including Havok and Lorna among their number -- would encounter Factor Three and Banshee, as well as have a rematch with Juggernaut. Then the final chunk of the season would be more-or-less a straight adaptation of the remaining Neal Adams issues, featuring the Sentinels, Sauron and the Savage Land, Magneto, Sunfire, and the ultimate reveal that Professor X faked his death to prepare for the alien attack, with the X-Men thwarting that invasion by the hostile Z'Nox in the season finale.

When season 3 begins, more time has passed. Beast has left the X-Men to attend college. The other members of the group, save Cyclops, are considering moving on as well. But when Professor X detects a powerful new mutant on an island called Krakoa, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Angel, Havok, and Lorna scramble to investigate. And that's just the cold open to the season premiere! The remainder of the episode, along with the next, roughly adapts the events of GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1, as you might imagine. Professor X recruits a new X-Men team consisting of Wolverine, Banshee, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Thunderbird, and Sunfire. The group heads to Krakoa, that it's actually a mutant, defeats it, and heads home. In the aftermath, all of the original team members except Cyclops depart, as does Sunfire.

Now. At this point, we've produced 28 of our 65 episodes. We have 38 episodes left. And guess what -- the full run of UNCANNY X-MEN from issue 94 through the end of the Claremont/Byrne run is 50 issues. It's pretty easy to excise 12 issues out of those 50, either removing certain fill-ins entirely, or by combining a two-parter or few into a single episode. Since this was the era of the 17-page comic, most multi-part stories can be pretty easily condensed.

To that end, at this point we're basically adapting on roughtly a one story to one story basis, because -- in my opinion -- that's the only way to do full justice to the material produced by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne.

To wit:

• Issues 94 and 95, featuring the old X-Men (except Cyclops) leaving and then the new X-Men versus Count Nefaria and the death of Thunderbird, are combined into episode 29.
• Issue 96, featuring Kierrok the N'Garai demon, can be removed entirely, with only its sub-plot material -- Cyclops's anguish over the death of Thunderbird and the debut of Moira MacTaggart -- transplanted into subsequent episodes.
• Issue 97, featuring Professor X sensing a new threat from space, while a mystery man named Eric the Red brainwashes Havok and Lorna (now known as Polaris) to serve him and attack the X-Men, becomes episode 30.
• Issues 98 - 100, in which the X-Men battle a new generation of Sentinels and their master, Stephen Lang, are combined into episodes 31 and 32.
• Issues 101 - 103, which spotlight Marvel Girl's transformation into Phoenix and the X-Men's vacation to Banshee's ancestral castle (where they run afoul of Juggernaut and his partner, Black Tom), become episodes 33 and 34.
• Issue 104, which finds the new X-Men fighting Magneto at Muir Island, is episode 35. Note that our prior episodes didn't feature the story in which Magneto was reverted to childhood, so we would find a different reason for the Master of Magnetism to be at Muir Isle here.
• Issue 105 sees Phoenix battle Firelord at Eric the Red's command and becomes episode 36. Firelord is a weird fit for this animated adaptation, so there's a possibility of swapping him for some other character, but the basic plot would remain the same.
• Issue 106, a fill-in flashback featuring Xavier's "dark side", can be removed entirely from the narrative.
• Issues 107 and 108, wherein the X-Men travel to the far end of the cosmos, fight the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, save the alien princess Lilandra and save the universe, would become episodes 37 and 38.
• Issue 109 features the X-Men's encounter with "Weapon Alpha", sent by the Canadian government to reclaim Wolverine. This becomes episode 39, the season finale -- which also incorporates elements of issue 110 as well, in which the man called Warhawk infiltrates the X-Mansion to plant bugs for the mysterious Hellfire Club.

That's season 3 in a nutshell. The narrative throughline is the rise of Phoenix as the new X-Men learn to work together as a team. Season 4 then becomes our adaptation of the classic Claremont/Byrne "world tour" storyline...

• We open with issue 111 serving as our episode 40. A few months have passed since season 2 ended. The X-Men have gone missing, and former teammate Beast comes looking for them. He traces them to a carnival in Texas, where he helps them break free of brainwashing by their old foe Mesmero. The X-Men battle Mesmero but are in the end captured by Magneto.
• Issues 112 and 113 are combined into episode 41, as the X-Men are held prisoner by Magneto in the arctic but eventually free themselves and send him into reatreat as his base is destroyed. Phoenix and Beast are separated from the rest of the team, with each group believing the other dead.
• Issues 114 and 115 can also be combined into a single episode 42, featuring Phoenix and Beast telling Professor X that they believe the X-Men to be dead, while in truth the team arrives in the Savage Land, battles Sauron, and learns of the threat of Garokk the Petrified Man.
• Issue 116 becomes episode 43 -- the X-Men's battle with Garokk, while Professor X goes into outer space to live with Lilandra, and Phoenix and Beast tell Angel, Iceman, Havok, and Lorna about the X-Men's deaths.
• Guess what! We're jumping to another series for this episode. MARVEL TEAM-UP issues 69 and 70, by Byrne and Claremont, featured a brouhaha between Havok, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Living Monolith. Why not adapt that into episode 44?! Maybe we'd remove Spidey and the Thunder God and replace them with Lorna and Phoenix for this adaptation. I think it would work, and make for a nice mid-season one-off episode.
• Issue 117, a flashback to Professor X's younger days, does not need to be excised here, but instead it would be combined with a much older issue -- #20, if you can believe it -- to form episode 45, as Professor X tells Lilandra both his origin story and the first time he met an evil Mutant, the Shadow King, to create episode 45.
• Issues 118 and 119 are combined to become episode 46, in which the X-Men arrive in Japan and team up with Sunfire to battle the terrorist Moses Magnum and Banshee burns out his mutant power.
• Issues 120 and 121 can also be consolidated. In this episode 47, the X-Men travel to Canada and fight Weapon Alpha, now called Vindicator, along with his team, Alpha Flight, for Wolverine's freedom.
• Issues 122, 123, and 124 were originally comprised of a sub-plot issue followed by a two-part encounter with Arcade. Here, we would condense them into two episodes, 48 and 49, covering that same ground.
• This brings us to issues 125 - 128, the Proteus saga, in which Beast and Phoenix are reunited with the X-Men, who travel to Muir Island and battle the reality-warping mutant who happens to be Moira MacTaggart's son. These four issues can be consolidated into a three-part season finale in episodes 50 - 52, wrapping things on a suitably epic note.

Alternatively, we could bring in UNCANNY X-MEN ANNUAL #3, which was set around the time of issues 122-124, to make episode 50, and condense Proteus into a season-ending two-parter. Depends whether we want one more inconsequential one-off in there prior to the big finale.

Now here's where we get a little controversial with our adaptation. I firmly believe that for thematic and dramatic purposes, the final season should end with the "Dark Phoenix Saga" -- which means that at this point, there will be some major rejiggering of the timeline as we adapt the final chunk of Byrne/Claremont stories, including breaking up "Dark Phoenix" a bit. But I think it will work. So at this point, our team consists of Cyclops, Phoenix, Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus. Children of the Atom, students of Charles, Xavier, MUTANTS -- ahem. Anyway -- time has passed since the defeat of Proteus. Our heroes are home. Phoenix has been having weird dreams about being a 19th century noblewoman. Professor X is still in space -- at least in our first episode.

• In the season premiere, Wolverine decides he should do something about his status as a rogue Canadian agent. So, in an adaptation of issues 139 and 140, he and Nighcrawler head up north, where they team up with Alpha Flight to battle the Wendigo as episode 53. Meanwhile, in space, Professor X realizes that he needs to return to Earth immediately to help Phoenix manage her powers.
• "Dark Phoenix" was originally comprised of a trio of 3-part stories. There's a lot going on those issues, perhaps more so than in most of the 17-page story era. So episodes 54 - 56 cover issues 129 - 131 -- Xavier's return to Earth and discovery of the new mutants, Dazzler and Kitty Pryde, followed by the X-Men's trips to New York for Dazzler and to Kitty's hometown of Chicago for a battle with the Hellfire Club's White Queen.
• In the comics, the X-Men go on the run after issue 131, but in our series, they instead return home, where time passes (a passage that originally took place in issue 129 of the comics after Xavier's return). During that time, Kitty is enrolled at Xavier's school, which means that episodes 57 and 58 adapt issues 141 and 142 -- "Days of Future Past". Where are Cyclops and Phoenix during this story? Possibly away visiting Angel in New Mexico, to set up his return in the next episode.
• Next we have issues 132 - 134, the X-Men's encounter with the full Hellfire Club, adapted into episodes 59 and 60 of our story. Here, the X-Men have learned of the Club's involvement in their recent troubles, and recruit Angel, a member of the Club, to help them investigate. This leads into the group's battle with Sebastian Shaw and the Inner Circle, the revelation that Mastermind has been manipulating Phoenix for months, an explanation of Warhawk's infiltration of the mansion in the season 3 finale, and Phoenix's transformation into Dark Phoenix.
• But what was Kitty doing while the X-Men were battling the Hellfire Club? Turns out she was at the mansion fighting a "Demon" in episode 61's adaptation of issue 143. Is this a weird placement for this one? Probably. But I think it works. We'd begin with a cold open set nearly three years ago, as Cyclops mourns Thunderbird's death and accidentally releases the demon with a stray optic blast to a mysterious cairn on Xavier's grounds. Then we cut to the present, as Kitty, home alone, finds herself fighting for her life against the demon.
• Then it's back to "Dark Phoenix" for its final act, as the Shi'ar come to Earth and sentence Jean Grey to death. Here we have three issues, one double-sized, to cover -- 135 - 137, which would make for a fine trio of episodes, 62 - 64.
• And then comes our season (and perhaps series?) finale -- "Elegy," adapted from issue 138. In it, the X-Men hold a funeral for Jean Grey, Cyclops reflects on their life together as X-Men, and then ultimately tells Professor X that he's leaving the team. It feels like a fitting conclusion to this 65-episode saga.

And that's it. But hey, if the series is picked up for 65 more episodes, that roughly takes us all the way up to the trial of Magneto in issue 200, and includes lots more material to adapt. But I won't get into that here.

As with the never-to-be Spider-Man series, I would say this cartoon should be held to a 1970s era level of technology -- again, a pre-digital age. And as with my Spider-Man idea, this one would never happen due to a number of factors. But I can certainly dream! Just as I can dream of a companion AVENGERS animated series adapting that series' greatest hits from its first fifteen or so years, and one for the FANTASTIC FOUR, basically adapting the full Kirby & Lee run -- plus an "anthology" MARVEL SPOTLIGHT series to cover (more loosely) adapted solo adventures of characters like the Hulk, Iron Fist, Moon Knight, Luke Cage, and so forth. I won't write entire articles about all of those, but suffice it to say that my pie-in-the-sky, bespoke, never-gonna-happen Marvel animated universe would look something like that.

ON THE PASSING OF GERRY CONWAY

It was announced last week that legendary comic book writer Gerry Conway has passed away at age 73. I posted something resembling the following in a thread on the subject at the MARVEL MASTERWORKS MESSAGE BOARD, where I do most of my comic book opining these days under the name "MCRE" -- but I wanted to publish my brief (yet ever so slightly expanded) thoughts here as well for posterity, because while I've frankly read relatively little of Conway's massive comic book output over the decades, what I did read left a big impression on me. Obviously there was his BATMAN/DETECTIVE COMICS run, which I wrote about in-depth here as my last major project before going into semi-retirement. I think anyone who read those posts would come to the conclusion that, while there may have been bits and pieces I didn't love, overall, I found it an exceptional stretch of Bat-stories.

But a few decades before I read those Batman comics (yet a few years after they were originally published), there was another Conway run that made a massive impression on me. If you were to ask me what formed the foundation for what I think Spider-Man is "supposed to be" when I was a child, I'd easily rattle off Roger Stern's Hobgoblin stories from 1983 (which were some of the earliest comics I owned as a child when I could barely read), the Lee/Romita newspaper strips I had via the 1986 BEST OF SPIDER-MAN book I mentioned numerous times when I looked at the strips years ago, the Lee/Romita AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issues circa the "Petrified Tablet Saga" (issues 68 - 75) which I owned via digest reprints circa 1987-88, and Gerry Conway's WEB and SPECTACULAR from 1988 - 1990, which I was reading as it came out.

I was around 10-12 years old when that combined WEB/SPECTACULAR run was published, and having returned to it some years ago as an adult, I think it remains a high watermark for Spider-Man (and is my number one vote every year in the "Most Wanted Omnibus" polls). When discussing that run with Tom DeFalco for the COMICS CREATORS ON SPIDER-MAN book, Conway said that his editor allowed him to write the books as a soap opera about Peter Parker and his supporting cast. In other words, per Conway, he came up with all the sub-plots first, then wrote the superhero stuff around them. As far as I'm aware, this was a pretty novel way to write a superhero comic at the time (though perhaps Chris Claremont had beaten Conway to it by a few years), and it's really the best way to write a series like Spider-Man, in my opinion. And that isn't to say the superhero stuff was an afterthought in those issues! To this day, because of their influence on me when I was a child, the sagas of Tombstone (in SPECTACULAR) and the Lobo brothers (in WEB) remain "iconic" Spider-Man storylines in my mind.

So I'm pretty bummed about this, but nonetheless thankful for all the joy Conway gave me over the years.

I'M STILL ALIVE...

Well! Things have certainly dried up around here since a year ago, when I thought I'd be able to manage one post a month! I managed January, February, and March, skipped April, posted in May, skipped June, posted in July, and then vanished for the remainder of 2025. I can make no excuses, though I feel like one of those 90s comic artists you would read about in WIZARD, who constantly missed their deadlines because they were playing videogames or whatever. That's about where I am... as I said around this time last year, I still want to do this blog; I just have a hard time lately finding the motivation to do it. I haven't even mustered the effort to reply to some comments that have rolled in over the past half-year!

So at this point I don't know what to say. I don't think I'm officially retiring or throwing in the towel, but despite my own wished to the contrary, I am most likely on a long-term sabbatical. And who knows; maybe that sabbatical will turn out to be permanent? I can't say for certain. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new post pop up at some point around here, but by the same token, I also wouldn't be surprised if this is the last word at this site! I guess we'll all just have to wait and see what happens next...

JULY 2025 - THE MARVEL ANIMATED UNIVERSE PART 1

Marvel cartoons have existed practically since the dawn of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s, when Grantray-Lawrence Animation produced THE MARVEL SUPER HEROES and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, while Hanna-Barbera gave us THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Over the decades, many more series followed. I have particularly warm and fuzzy memories of watching SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS and THE INCREDIBLE HULK on NBC Saturday morning in the early eighties, catching the "Pryde of the X-Men" pilot episode for an unproduced X-MEN cartoon later in the decade, and then eventually, in the 1990s, watching a semblance of a united Marvel animated universe (if only by dint of the various shows using all the same voice actors for episodes with guest appearances) with X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN on Fox, FANTASTIC FOUR and IRON MAN in syndication, and THE INCREDIBLE HULK on UPN.

And there have been many, many more Marvel shows since then, including the unparalleled and cancelled-far-too-soon AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES, whose first season I wrote about here years ago, during the height of COVID lockdown time.

I think after EMH ended, Marvel dabbled with what you might call a shared universe again, with shows like ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, MARVEL'S AVENGERS, HULK AND THE AGENTS OF S.M.A.S.H., and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY all having some degree of crossover. But Marvel has never done -- and, as you'll soon see, likely never will do -- a shared animated universe in the way I'd like to see it done. I've written about this concept before, in comments on posts over at Gentlemen of Leisure, but I decided I should consolidate my thoughts and post them here, if for no other reason than posterity. So what you're about to read are some of those afore-mentioned comments, expanded and updated.

Again, it's unlikely to ever happen exactly this way, but my dream will always be to someday see animated versions of the Marvel characters that adhere to the established comic book continuities of their early years. Now, I'm not saying I want straight page-to-screen translations of every issue from the 60s; but more like picking and choosing the things that worked best and making them into a pre-planned, cohesive story, while respecting the general original chronology laid out by Kirby, Ditko, Lee, Romita, and the rest.

Now, I know I'm already dating myself with this, but let's say Marvel/Disney is going to produce a Spider-Man cartoon using the long-established "magic number" of 65 episodes -- in this case, a pre-planned five-season series of thirteen episodes per season. The show would start with Spider-Man established; no need to revisit his origin. Peter Parker is, say, a high school junior with maybe a year of adventuring and fighting common criminals under his belt. Our first season would basically adapt the first half of Steve Ditko's run. Again, there's no need to cover every single issue; just hit the major highlights -- the first appearances of the Chameleon, Vulture, Doctor Octopus, Sandman, the Lizard, Electro, the Enforcers, Mysterio, the Green Goblin, and Kraven would be sufficient, with Ditko's sub-plots threading through all the episodes in a serialized fashion. Perhaps the season ends with the Sinister Six story from the first Spidey Annual.

The first thing to note is that certain characters should be introduced in our series sooner than in the comics. For example, there's no reason not to have Robbie Robertson working at the Daily Bugle from the first episode. Norman Osborn could start to show up earlier than in the comics as well, in order to better plant the seed that he will eventually be revealed as the Green Goblin. But the flip side of this is that we don't want to mess with the continuity too much. Peter Parker absolutely did not go to high school with Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborn, and it drives me nuts every time adaptations in various media have them at Midtown High with him. We'll get to them eventually; no need to shoehorn them in too soon.

And the main way our series would be different from a lot of cartoons would be that it passes in real time, with each seasona accounting for a school year in Spidey's life. So season 2 would pick up a few months after the end of season 1, with Peter starting his senior year in high school. This season would continue to adapt Ditko stories, but with more of an organized crime bent, featuring the story of the Big Man and the Crimemaster, more of the Enforcers, the Green Goblin trying to take over New York's gangs, and perhaps some foreshadowing of the Kingpin. Plus the debuts of a couple new villains like Scorpion and the Spider-Slayers, as well as return engagements from the major villains -- Kraven, Sandman, etc. -- and it would all culminate with a 2-part season finale featuring Doc Ock, adapting the classic "Master Planner" story.

At this point, the series moves in a new direction. When season 3 opens, another summer has passed and Peter is starting college at Empire State University. Certain high school cast members are gone (Liz Allen, Sally Avril), replaced by the afore-mentioned Harry, Mary Jane, and of course Gwen Stacy. This season opens with the transition from Steve Ditko to John Romita -- a 2-parter featuring the unmasking of the Green Goblin. From there, the remaining 11 episodes of the season adapt the early John Romita material; the Rhino, the Shocker, the "death" of the Vulture, and the returns of stalwarts like the Lizard and Kraven. The season likely ends with another classic, "Spider-Man No More!", showing us the Kingpin in full for the first time, after we've heard thorughout the season that someone has been villing the mob boss void left by Crime-Master and the Big Man, as well as the disappearance of the Green Goblin following the season premiere.

By now, you know the drill. Another summer time-jump and we reach season 4, in which we adapt more John Romita stories. This is a Kingpin-heavy year, as were the comics around this time. The Kingpin appears in, or has his hands in, nearly every episode. But there's still time for appearances by Doc Ock, the Vulture, and Mysterio. I imagine the season might end with a Green Goblin return, adapted from the story in SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN Magazine #2.

And that brings us to the fifth and final season, which spends nearly its entire run-time on the classic "Petrified Tablet" story, featuring a gang-war between the Kingpin and Silvermane, and ending with Silvermane's death.

Now -- this isn't perfect; it's really me coming up with all of this off the cuff while looking at AMAZING SPIDER-MAN covers for inspiration. But you get the idea. Five seasons, following Peter from the midpoint of high school to the end of hus junior year of college (and if the series is successful enough, maybe we get picked up for another 65 to cover his senior year and a few years of graduate school). The show would stick to adapting the Silver Age stories as best it could, with certain modifications to allow for better pacing, foreshadowing, and so forth. And -- this is a big one -- I would actually set the series in the sixties, when the comics were published! Or, at least, in a pre-digital world. I find that as I get older, I feel everything is better if it's set in the era when it was created. I read someplaced that the current PEANUTS cartoons produced for Apple TV have a mandate not to use any technology created after the 1970s. I think that's a great rule of thumb for everyting, everywhere, all the time, but for now we'll just apply it to these fictional Marvel shows!

(Yes, I said "these" -- I'm not done yet! Next time, I'll talk about my hypothetical X-MEN series!)

Anyway, like I said up top, there's no way this actually happens. It's not commercially viable enough. It's too niche. Audiences nowadays want their Miles and their Venom and their Spider-Gwen and their Silk and so on and so forth. And setting in the sixties probably loses a lot of the young viewers such a show would need in order to survive. So this concept will always remain nothing more than a pipe dream for me! (At least until the day A.I. can create bespoke content on demand with no regard for corporate ownership.)

This post went pretty long, so I won't bore you with any other content, other than to note that I'm still reading the newspaper strip adventures of Rip Kirby! But I think I went pretty in-depth on what I liked about that last time, so I won't go into it again. Maybe next month I'll have moved along to something different?!

MAY 2025 - I DON'T WATCH TV ANYMORE

At least not like I used to. I grew up watching TV. As a child, I was enamored with my Saturday morning and weekday afternoon cartoons, as you might expect. Everything from HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, THUNDERCATS, and TRANSFORMERS to SUPER FRIENDS to THE SMURFS and GARFIELD AND FRIENDS. I also followed the adventures of THE DUKES OF HAZZARD and THE A-TEAM in live action. I watched TV all the time through elementary school, high school, and college. I took in the TV shows my parents grew up with via "Nick at Nite" and weekday syndication (I have very specific memories of watching THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW anytime I was home sick during elementary school). There were the TGIF sitcoms on ABC (PERFECT STRANGERS was always my favorite). Must-See TV on NBC. STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE during the nineties "Golden Age" of first-run syndication. In terms of animation, you had BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, X-MEN, and SPIDER-MAN on Fox Kids when I was in middle school and high school. Then DRAGON BALL Z and GUNDAM WING, among many others, on Toonami during college and beyond.

Then the early twenty-first century brought me THE OFFICE, PARKS AND RECREATION, 30 ROCK, MODERN FAMILY, and more in the comedy genre, as well as 24, PRISON BREAK, LOST, and a slew of other network dramas with a similar serialized feel. In a way, these were -- to me, at least, someone who didn't watch the pay cable channels like HBO and Showtime -- the precursors to "prestige" or "peak" television. Which I'm not sure why we call it that; it was never all good -- but by the later part of the 2000s, I was watching it. I was engrossed with MAD MEN, BREAKING BAD, and THE WALKING DEAD on AMC, and JUSTIFIED on FX, as well as -- having finally gotten an HBO subscription -- BOARDWALK EMPIRE and GAME OF THRONES.

I watched a lot of TV around that time, in the aughts and into the teens. And I liked most all of it. MAD MEN is one of my all-time favorite television experiences ever. I love that show; at the risk of a little hyperbole, I'd even say that I cherish it (or at least I do the first three seasons; I find that my interest plummets the further the narrative moves into the sixties). Likewise, JUSTIFIED, which I adored. GAME OF THRONES was great for the first several years. BREAKING BAD was amazing, but not something I'm particulary attached to; I can't really ever see myself watching it again. And I will never understand how THE WALKING DEAD became the cultural juggernaut that it remains to this day. I gave up on that one a few seasons in; it was too dark and depressing for me. The final scene I ever watched was when a certain baseball bat connected with a certain beloved character's face, and I never looked back (though I did often question why I had even stuck with it for that long, in hindsight).

MARCH 2025: I TAKE THINGS TOO LITERALLY

And we're back! So far, so good with this new format. And this month I even have something of interest (at least to me) to talk about!

Not too long ago on the Marvel Masterworks Message Board, in a discussion about X-Men Omnibuses, the dreaded Chuck Austen was name-dropped. I was there when Austin's run on UNCANNY X-MEN was published. I read it. I actually thought it started off okay, but it quickly went off the rails and ended as one of the most rightly reviled stretches in the title's history. However -- even when it was briefly good, it wasn't what I was expecting.

See, in advance of his run, Austen did an interview with WIZARD magazine where he said that to prepare, he had gone back and re-read the 1970s Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum issues. I'm assuming he was a kid when that material was published, because he seemed to consider it the X-Men's gold standard, even more than the subsequent Claremont/John Byrne run. So naturally when he said this, I figured, "Great! He'll probably bring back Banshee and redeem him from Joe Casey's character assassination. Maybe they'll even visit his castle! Maybe they'll fight Count Nefaria or something. I bet we'll get some good swashbuckling Nightcrawler action. Ooh, maybe he'll even bring back Eric the Red!!

None of that happened. In fact, Austen's run bore zero resemblance to the Claremont/Cockrum run I loved. Aside from Nightcrawler and Wolverine, it was a completely different cast. The stories did not in any way, shape, or form, call back to that classic run. It didn't "feel" like the run in terms of style, either.

FEBRUARY 2025

Happy belated New Year, everyone! Today is the first day of the rest of this blog's life. I'm still trying to figure out the new format, but at present I think I'm going to go with sort of an "Items of Interest" approach with little mini-headlines. For example...

A BOLD NEW ERA CALLS FOR A BOLD NEW BANNER!
Which is what I'm working on my spare time at the moment. I've been using those ol' John Byrne corner box heads from the late seventies/early eighties for quite a few years now, but I feel like it's time to retire them and sort of... personalize things a bit more. See, I don't talk about it all that much around here, but I like to draw. And so I figured maybe the banner should reflect that. To that end, I'm doing brand-new corner box heads in my own style, which will adorn the new banner once they're finished. Here's a sneak peek at the penciled versions of some of them:

(You'll note that I've started with the "unafilliated" characters and the Fantastic Four plus FF-adjacent characters. But there are more coming! I'm working on the Avengers right now.)

Now when I say "my style," I should clarify what I mean. I generally draw more cartoony than this, but I want to keep with the general aesthetic I've had here since the beginning. So cartoony is out, at least for this project, as I utilize my seldom-employed "super-hero" style -- which looks vastly different from my "everyday" drawings, and which takes about three times longer to boot! You may be able to tell that I'm obviously heavily influenced by Byrne (as well as some of my other favorites; Alan Davis and Mark Bagley top of the list), so ultimately what you see up top will not look all that drastically different from what you're used to. The main difference will be that I drew it myself!

But the other difference is that I'm changing up some of the looks and characters you'll see up there. I thought, after so long with the Bronze Age dominating the banner, that perhaps it's time I presented this blog adorned with the stars of "my" Marvel -- which is sort of a mix of eras. So you'll see the X-Men of the nineties, Avengers of various eras, some characters (chiefly Power Man, Iron Fist, and Moon Knight) who had their heydays in the seventies and early eighties, and some characters very much of the period when I read Marvel religiously in my teens, such as the Scarlet Spider, "Professor" Hulk, and the Thunderbolts. It'll be eclectic, but I think it will nicely represent my ideal or "iconic" Marvel Universe. I'll go into more detail when the banner is finished and published.

In other news...

WHAT HAVE I BEEN READING LATELY?
This site was always, first and foremost, about examining comics, graphic novels, and the like. And just because I've decided to retire from writing long-term in-depth posts about same, doesn't mean that I've stopped reading them! So as I put up these monthly-ish posts, I'm going to try to mention things I've read lately. We'll start with a tome I finished a while back: FLASH GORDON VOLUME 4: THE STORM QUEEN OF VALKIR from Titan Books. This installment picks up where my Flash Gordon review of a number of years past ended. Creator Alex Raymond has left the strip, turning artistic duties over to his former assistant, Austin Briggs. Scripter Don Moore remains aboard.

This was an odd one. For those who read along with my Flash posts way back when, you might recall that when Raymond departed, all seemed well for our hero and his friends. Ming the Merciless had been vanquished some time earlier, and more recently, Flash had also defeated a new warlord named Brazor to restore peace yet again to Mongo. Thus the next volume, which collects all of Briggs' run on the Sunday strips, begins with a bit of a clean slate, and an odd status quo -- Flash is the president of Mongo.

You may be wondering, isn't there someone more qualified to be president, like maybe Prince Barin and/or his wife, the reformed daughter of Ming, Princess Aura? When we last saw them, they were indeed leading a council that ruled over Mongo following Ming's overthrow. But Barin and Aura are nowhere to be seen in these stories. At all. They were regular recurring cast members for years while Raymond was on the strip. True, they'd drop out of sight for (sometimes very long) stretches at at a time while Flash went off his various expeditions, but they always came back. Yet here, in a run of four years, we never see or even hear of them once. It's bizarre, especially considering the original scripter is still on board!

So instead we have President Flash ruling Mongo and battling the latest warlord to challenge the peace: this time, it's Ming's heretofore unknown son, Kang the Cruel. Kang is the regular antagonist through Briggs' full run, though there are many stories interspersed between his run-ins with Flash. Stories in which Flash and Dale find themselves in strange lands, where strange princesses fall immediately in love with the dashing Flash. I guess even with a new artist, some things never change!

In the end, Flash defeats Kang and once again restores peace to Mongo, and continues on as president. Oh, and Professor Zarkov, as always, drops in and out of the story, frequently disappearing just long enough that you think the creators might have forgotten his existence, until suddenly reappearing.

Like I said, it's kind of odd, and it's just a long rehash; four more years repeating everything Alex Raymond did during his decade on the strip. I get that newspaper strips were disposable entertainment; you read your daily paper and threw it away, and I get that there would always be new readers who might have missed all this stuff the first time around. And further, I get that Raymond's run was a full ten years long, and Moore's is four or so. But nonetheless, the blatant reptition is kind of crazy! You'd think they'd at least try to do something different now and then.

ANYTHING ELSE?
For now, I don't think so. I'm easing into the new format here, so I'm going to keep this post fairly brief. (This was brief?!) Next month, I think I'll have more to talk about, so I hope you'll join me!