I’m heading off to the airport in the morning for Emerald City Comicon, but here’s something to keep you occupied on this comicless Thursday. It’s something I kind of wanted to address in the strip, but none of my characters are from the Chicago area, so none of them would ever have known about the Eagle Man commercial.
This video sums up how I feel about the Fox X-Men cartoon, or at least its comparative production values.
OH MY GOD EAGLE MAN MY CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARES THEY HAVE RETURNED
look at those looww raaaaaaaaaates
Also, look at that Man Cow.
I feel dumb asking, but why is FoX-Men Storm being equated with Eagle Man? I don’t get it.
And – of course – I get the flying, pooping butt avatar. Of course.
Have to agree. Just don’t see the connection here Walky. Sorry.
Me either. Huh?
The cadence of their speech matches up almost perfectly. In other words, the way they put their words together sounds exactly the same. This is meant to say something about the quality of the X-Men cartoon.
Oh. Ok.
I’ll have to take your word for it. Seems like they’re still unrelated to me.
Yep, I just don’t see it.
Hahahahahahaha. As a former resident of the Chicagoland area, and someone who used to watch X-Men every morning, this is PRICELESS. And true.
Amen, buddy. Both were solid fixtures of my formative years. In my mind, much of the 90s seemed to have lower production values all around.
I never really watched much of the show when I was a kid, but I sure as hell remember Eagle Man.
I’ve got something for youuuuuuuu. I’ve tortured my friends with Eagle Man a time or two. LOLtastic.
EAGLE MAN! IT’S EAGLE MAN! OH MY GOD YOU ARE MY NEW FAVORITEST CARTOONIST IN THE ENTIRE WORLD EVER!
“Do you have insurance on this car?”
<3 <3 <3
This is hilarious, and I totally see the parallel.
Now all we have to do is figure out who Moo and Oink are.
I’m putting out there, the Empire Carpet Man IS Stan Lee, look at that ‘stash, look at that smile.
Thank god I’m not the only one to have noticed! Stan, why are you selling carpeting?!
….oh my SWEET MERCILESS CTHULHU, YOU’RE RIGHT!
588-2300 – EXCELSIOR!!
LOL
I don’t get it. Storm is clearly speaking Overdramatic Comicbookese, and Eagle Man isn’t speaking dramatically at all.
That show was a classic.. newer ones just don’t get the art right at all.. though the most recent had major awesomepoints, and Evolution had very-nice-hair points and kinda neat anatomy points..
But you have to respect a show that went “let’s invent a new character so he can get killed in the first episode, so they KNOW we’re serious” when meanwhile Spider-Man wasn’t allowed to punch anyone..
He wasn’t invented for the show. He was an existing xmen character who’d just been dead for years. They might have invented the look, but not the character.
Ehhhh, *kind* of. They took the powers and changed everything else, including the name.
Boy that xmen cartoon had aweful animation. That and the spidey toon of the same era just have such poor animation. I disliked the animation even at the time now they’re just unwatchable.
Fuck You!
Just speaking the truth. I’ll give both shows points for going for epic stories and trying to follow the comics a lot and all thar. But the animation? Terrible. Really ugly and worse then most shows from a decade before.
Things shouldn’t follow comics when they’re shitty comics.
Oh, you did not just diss the X-Men. Willis, man, I’ve loved your work for years. Don’t make me wanna hate you now, I have enough internal conflict already.
My eight year old self would have savagely attacked your ankles for that, but now that I can go back and look at the era with a more cynical eye, I realize that my interest in that show was 10% Wolverine is badass and 90% Rogue is hot (I imagine Sal sounding exactly like that, incidentally).
This is why Batman the Animated Series was better in hindsight. The animation, voice acting, and writing were vastly superior. The X-Men and Spider-Man toons haven’t aged nearly as well.
The internet: Where criticism of something is exactly the same as insulting people who like it.
WOW! Ot really sounds bad in the original english.
I watched this dubbed in my language and was much much better.
Baaah. Humbug.
Your precious Eagle Man is then just a rip of Mumm-Ra the Ever Living.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umU8vKRNnRw
That’s 1985, that video of Eagle Man was created in 1993.
Dude, don’t diss the X-Men cartoon. The writing in that was far superior to many of the cartoons on the air today. And, I’ll go ahead and say it:
“No Transformer fan should EVER diss another cartoon for bad animation.” If you do, I’ll force you to watch Carnage in C-Minor over and over again.
Anybody who thinks the X-Men cartoon had anything approaching okayish writing is fucking high, dude. Laughable dialog, terrible, inane storytelling… it’s just a circus of retarded.
And maybe you should make sure whether I actually like the original Transformers cartoon before using that against me, bro. If the original TF cartoon were all that there was to Transformers, I wouldn’t be a Transformers fan.
I’m not denying that plenty of the stories and dialogue are awkward, but they certainly have their charm. I seriously appreciate the creators’ attempts at animating comic-book realism, when they could have simplified the character designs. I loved the show as a kid, but forgot about it. Now I’m rewatching it, I think the voice acting is spectacular (Storm sounds perfect; she has a sharp, over-clipped accent when she’s not shouting, and that carries over to battle!dialogue that I’m sure is MEANT to be narmy, since none of the other characters do anything of the sort). Only bit of the voice acting that I can’t stand are Americans trying to be Scottish without knowing where in Scotland they’re meant to be from, or that Ireland and Scotland aren’t the same country. And that’s kind of par for the course.
You think Storm’s voice acting was GOOD? But everything she said was in a ridiculous over-the-top SPOOOOOOoooOOOOOooOOOOOky ghost voice that makes me want to cut out her larynx with a chainsaw.
And, man, X-Men is exactly where America learned that we definitely should simplify things for animation, because it looked fucking awful. Why is it admirable to not choose to adapt material for the medium it’s being presented in? Some things work in some mediums, some things don’t. Ignoring what works for one and not the other isn’t great, it’s just dumb. Simplify those designs so that they don’t look awkward, ugly, and stilted when animated. FoX-Men’s refusal to do this is a huge part of what makes it not work. I don’t want to see half-assed adaptations of comic book plots, I want to see good stories.
80′s X-Men Looked fucking awful? What a novel perspective. It doesn’t look like teen titans, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what criteria could be used to judge it as being that bad. Unless you violently hate big 80s hair. That would do it. Must be the hair.
And I think his point was that Storm sounded that way deliberately, consistently with her normal speaking voice, with full knowledge of the narm that resulted. Not that you were required to find her tones dulcet. (And ghost voice? What a novel mischaracterization.)
The stories and writing did get quite weak at times, I’ll admit. By today’s standards. For the 80s they were quite impressive.
Regardless: very strange to see this kind of reaction – it resembles hating Beast Wars to me.
It looked awful because it was trying to look like a static inked comic book image, which is not going to translate into an attractive animated image. It’s going to look awkward, wrong, and forced. It’s going to look like shit, and it did. Terrible, terrible shit.
Teen Titans, on the other hand, was designed for animation. X-Men definitely was not. It still thought it would be really cool if it was full of all this unnecessary detail that looked like utter shit when handed to underfunded overseas studios. FoX-Men was still stuck in the pre-BTAS frame of mind, despite being its contemporary. It’s an artifact of the past, though one that doesn’t realize it quite yet. Fox Spider-Man started to figure it out, but not nearly enough to save it.
There’s nothing about a “static inked” style that makes it inherently unanimatable that I can see. Comic books themselves are generally intended to be read as ‘key frames’ of continuous flows of action, after all. The only thing ‘unanimatable’ about them that I can discern is the high level of detail involved in the character drawings, which makes them *financially* unviable – but whoops, 80′s X-men was actually made, so I suppose they managed it nonetheless. Score one for them.
Personally I am of the opinion that ugly is ugly – if comic-book style animation is ugly, then comic books must be ugly too, to the degree that their style resembles the animation. (Ed, Edd, and Eddy will be ugly in any medium that retains the style, for example.) You don’t appear to share this opinion – but I am unable to discern why, beyond possibly a nostalgic familiarity with the BTAS/Teen titans art style.
So yeah – I’m still not seeing an underlying rational basis for your apparent dislike of the show *or* it’s art style – not that people are required to be rational all the time, mind you. But it’s still rather strange, and the video remains nonsensical to me. You might as well show a video intercutting BW Megatron with ‘Bit’ from Tron (“Yes, Yes, Yes, No, Yes”) and expect people to read that as a complete summary explanation for why Beast Wars is dumb.
So FoX-Men *tried* to have a comic book look. Just because you attempt something doesn’t mean you succeed at doing it well. It is possible to succeed at it, if you put enough money and care into it. X-Men did not have the funds to do so, and as a result it looked stilted and ugly. It would have been a much prettier series if it recognized its financial limits and designed its art style appropriately.
Of course, that would only have solved one of the series’ problems.
On this we will agree to disagree. I think, for it’s time period, it was awesomesauce. I definitely thought their version of the Phoenix Saga was far superior to that done in, say, X-Men the Last Stand.
Was it Batman: The Animated Series? No… but at least it wasn’t Superfriends. It was a transitional 90s cartoon, coming out of the cartoons of the 80s, and tried to push boundaries.
Guess it didn’t rub you the same way. Ah well.
I extend to you the firm hand of friendship!
Those Eagle Man commercials went well with episodes of Jerry Springer.
Batman the Animated Series was better in hindsight only? I think one would be hard pressed to find a finer animated TV series period – comparing the X Men cartoon to it.. aiiiiieee.
I think the largest sin of the X Men cartoon is that ultimately it was incredibly cheesy, and yet took itself seriously. In all honesty, I can still go back and watch the original Transformers and GI Joe cartoons because it’s all so tongue in cheek.
I was so excited for this cartoon, especially since it was coming so soon after Batman: TAS, which really set the bar for Superhero cartoons.
Sadly, X-Men didn’t come close. Even the Pizza-Hut tie-in comics sucked. The new X-Men anime cartoons come the closest to what my expectations were at the time for the X-Men.
Oh, c’mon Willis I love your comic and toy reviews, but the X-Men were awesome. The Latin American dub is a classic and made every charecter interesting (in fact, the Latin American voice actors did a better job than the actual actors in both Transformers movies). I love Jubilee.
But really, you know what we got from the Xmen? Freakin’ Marvel vs Capcom, that’s what we got.
It is very possible that the Latin America dub had superior voice acting and a good translation. The original English is my biggest problem with the series, so I imagine if that were swapped out the series might be pretty enjoyable.
The Latin American voices made it worth watching. You could actually feel the characters. If that makes sense. It was an awesome experience.
Also, what’s with people getting mad here? You have your opinion, and so does everyone. There’s no need to argue..
…wow, and here I thought haystack-haired-trailer-park-slut Rogue and plots-that-make-no-sense-without-comicbook-context were my only reasons for loathing that series. I had totally forgotten about even-Shakespeare-isn’t-ridiculous-enough-for-my-script Storm.
Man, I loved X-Men. I honestly don’t understand the hate. The animation, writing and acting all seem fine to me, and I don’t think it’s just nostalgia clouding my vision, though I admit that could be part of it.
Hey David,
I just saw you at Emerald City Comic Con 2 hours ago! Thanks for signing the Roomies book and Poster I picked up! You the Man! Keep up the good work.
The only problem I had with the X-Men cartoon was something that they obviously couldn’t include- bloody violence. Not that I was looking for tons of gore, but Wolverine’s claws aren’t for ripping apart robots.
Well, that, and the time travel storylines tended to get a little annoying. Though Apocalypse was always my favorite villain.
Nobody gives a shit about Storm, so who cares how she talks?
*sigh*
A year or so ago, when the old X-Men cartoon was still exclusively preserved in my pristine childhood memories, I would have wondered what was wrong with you, Willis. Then I sat down and watched a good five minutes of it for the first time in fifteen years, and…it’s just…so…awful. It’s really sad. Oh, well. At least, as been mentioned, Batman: TAS still mostly holds up. God love Paul Dini and his madcap brilliance.
Walky is absolutely right. The FOX X-Men cartoon was utter crap in all respects. The designs didn’t work in animation, the plotting, scripting, and acting were all half-assed, and it was just generally awful, ESPECIALLY when compared to contemporaries such as Animaniacs and Batman the Animated Series.
I was born in ’95, so I can give a perfectly objective opinion of the show without any form of bias, even subconscious, because I never watched the thing as a kid. Even if I had, I can still tell a good show from a bad one, and X-Men The Animated Series was a bad show.
You want an X-Men show that’s actually pretty good? Try X-Men Evolution.
Yeah, X-Men Evolution is one of the handful of Marvel cartoons that were pretty great.
You’re joking, right? X-Men: Evolution was terrible.
No, it wasn’t. It’s one of the best animated shows I’ve seen in a while.
That’s hilarious.
The earlier X-Men cartoon was leagues better, even with its flaws. X-Men Evolution didn’t even reach tolerable until the second season.
Even Wolverine and the X-Men laughs at Evolution.
Wasn’t Wolverine and the X-Men the cartoon where Wolverine pretended to be Cyclops and vice versa? That was a pretty bad show. It wishes it were X-Men Evolution, which is the only X-Men cartoon I’ve ever found watchable.
As far as I’ve ever been able to discern from people who didn’t like it, its only crime was not translating mediocre comic book stories directly into really terrible cartoons like FoX-Men did. It was nothing to do with the animation quality or the storytelling, it just Wasn’t Enough Like That Thing I Remember From When I was Younger and Dumber.
Wolverine and the X-Men is, according to the creators in their commentaries, the show that X-Men Evolution wishes *it* was. Just noting.
Personally, I think that all three are fine shows, depending on what you’re looking for – and your level of visceral opposition to old comic art styles/old comic stories, your opposition to extreme flanderization of the characters/comic stories, and your opposition to Emma Frost taking Jean Gray’s place, respectively.
And the end of X-Men Evo was dumb, and knew it – Leech was so overpowered that he could have totally won on his own in ten seconds. And after a lot of completely pointless beatdowns, he (vicariously) did exactly that – rendering everything that preceded moot. Whoops.
Oh, and I’ve actually watched all three shows recently, back to back. “Pretended to be cyclops”? I do hope you’re not criticizing that which you haven’t even seen.
I dunno what else to call it when Wolverine is the team leader who’s kind of straightlaced and by the book and Cyclops is the angry loner who’s a loose cannon. It wasn’t a bad show. I just found it kind of dull, like most Marvel cartoons. Evolution and Spectacular are the only ones I’ve ever truly enjoyed.
Ok, no way a kid born in fucking 1995 is criticizing cartoons I grew up with
Everyone thinks the terrible shit from their own childhoods was way hotter shit than the equally terrible shit from everyone else’s childhoods. Everyone is wrong.
P.S. You are a subset of “everyone.”
And everyone thinks that they are personally they final authorities on what is and is not terrible shit. They’re all wrong too.
P.S. Guess who else is a subset of “everyone”.
I freely admit all of the cartoons from when I was a kid were shit. Transformers included.
Read for comprehension, my friend. You do not win the ability to be the sovereign authority on what is shit by taking something that we’re supposed to expect you to like and and disparaging it. (Despite what literary critics think.) You do not win the ability to be the sovereign authority on what is shit *at all*.
You’re entitled to your opinion and you don’t have to like any particular thing. But the minute you take the daring risk of declaring that opinion as objective fact (on the internet!), you have just stuck your neck out and handed out axes.
Now admittedly, the people defending things are sticking out their necks too. But the difference here is that the subjective value in these shows is imparted by the viewer. By stepping forward to defend something I have already *proven* that it is not objectively unlikeable (or “shit”, or whatever). It may still have crappy animation quality, simplistic plots, poor continuity, or animeesque designs – such things are objective, and will usually be admitted to by the defender. But when it comes to you telling me that something I like is simply “bad” – you have lost before you have begun.
I’ve been providing support for my opinions, and I’ve been engaging in back and forth. The person I’m responding to declared their opinions off-limits for debate due to the age of the person they were responding to, which was a mindset which I was attacking.
You can’t really equate those two approaches. Or do you agree that nobody born in 1995 can possibly have a valid opinion about FoX-Men? Like Jersey Girl, it’s not FOR them?
In all honesty, and no offense, I don’t actually see you providing any sort of objective support for your opinions here. You don’t like 1980′s X-Men because storm talks kinda-vaguely-sorta-like Eagle Man? The stories in Wolverine and the X-Men are somehow inherently worse than those (by many of the same people) in X-Men Evo? Comic-book style art is unanimateable?
Granted Mr. Dick Manstrong (quite the name there) wasn’t exactly putting out the most intricate and detailed argument, but in quite succinctly the exchange was ‘who are you to criticize the shows I like, kid’, met with ‘You only like that shit because of immature nostalgia (which I’m above because I call the G1 animation shit).’ Pardon me if I don’t see your stance here as being significantly more nuanced – and as noted, your position is actually weaker than his is. Nostalgia *is* a legitimate basis for a show being good – Transformers Animated relies heavily on it. And if nostalgia can impart value to Transformers Animated, why can’t it do so for G1? (Hell, it seems to be about 80% of what you like about new transformers toys in your reviews; it’s just that *your* nostalgia is for the comics.)
This is not to say that declaring yourself “not of critics” is likely to impress anybody. But similarly, critics don’t impress *me*. Especially when they’re just venting their opinions. (They get more mileage when they bring in actual knowledge, arguments, and facts, mind you. But so far I’ve seen little of that here.)
Can you link to a Youtube video showing a scene from X-Men you thought was well done?
Of course terrible shows and good shows still share writers. Paul Dini is responsible for why I love Batman, but he wrote one of the most meh episodes of G1 Transformers. Sometimes good writers don’t care. Sometimes it’s just a paycheck to them. Sometimes they get older and better, or work under differing constraints that let them shine. Bob Forward co-edited Beast Wars, which was great, but over a decade earlier he was writing He-Man, which was not so great.
(I am curious, however, why Wikipedia doesn’t even have linked articles for the listed creators of Fox X-Men. Did they do nothing else?)
You also continue to tell me why I like things I like and be pretty wrong about it. Yeah, Animated hinges largely on nostalgia, but those aren’t the reasons I enjoy it as a piece of entertainment. I enjoyed the characters and the dialogue and the animation style. The nostalgia was just extra stuff on the side that didn’t really add to the actual objective value. My favorite parts were the things that were totally new, like Bulkhead and the Angry Archer and Sentinel Prime.
And of course when I talk up a toy that’s based on a character from my childhood, I’m going to point out that nostalgia plays a factor, because that’s being analytical. There’s a difference between saying “Wheeljack is totally the best and anyone who says differently is an idiot” and “this is what I liked about Wheeljack when I was little” The first is using the mere existence of nostalgia as an arbitrar of goodness (one that doesn’t mean a hill of beans to anybody else), and the second is just trying to explain in language why you’re nostalgic, singling out those parts and putting them all out on the table so that both I and the reader can balance the emotional versus the intellectual. I want to separate the emotional feelings towards the character an action figure represents from the more physical properties, like whether it’s fun to transform.
It’s being fair in an assessment. Nostalgia is a given when talking about pop culture. It’s prudent to understand it and its sources when going on about a topic.
But by all means, continue to misunderstand me. There were plenty of responders here that enjoyed FoX-Men that I left alone. Getting all huffy when I attack the weakest of arguments, the ones that have visible holes, just paints you as incredibly defensive.
I’m not saying the X-Men cartoon was GREAT, I’m saying it was better than X-Men Evolution. It’s not just nostalgia, either, I’ve sat through plenty of episodes on one of those Disney channels recently and while deeply flawed, it does a better job capturing what the X-Men comics were about, especially at the time.