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Monday, October 31, 2022

X-amining X-Men: The Animated Series Season 1 Episode 1

In celebration of the premiere of X-Men: The Animated Series thirty years ago today, here is my review of the series' inaugural episode. To read the rest of my reviews of the animated series (currently up to the start of season four), become a Patron now for as little as $1.25 a month!

"Night of the Sentinels Part 1"

Original Airdate
October 31 1992

Written by
Mark Edward Edens

Plot
After young mutant Jubilee's foster father reports her to the Mutant Control Agency, a Sentinel attacks her house, intent on capturing her. Jubilee has, however, snuck out to the local mall. The Sentinel tracks her there, drawing the attention of fellow mutants Storm, Rogue, Gambit & Cyclops, who destroy the Sentinel and take the unconscious Jubilee back to their mansion home. There, she encounters Beast, Morph, Wolverine, Jean Grey & Professor Xavier, and learns the group is called the X-Men a team dedicated to mastering their powers and achieving peaceful coexistence with the humans who often fear & hate mutants. Learning the Sentinels are the product of the Mutant Control Agency, the X-Men infiltrate their headquarters in order to destroy their files on mutants, but the agency's security forces are, unknownst to the X-Men, lying in wait for them.

Roll Call
What will comprise the full roster of X-Men appear in this episode: Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Wolverine, Beast, Morph, Jean Grey and Professor X, along with Jubilee, representing the majority of the then-current Blue Team roster (with Storm subbing in for Psylocke while Jean Grey & Beast will fill more "reservist" roles on the show).

Firsts and Other Notables
Obviously, this episode marks the first animated appearance of this iteration of the X-Men, including all the members of the team listed above, the X-Mansion, the Blackbird, the Danger Room, and the Sentinels (it is also the beginning of the 90s era "Marvel Animated Universe", in which this series and several others, including the Spider-Man animated series of the same era, occur).

Though not explicitly called out as such, this episode also introduces a "war room" for the X-Men, a place beneath the facade of the mansion where the team will gather throughout the series to plan their moves and whatnot, a notion that would later be explicitly adapted into the comics.

The individual character designs are all largely based (with a few tweaks) on Jim Lee's redesigns from the '91 linewide relaunch which debuted a little over a year before this episode aired.

The one pseudo-original character introduced is the shapeshifter Morph ("pseudo" because he's technically based on Changeling, the former villain who retroactively joined the team while briefly masquerading as Professor X before dying in the line of duty back in the Silver Age, with Morph's "default" facial design here resembling the Changeling's un-morphed look). Morph is a character introduced with the purpose of killing him off in order to establish the stakes of the series (similar to what happened with Thunderbird at the outset of the "All New, All Different" era), though in one of those weird bits of character evolution, this Morph will in turn inspire the creation of the "Age of Apocalypse" Morph, who shares his name & powerset with this iteration of the character while sporting a different look but while also ostensibly being a variation on the original 60s era Changeling.


Other than his power (and his whole "born to die" thing), Morph also has a distinct laugh heard several times in this episode, which will later be used as a clue in a mystery setup at the very end of the season.

The animated forms of Senator Robert Kelly & Henry Peter Gyrich both debut in this episode. Both characters will make return appearances throughout the series.

According to producer Eric Lewald, the decision to use Jubilee at the POV/audience insert character instead of Kitty Pryde (as was the case in the "Pryde of the X-Men" pilot episode which appeared a few years before this) came directly from Marvel.

The logo that will later be used for Gambit's comic book miniseries (and eventual solo series) debuts in the opening credits of this show, roughly a year before its first print use.

Casting Call
The actress performing Storm's voice in this episode (and the rest of the season) is Iona Morris; midway through Season 2, she will be replaced by Alison Sealy-Smith, who proceeded to redub all the lines of dialogue for the earlier episodes in subsequent re-airings. However, the episodes on DVD feature the original actress (I don't know about the Disney Plus versions, but I assume they too feature Iona Morris).

Cameo Concerns
One of the things this series is know for is dropping existing mutant & Marvel characters into the backgrounds of scenes (sometimes in advance of the character showing up in an episode proper). Here, Sabretooth is technically the first established character we see, via news footage watched by Jubilee's parents in the opening minutes of the episode. Later, Magneto appears briefly ahead of his first full appearance in episode 3 when Morph is flipping channels, and both X-Force members Domino & Cannonball appear on screens in the X-Men's war room. 


Acts of Adaptation 
Jubilee's first encounter with the X-Men in the comics also took place at a mall, though she was being targeted by the buffonish M-Tech rather than the Sentinels.

The Sentinels did attack a group of young mutants at a mall in New Mutants #2.

The idea of mutants registering with the government/some form of agency comes from the Mutant Registration Act, a running subplot in the X-books circa "Fall of the Mutants" on the late 80s.

Um, Actually 
Jubilee is a foster child here, with her foster father reporting her to the Mutant Control Agency (more out of a general sense of fear and being overwhelmed than due to bigotry to mutants), whereas in the comics, she was introduced as an orphan (whose parents, we later learned, were murdered by hired goons in a case of mistaken identity).

Similarly, Rogue mentions her father's reaction to learning she was a mutant, whereas in the comics, Rogue was raised by Mystique after she ran away from home following the emergence of her mutant powers (something the show will later establish as well, contradicting itself).

X-Related
This episode aired the same month Uncanny X-Men #295 and X-Men (vol. 2) #15 were on sale, with the bulk of the X-books involved in the "X-Cutioner's Song" crossover.

A Work in Progress
Gambit is more or less this series' interpretation of the character (smarmy but also a little charming) almost from the get go, as he's introduced flirting with a shopkeeper at the mall over playing cards.


Similarly, Storm almost immediately drops into one of her over-the-top, hyper-regal proclamations with which the character is often associated, something which the show hangs a lampshade on by having Rogue tell her to lighten up on the speeches (not that it stops the writers from having Storm do this kind of thing again going forward).

While Rogue & Storm are wearing "normal" clothes at the mall before the Sentinel attacks, Gambit is just buying playing cards in his full X-Men gear, pink armor shirt, head condom and all.


Cyclops' depiction in this series (somewhat understandably) often gets a bad rap, but he is the one member of the team to actually *stop* the Sentinel in this episode, taking it out with one blast.

While it's never made clear how long the X-Men have been in operation prior to this episode, they are encountering Sentinels for the first time here.

When Wolverine gets thrown into a wall, he lands with a "clang" sound, a nice (aural) touch.

Storm is the character who gives Jubilee (and through her, the audience) the rundown on mutants in general the X-Men's schtick specifically.

Jubilee also hangs a lampshade on the whole "too old to be in school" issue that confronts iterations of the team featuring more adult characters (vs. the original teenaged students), and Storm suggests they are all students despite their ages on account of continuing to learn how to control their powers.

The first Wolverine/Cyclops tiff occurs when Wolverine insists on going off after Jubilee when she rushes home, establishing for this series his paternalistic relationship with young female charges.

Rogue mentions that her power first manifested when she kissed a boy and knocked him out in the process, a direct lift from her comic book background.

Morph uses some kind of knockout gas gun in this episode.


Animation Achievements 
Significant amounts of the animation in this episode and the next weren't fully finished by the time Fox had the episodes slated to air as a special pre-season release in late October; many of those mistakes and omissions were retroactively updated in subsquent re-airings/releases.

In general, this series is (rightly) often dinged for generally lackluster (and occasionally shoddy) animation, especially as it gets long in the teeth, but the opening credits are pretty banging, dynamically introducing each character and showing off their powers before sending lines of good mutants and bad mutants slamming into each other (the theme song itself is also a standout of these opening credits and possibly the best thing to come out of the series overall).


The Grim 'n' Gritty 90s
This episode and the next were amongst those included for sale along with a mini-comic at Pizza Hut.

Jubilee's foster parents are concerned because her powers destroyed the VCR.

While the opening credits of the series are a genuine standout, the closing credits in this season are laughable 90s, playing over very CG-rendered figures of the characters with bio information about each displayed on the screen.


Human/Mutant Relations
While the Sentinel is perhaps warranted in its destruction of the side of Jubilee's parents' house in its pursuit of (what's its been programmed to believe is a dangerous mutant) and the later damage during the mall fight is understandable, the Sentinel also just straight-up crushes cars and light poles in its pursuit of Jubilee, and I dunno, maybe the general public should have some fear & hatred of giant robots...

It's noted that the Mutant Control Agency which is registering mutants and deploying Sentinels (and for whom Gyrich works) is a private organization that often works closely with the US government, but is not formally part of the government.

Quotable Quotes
Arcade Manager: Hey you! Do you know how much that game costs!?
Jubilee: Yeah, a quarter.

Storm: Storm, Mistress of the Elements, commands you to release that child!
Rogue: Lighten up on the speeches, sugar.

Storm: Did you find the child?
Wolverine: Her trail went cold outside her house...got bit by a dog, too.

Rogue: You look nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Quotable Beast
"The faint heart averted many feet and many a tear, in our opposed path to persevere", from the poem "Farewell" by Coventry Patmore, as Beast climbs over a defensive laser grid.

Producer Eric Lewald on the overall approach to the series
"The word that keeps coming back to me after 20-plus years is “real.” Real adults having real human problems with real consequences–adults who just happen to have superpowers. The best parts of the best of the comic books were written that way–why couldn’t we? While that’s not a terribly specific blueprint, it did help us decide what we didn’t want the series to be."

Lewald, Eric. Previously On X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series. San Diego: Jacobs Brown Media Group, LLC, 2017. p17

Writer Mark Eden on the inclusion of Jubilee on the roster
"The feeling was that we had to have someone “relatable” to our young audience, based on what I always thought was the dubious assumption that children aspire to be teenagers, not adults. This leads to far too many animated shows about fourteen-year-old heroes who drive cars and pilot spaceships. We made good use of Jubilee, however, as more than just a sop to our target demographic. She became our audience surrogate, the point of view for the pilot:”

Lewald, Eric. Previously On X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series. San Diego: Jacobs Brown Media Group, LLC, 2017. p26

Eric Lewald on using the Jim Lee designs
"In adapting the books for TV, there was the additional question of “what would animate well”–it had to look good simplified so moving the designs around wouldn’t destroy our budget. In early 1992, Jim Lee’s designs were not only current and well-liked, they best fit our limited-animation needs."

Lewald, Eric. Previously On X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series. San Diego: Jacobs Brown Media Group, LLC, 2017. p31

Producer/Storyboard Artist Will Meugniot on almost not using the Jim Lee designs
"My goal at that point was to do something as close to the contemporary comics (early 1992) as possible, so we started with the Jim Lee designs (among many available). But we had this side-trip off of them because shortly after we started, after I had gotten the initial designs of Wolverine, Cyclops, and Jean approved, suddenly I got a note from Marvel saying, “You have to put away all the Jim Lee reference. We can’t do a show that looks like his stuff.” They wouldn’t say why, but of course the problem turned out to be that Jim and the other major Marvel guys had announced that they were leaving to found Image Comics. I knew that we had to use those costumes because that was what people who like the characters were going to expect (and they worked best). I thought, well, (to fight it) I’m going to do a model sheet that’s so dumb that they will be forced into using the right ones. So I did a completely wrong, young/funny Hanna-Barbera, 1970s version of the team...It worked out well that Stan [Lee] sincerely thought I was being an idiot for doing the wrong designs."

Lewald, Eric. Previously On X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series. San Diego: Jacobs Brown Media Group, LLC, 2017. p48

Austin's Analysis 
Though both this episode and its second part aired on two separate Saturdays, it is very clear that they were created with the intention of airing as one finite unit: this episode is front loaded with exposition, and rather than build toward a nail-biting cliffhanger, it concludes on a threat more suitable for a commercial break than the end of an episode: a bunch of generic goons waiting to ambush the unsuspecting X-Men. Fortunately, the front-loaded exposition portion of the episode is particularly strong for what it is: in terms of introducing the core themes of the series (humans fear & hate mutants, the X-Men exist to help mutants) and giving each character a chance to showcase their powers and personalities, the first two acts of this episode are a masterclass in TV pilot writing.

It is helped in that regard, of course, by adapting a well-established property. Whereas back in the 60s Stan Lee didn't really hit on the core metaphor that would eventually exist at the heart of the series until the introduction of the Sentinels in issue #14 (and which even after that, would take a decade or so to really take root), the producers of this show were handed a property in which the central notion of "sworn to protect a world that fears and hates them" was well-established. Therefore, they're able to hit the ground running, establishing the concept of human/mutant prejudice and its physical incarnation in the form of the Sentinels within the show's opening minutes. While it may have seemed odd to longtime fans to not start the series off with Magneto, this absolutely makes sense: the Magneto of 1992, rather than the cackling loon of the Silver Age, exists in response to human prejudice against mutants. For him to work in that context, the prejudice first needs to be established. The X-Men fight intolerance, and the Sentinels are the foe that allows them to punch/blast/slash it. Kicking off the series with them is a no-brainer.

And in doing so, it provides the perfect vehicle to showcase the various members of the team. Using a point-of-view character like Jubilee as an audience stand-in is a time-honored technique, but whereas Kitty Pryde in "Pryde of the X-Men" filled audiences in on the X-Men by watching a Danger Room sequence, here Jubilee gets to meet (and introduce viewers) to the X-Men via an actual fight with legitimate stakes, for the X-Men and for her. It's much more visceral & effective as a result, and giving the X-Men a giant robot to attack allows for everyone to get in on the action.

All in all, it's a strong start for the series, even if, when taken as a finite unit of half hour television, it slumps a bit towards the end, as the story segues into setting up first the X-Men's defeat, then their rally & ultimate victory, in the second part and even if the animation quality is...inconsistent. For any diehards watching it as it premiered, it sent a very clear message that for all the necessary changes wrought by the act of adaptation and the standards of the medium, the creators understood the core concepts of the characters individual and the X-Men as a whole, and for any viewers new to the X-Men, they were presented with an engaging, action-packed introduction that still hinted at the layers & possibilities inherent in these stories.

Next Episode
One of the X-Men falls as "Night of the Sentinels" concludes!

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11 comments:

  1. I think I would have been more charitable toward this show if it hadn't aired so soon after the premiere of Batman: The Animated Series. Compared to most kids' tv shows around that time, the first handful of X-Men episodes are pretty strong, but B:TAS was superb (with far superior animation, plots, voice actors, music, etc) and X-Men couldn't help but sit deep in that show's shadow.

    Even without that unfortunate comparison, the show was still lackluster in most areas. Seemingly 90% of the animation budget went towards the opening titles, the characters bordered on one-dimensional*, and the voice acting was atrocious. Every actor launched every line as if they were trying to make sure people in different parts of the house could still hear every word, no matter what volume the TV was set to.

    *again, this was technically an improvement since most 80s cartoon characters were entirely one-dimensional

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  2. What Bob said. Although I think in my case there were extra factors: I’m older than most of the other regular commenters here and I wasn’t reading X-Men comics of the day. Batman captivated me from the moment a figure of Bruce Timm’s appeared in Entertainment Weekly, and while the finished product could be disappointing in spots the voice cast, music, and design were on an unbelievably high level. I know X-Men captivated a generation of fans, which I’m happy for even as I find it weird not to have recognized music cues in a couple of recent MCU projects aimed at them; I watched the pilot online back when Austin’s series began on Patreon, however, and could barely make it through that one episode while my slow-going DCAU rewatch has continued to impress and delight with new discoveries. Just not for me.

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  3. I was in love with this series from the start. It was a Golden Age for me since Batman and X-Men were my two favorite comics at the time. It's true, Batman was the better produced show, but I liked that X-Men adopted the ongoing plotlines. I admit, it's a little harder to sit through now, mostly because of the voice acting, I still have fond memories of it.

    That being said, the concept on display here is solid but it isn't the strongest debut of a show ever. It's just too fresh for any real tension to be built up if you didn't already know who these characters were.

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  4. I really liked X-MEN for the first three seasons. Season 1 was probably my favorite, because it truly did feel like the comic, with true serialization (i.e., there were ongoing plotlines and episodes that led directly from one to the next). Season 2 did this as well, but not to the extent of season 1.

    I loved the first half of season 3. The premiere 2-parter, which was broadcast in primetime, had the best animation the show ever saw, and I adored the adaptation of the "Phoenix Saga". But "Dark Phoenix" left something to be desired, and the missing episodes in between, which were shunted to a later season due to production delays, irked me, since they were mentioned in a WIZARD special or something, so I knew they were supposed to be there.

    All that said, I'm with Bob and Blam here in that I found BATMAN superior in pretty much every way. The only thing I wished at the time that BATMAN could've done like X-MEN was the serialization. But as I've gotten older, I find that I really like the "done-in-one" formula for BATMAN, becuase it fits with the 1970s Bronze Age feel the series was adapting. And you get plenty of serialization later in the DCAU with JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, so I'm more than happy with BATMAN as it is. Again, I really liked about half the run of X-MEN, but BATMAN has aged far, far better in nearly every way.

    Then (not that anyone asked) there's SPIDER-MAN! Another one I really liked early on. The first two seasons were excellent, but as with X-MEN, than one lost me as it went along, to the point that I had actually stopped watching it by its final season. But season 1 especially is an outastanding adaptation of the Lee/Romita "Peter in college" era, and the show had much better production values than X-MEN -- beter character designs (even the X-MEN character models looked better tweaked for their SPIDER-MAN appearance than they did on their own show!), better voice actors (or perhaps I should say better voice direction; SPIDER-MAN's performances didn't feel as over-the-top as X-MEN's frequently did, even though I think most of the X-MEN actors were fine), better music, better animation (though the CGI cityscapes have aged unbelievably poorly, and the series had this annoying habit of using freeze frames and recycled snippets of animation to pad out fight scenes).

    In summary: Back in the 90s, I loved all these shows to varying degrees, but BATMAN felt more consistently good to me. Today, I think BATMAN holds up as well as it ever did (if not better), while SPIDER-MAN is decent and X-MEN is so-so.

    Nonetheless, I'll bet watching X-MEN 97 on day one when it hits Disney Plus!

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    1. Again not that anyone asked, but I've frequently wondered what my ideal X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN cartoons would look like. The problem is, what appeals to me is not fit for mass market consumption -- especially by the theoretical target audience of kids. I'd love a pair of shows that just sort of adapt the original Silver/Bronze Age comics. Say they're both your typical old-school 65-episode shows. I'd start SPIDER-MAN with Peter in high school, with Liz Allen, Flash Thompson, etc., and show him becoming comfortable as Spider-Man and working for the Daily Bugle with Jonah, Robbie, and Betty there. Then around episode 20, he would graduate and after a few episodes of "summer vacation" he would begin college. Liz would vanish from the cast, we would add Harry and Norman Osborn, Gwen and Captain Stacy, etc. and go from there with recurring old villains and introductions of new villains.

      Essentially this would just be an adaptation of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issues 1 - 80 or so, with lots of the lesser stuff trimmed out and certain things expanded upon with the benefit of hindsight -- advance teases about the real identities of the Green Goblin and Big Man, for example, or having Robbie Robertson at the Bugle from the very beginning. There would be no villains or concepts created after the 1960s, so no Venom or any of that.

      For X-MEN, I'd do much the same -- start with the original five. Issues 1 - 20 would adapt a massively condensed version of issues 1 - 66 (just the important stuff -- Magneto, the Brotherhood, Sentinels, Juggernaut, Havok, Polaris, Beast graduating, etc.), then episodes 21 and 22 would adapt GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1. Write out Angel and Iceman at that point, bring in the All-New, All-Different team, and then adapt their stories for the remainder of the series. And for this, I would almost do straight adaptations, unlike the SPIDER-MAN "pick and choose" method. Episodes 23 - 65 would roughly map to issues 94 - 137 and the series would end with the finale of "Dark Phoenix".

      For both of these I would do the same sort of "timeless" setting as BATMAN: THE ANIMATED series, where it's basically set at some nebulous point in the past that looks a lot like the 1960s (as opposed to BATMAN's 1930s aesthetic). No cell phones or computers, etc. All the current PEANUTS animation has a mandate, I believe imposed by the Charles M. Schulz estate, which says they can't use any technology created after the 1970s. That's basically the exact rule I'd use here.

      Then I'd have two absolutely perfect animated series for my two favorite comic book properties, and I'd be incredibly happy for the rest of my life. Unfortunately as I said, even though this is unequivocally the best way to do these things, it's is completley commercially unviable!

      (Hmm... I may have to expand this into a post on my own blog someday!)

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    2. I can see why that could be appealing to some people. Though, personally, I just don't think the Silver Age is all that interesting outside of what it establishes. I think it would be cool to start with maybe a 12 episode first season of the O5 before moving on to the later stuff. But I also wouldn't want it to be a 1/1 recreation. There's a lot of good stuff in the Bronze Age but some of it hasn't aged particularly well (Leprechauns, for example). I can also live the rest of my life without having to sit through another Garokk adventure. I just found him boring. I kind of also want to see the original Brood Saga adapted.

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    3. I admit that I don't love a lot of the Silver Age, but I admittedly also know very little of it. However I can say that the Stan Lee/John Romita/et al era on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (basically issues 39 - 100, though my "sweet spot" is 39 - 80) is one of my all-time favorite comic book runs, period.

      In this total fantasty world I've invented, by the way, if these series were successful enough, I'd love to see them get second seasons. Take the X-Men into the 1980s era, adapting bits and pieces of the second Dave Cockrum run (including the Brood), the Paul Smith run, and maybe end the season with "Fall of the Mutants". And for Spider-Man -- continue on into the 70s, bookending the season with the deaths of Captain Stacy to start and Gwen and the Green Goblin to end it.

      I think part of my fascination with this idea is that for me, those eras are just the most iconic for the characters. Spider-Man in college (Lee/Romita), and the All-New, All-Different X-Men (Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne) are, and in my mind always will be, the definitive versions of the characters/status quos.

      Basically it comes down to how disappointed I get when every animated adaptation nowadays follows the same basic beats. Since roughly the turn of the century, every Spider-Man cartoon has him in high school for the entire series. Every Spider-Man cartoon has him knowing Harry and Mary Jane and Gwen while he's still in high school. Every Spider-Man cartoon introduces Venom super early. I really just want something that's more faithful to the timeline of the comics -- Peter did not go to high school with Harry, MJ, and Gwen. He graduated and then met them all in college. He did not meet Venom until he was a (young) adult, after he had finished college. Stuff like that.

      (I realize a huge part of this is that most of the modern day adaptations borrow heavily from ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, where all that stuff did happen, and that really bugs me too. Look to the original source material for inspiration, not to the stuff that bastardized it four decades later!)

      That's always irked me a bit about X-MEN, as well. Under no circumstances should Gambit (for example) be one of the X-Men the very first time they meet Magneto! It's just wrong!

      Really though, I think that down deep, all I want are animated versions of these characters, just once, that try to stick closely to the original continuities -- even if it's not an issue-by-issue adaptation (which I agree is not the way to go; even in this scenario, I would adapt the basic core premise of each issue, but not copy the stories exactly beat-for-beat). Start the shows where the comics started, follow the basic timeline, don't introduce characters who didn't yet exist, and so forth. I'd just like to see someone try it. Maybe (probably) it would fail spectacularly. But I know I'd enjoy it!

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    4. I actually can agree with you, for the most part. I've always thought any adaptation should hew very closely with the course material. I'm okay with small divergents (as is necessary when adapting one medium to another) but I think the source material is only boosted when the adaptation is fairly faithful. One only has to look at the success of anime and, to a lesser degree, The Walking Dead, to see this in action. I kind of agree with what George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman had to say about it. I'm sure The Sandman collections have been selling a lot more because people can read it to find out what happens next, unlike the Spider-Man and X-Men comics. It's why I think that the success of those movies hasn't translated to increased comic book sales.

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    5. The popularity of the X-amen cartoon did lead to increased success for the X-Men comic books though.

      We can see two reasons why the Marvel movies haven’t impacted comic book sales:
      1.)The Sandman is a finished product. It ran for a certain length of time and has a beginning, middle, and ending. Fans of the Sandman show are required to buy a certain number of TPBs to get the entire story.
      In that sense, perhaps fans do see the X-Men movie based on the Dark Phoenix Saga and go to the store to try to find the “Dark Phoenix Saga” collected edition. It’s a story which existed in the past. There’s no reason to start reading the newly published issue of the comic because it’s not the same characters or plots or situations as they just saw in the Dark Phoenix movie.

      2.)I think the type of story being presented in Sandman appeal more to a wider-audience than the superhero genre. Sandman seems like something more intellectual that a casual fan might want to read.
      Superheroes are fun to watch in a movie, but might not be something which would tend to make the average moviegoer think that they would want to put the time and effort into collecting a superhero series.
      Plus, it’s a different type of serial narrative. What would fans want to see is going to happen next in a Spider-Msn movie, which villain Spidey might beat up in the new movie? It’s very different than wanting to find out what will become of Morpheus.

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  6. "the theme song itself is also a standout of these opening credits and possibly the best thing to come out of the series overall"

    The theme song seems to have been so memorable that it played when one X-Men character appeared in one of the latest MCU movies. And I think that both the Michael Kamen and John Ottman main themes composed for the X-Men films were trying to subtly incorporate the animated series main theme.

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