X-Men '97 (Disney +): Continuation of X-Men: The Animated Series

Yea, I thought that as well. Cap isn't really the US Governemnt's top cop as Rogue put it, at least not in most versions of the character.

Rogue's really pissed and doesn't like any authority figures.

Cap was very reasonable but Rogue isn't looking for reason. She wants vengeance and what she does later in the episodes shows she's slipping in morality.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 25th 2024 at 12:38:26 PM

Superheroes quite often miss this idea because it would be just too easy. "Looks like to solve this case, I'll have to break out the criminal from jail, hmm, yes, I guess I'll put on my usual. Then I keep wearing it when cops will start hunting me down."

Then again if he used the shield, it wouldn't be hard to at least suspect who he is.

He also wanted to bring a whole team. Possibly Avengers. The more publicly known figures you add, the harder it is to hide who they all are.

But considering there might have been another one of those Tri-Sentinels, it wasn’t a bad impulse to want more hands.

Thoughts on the casting of Josh Keaton as Cap and Michael Patrick McGill as Ross carrying over onto this show? True, the passing of John Vernon didn't leave them with any option but to recast Ross, but would you say it's a case of the MCU being in a place where it shouldn't be in?

Edited by Anicomicgeek on Apr 25th 2024 at 1:56:39 PM

There's also the issue of running in half-cocked.

As shown in the episode Rogue put herself in a situation where she would have died twice. Gyrich was prepared for her with mental defenses and has Nightcrawler not found her who knows what would he happened to her unconscious body.

And then had she found Trask alone she definitely would have been killed by the Prime Sentinel.

Rogue was completely controlled by her anger this episode and it made her very sloppy.

Oh are they the same voice actors for those characters for What If?? Ideally I hope they wouldn't use the exact same voices as the MCU version and go for something more like the XTAS originals' voices but I can't say I noticed either way.

I would've liked for David Hayter to play Cap again as he still does a great job as the Jedi Knight in SWTOR, but he was only in the Spider-Man series, and only really showed up once in X-Men.

Hey everyone! If you're still behind on your Animated X-Men lore, here's an accurate recap.

It's incredibly dense.

Nothing was missed. I haven't watched the original show and years, but this guy got everything.

It dosen’t have Jean fainting!

But othervise it’s pretty accurate.

You think she just tripped when she fell off that cliff?

Woman was obviously passing out at the time.

Was gonna say she was blown away by explosion, but looking better it really does look like she tripped.

Edited by EmperorGeode on Apr 25th 2024 at 4:13:57 AM

This season won't be complete until we get a several minute montage of Logan and Scott screaming "JEAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!"

[1] Yep, they're the same voice actors from What If? Like I said, I can understand Ross to a degree (again, John Vernon is no longer with us) and I'll give props to Keaton for adjusting his performance to suit a more-comic accurate Steve, but I really hope if the other Avengers show up, we don't just get, say, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, or if we do get more MCU actors, such as Mick Wingert coming back as Iron Man again, that they do what Keaton did and adjust their preformance accordingly.

Edited by Anicomicgeek on Apr 25th 2024 at 2:17:05 PM

I just watched One Man’s Worth earlier today and now I lean on Bastion being Nimrod rather than Mold. End of two parter seemingly has him destroyed by Bishop and his parts send back into future, however it would be easy to say some part of him somehow stayed in past and while incapable of reconstructing his body, he was able to either create or posses a new one, becoming Bastion and working on anti mutant technology form shadows until Timey-Wimey Ball come to the point where his existence would be assured.

Not super connected but I was wondering what Gyrich has to do with anything and it gave me idea. What If Bastion was also against his assasination attempt at Charles as the first step in kicking off war between humans and mutants.

Edited by EmperorGeode on Apr 26th 2024 at 4:50:16 AM

I'm glad that, while everyone is still sympathizing with Rogue, no one is turning on Cap as well.

Especially since he's trying to work within the system, since we all know how popular that is lately.

The Avengers have been constantly put in the position of The Man, until recently with the finale of the Krakoa era. So seeing Cap want to help, and try and reason with Rogue, and even present some sound logic for why he can't just go in (and it turns out, going in half cocked and riding on emotion was a bad idea, as we see with what happened with Trask).

Interestingly, the recent Avengers tie-in you mention also has the Avengers not rush in half cocked. Tony mentions he’s been planning the op for a while rather than jump into action and waste their one shot.

I'm pretty sure the Goblin Queen telling Scott to say her name was a reference to the JEAAAAAAAANNNNNN meme.

This happened a lot in X-Men books and Hulk books.

Now I want it to stop happening in Hulk books too.

Lets move past that.

Yeah. I do like that as well. It helps that Tony's been directly involved in the entire thing as well, so it's given him an insider perspective on it. Also, the rebirth of the Avengers Unity Squad via Cap has also helped.

I'm hoping these closer ties between Mutants and Avengers continues. Maybe get some more Avengers to join the X-Men and show more solidarity.

Now that I think about it, the Avengers are no longer government sanctioned, correct? Could that have something to do with it?

Exactly on the Avengers no longer being government-sanctioned. In fact, Cap being aware of government corruption via Hydra's infiltration of SHIELD is the reason why he oppossed the Superhero Registration Act during Civil War both in the comics and the MCU and why the Avengers have stopped being beholden to any government ever since Bendis' New Avengers.

The Avengers have been independent from the US government since at least Aaron's run where the government took exception to a foreign leader (Black Panther) leading the team. Since the Avengers were later in the run supported by the Agents of Wakanda, you could argue that they just switched from being endorsed by the US to being endorsed by Wakanda. But the Riley run happened to T'Challa partway in the run and Black Panther took his leave from the team.

The very most current iteration of the team, led by Captain Marvel, isn't tied to any government and their base is in orbit. Probably violating the treaties about not arming space but comics seldom heed those particular agreements.

That all said, even the fact that the Avengers were at odds with the US government didn't stop Immortal Hulk from using them as The Man, here to bully poor Hulk on the request of the military.

Nothing the Avengers ever do will stop them from being painted as The Man because it's cheap, easy points to score to make more outcast characters look better.

It goes back even further, I see. Although, there are times like during Hickman's run where Captain America was running SHIELD and an Avengers team that muddies the water. Also, the USAvengers, reformed specifically to be America's Avengers. Oh, and Avengers Inc, which was less an Avengers team and more Wasp running a detective agency while working for Mayor Luke Cage.

Edited by Bocaj on Apr 26th 2024 at 4:20:03 AM

I thought it started with Bendis' New Avengers? Maria Hill was antagonistic with them because of it.

In that case it was because if Carol didn't apprehend Hulk, Shadow Base would arrest Sasquash for killing a bunch of people at a hospital. It wasn't his fault, Sasquash was possessed, but Shadow Base didn't care.

Edited by Cortez on Apr 26th 2024 at 7:38:17 AM

Maria Hill is, by default, antagonistic. Also, the worst. But I'm less familiar with the Bendis era so I missed that they weren't tied to the government then.

Important correction, the government didn't want Sasquatch arrested for said possession incident, Shadow Base had gone rogue by that point. Sasquatch was immediately recognized as not being at fault for the hospital massacre and welcomed back onto Alpha Flight.

Anyways, the Avengers having an unfortunate tendency to be "the Man" in other books is, I feel, a consequence of something I've observed on other threads here. Namely that the Avengers feel very out-of-sync with the wider Marvel Universe a lot of the time and kinda like Marvel imitating DC, which is why for so much of Marvel's modern history, groups like Fantastic Four or X-Men were the flagship teams at Marvel.

The Avengers, rather than Marvel's usual brand that helped it differentiate from DC, has long felt like Justice League-lite, a DC style comic in a Marvel universe. Marvel has always had a more cynical, jagged, sometimes downright horror-esque take on superheroes - the MU is a world where superhumans fight either to protect a world that fears them and may be justified in doing so or to conquer it. Meanwhile, DC is generally more idealistic and hopeful, a world where superhumans are fairly accepted parts of society and heroes are beloved icons of the community. And this was reflected by the flagships of each company for most of their history; the Justice League for DC, the X-Men for Marvel. The former a mythic fantasy story about benevolent demigods protecting the world from larger-than-life threats and the inherent goodness of people, the latter a sci-fi horror story about a new subspecies possibly supplanting mankind and the division of humanity.

The Avengers were, as a result, always an odd-man-out of Marvel's teams. While you had groups like the X-Men, FF, New Warriors, Nova Corps, and so on going on crazy science fiction adventures or stories about political strife, both with often rather dark themes, Avengers was trying to be like Justice League by being about "earth's mightiest heroes" going on more typical superhero plots. And this gets even more noticeable with how some individual members of the Avengers tend to end up more like the other books at Marvel when not hanging with the Avengers: Iron Man, when on his own book, becomes infinitely more flawed and his stories frequently become techno-horror plots about shit like corporate conspiracies, psychotic AI, and such rather than just "the team tech guy". Outside of Avengers guest appearances, Hulk is an often gruesome Cosmic Horror Story about a man tormented by his inner demons and nightmarish consequences that come from the abuse of power and reckless science. Hell, the entire reason Hulk left the Avengers early on was because Stan Lee felt he didn't fit on a traditional superhero team.

This is even more clear when one looks at Johnathan Hickman's career at Marvel. Hickman is one of the greatest writers to grace Fantastic Four, X-Men, and recently Spider-Man, having acclaimed, series-defining stories and runs with all three of them... but his Avengers run, the closest the Avengers ever came to really having the same vibe and aesthetics of the rest of the Marvel Universe, is considered one of his weakest works at Marvel and riddled with problems, not least of all because the Avengers just don't fit well with the kind of lore and worldbuilding and storytelling Hickman did, stuff that was perfectly suited to all the other flagships.

As to how these blocks of text relate to my original thesis; what I'm saying, basically, is that because the Avengers have always been kinda outsiders to the rest of the Marvel Universe, often accused of feeling like they're off in their own little world away from everyone else, when they crossover with other comics at Marvel, it often feels awkward. Like square pegs being jammed into round holes. Because the Avengers have a totally different vibe and philosophy to most of Marvel's other characters, sometimes bordering on being a total antithesis to what those other characters stand for. The government relations thing being an obvious example; while the Avengers have been on outs with the government now and at times in the past, they've more often worked with government sanction and support from within the system... the same system that the X-Men spend a great deal of time fighting against and criticizing.