Though never officially part of this team, she had two adventures with them. I would have to reread them again to remind myself, how much or which members she actually interacted with.
Issues 25 – 30, God Loves, Man Kills II
Bishop, Cannonball, Sage, Storm, Wolverine and Kitty
I know she spent most of this storyline one on one with Stryker
Issues 42 – 46, Prisoner of Fire
Bishop, Cannonball, Gambit, Magma, Rogue, Sage, Storm, Wolverine and Kitty
I mostly remember this for the awesome cover to issue 44 and that Rachel Grey returns!
She makes one off appearances but these issues are the ones where she is active with the team.
Issue 18, was the silent issue
Issue 19, was the Thanksgiving issue
Annual 1, has a back story setting up Mekanix
comicbookdb informs me that I own issues 1, 2, 5 and 9 but she isn’t listed as being in those issues, so she is probably only referenced in those.
If I had to arrange his list, I would have started with Peter David’s X-Factor. Besides the Doc Samson issue, it never really did anything for me.
What I was mostly interested in, was which members showed up the most.
Wolverine, six times: New, Magneto, Outback, Blue Team, Astonishing, All New All Different
Cyclops, five times: New, First Class, Blue Team, Astonishing, All New All Different
Colossus, five times!
Jean Grey, four times: New, First Class, Gold Team, All New All Different
Beast, four times: New, First Class, Blue Team, Astonishing,
Storm, four times: Magneto, Outback, Gold Team, All New All Different
Nightcrawler, three times: Excalibur, Magneto, All New All Different
Kitty Pryde, three times: Excalibur, Magneto, Astonishing
Rogue, three times: Magneto, Outback, Blue Team
Psylocke, three times: Magneto, Outback, Blue Team
Then there are those on only two lists: Wolfsbane, Emma Frost, Havok, Forge, Jubilee, Angel/Archangel, Iceman
How interesting if the two times group formed a book? Several of those characters have never spent much time together. Emma/Havok would be interesting to see without Scott in the room. Warren/Bobby don’t have much history besides the First Class, Defenders and Gold Team, a lot more time apart than together. I could do without Forge, and he is busy with Cable’s X-Force. I know, ideally, Peter David would be the writer of this team, but I can’t decide if this would be a core title or more of a satellite title. It does feature both Emma and Havok, so in my brain, it is a A-list book, but the rest of the members are holding it back. Plus, the roster is all over the place. Havok is running his own Avengers team, Emma is co-leading Uncanny X-Men, Angel has no memories and with Iceman, both are at the Jean Grey School, not even sure what is happening to Wolfsbane. Last I heard, she was looking for her child she had with the wolf prince. Forge is with X-Force and Jubilee is already on an A-list book.
I apparently ran with that idea. It would have to wait until after Battle of the Atom, plus that roster would never exist. I completely forgot Emma and Bobby, which I am pretty sure they haven’t worked together for an extended period of time since she had control of his body. I also can’t decide if Wolfsbane being on this team automatically makes this a B-Team or not. She was on Wolverine’s X-Force, so she has been to the big league, but she doesn’t stay there long. Also not sure of this is a field team or more if a rag tag group used in a mini to further the larger plot? Has to be the second one, as what could keep them together, the success of their first mission most likely.
I think the general rule to making a classic roster is:
Have Kitty Pryde (of course) and Nightcrawler
At least one of the First Class members, I prefer Cyclops
At least one from the All New All Different team, besides Nightcrawler
That at least gives you four members, so throw in no more than four more members and have a good time.
The cover threw me off and I was reading the second page and thought the Dodsons changed their style for this like how Coipel did or that Peter’s coloring changed the tone of the art. Turns out, we are being treated to David Lopez, who does a great job here.
This issue gives us two stories: Jubilee and Wolverine / X-Men rescuing a plane full of people.
The Jubilee portion handles that she is still a vampire, so those fans can calm down. I like how Wood takes advantage of writing a Marvel comic and has technology be reason why she can enjoy the daytime. Such an easy fix but a clever one. Sure, if there is a nice vampire out there, Reed Richards would take the time to make her life easier.
Lopez does a good job if capturing Shogo being a baby.
This has been the best portrayal of Wolverine in some time. I like these quiet issues. It is almost like the calm before the storm.
Wolverine buys Jubilee’s old house, that’s nice. Who knows when a East coast team member will ever get the time to enjoy it, but she has it – Logan bought it, he hasn’t gifted it. Plus, she was off a team for quite some time, so she will be off this team eventually too.
Really like how Storm is drawn and colored, she looks like a queen of her environment, though I am falling out of love with Storm. It might be because Rachel is questioning Storm’s leadership role, shedding light on how I don’t like Storm just taking the role of leader. If there was a team that didn’t need one person in command, it is this team.
I’m sure Rogue has used Psylocke’s powers before, but now that Rogue is at a power set of zero, that when you only have Psylocke’s, it must be pretty exciting.
I like also how Psylocke is still training her powers and abilities in the Danger Room.
Not exactly sure what Kitty was doing during the plan, it was probably her own plan and she was overseeing it.
Pretty nice done-in-one issue.
The only thing that bothered me in this issue was Storm mentioning Rachel’s relationship with John Sublime. Which I’m not even sure if that is a relationship. As far as I saw, he was flirting with Rachel and Rachel just wasn’t stomping on his attempts. I don’t believe that means anything. Plus, she hasn’t had any relationships since her original one with Franklin Richards. And it isn’t even like she’s carrying that torch with her, we have never seen her missing those days. And how could she miss those days, as those were horrible days. That and she will be getting a glimpse of that soon with Battle of the Atom. Though she doesn’t know that just yet.
Storm deciding to have Rachel kill Omega Sentinel was a poor decision and I agree with Rachel, every time Omega Sentinel is having a good day, this X-Men team will remember that she could not be experiencing due to Storm’s decision.
Thanks to YouTuber Vintage9x for hosting this video.
I adore this pilot. I really wish there was a second episode, to show off what they could do.
It was written by Larry Parr, who wrote the Morlocks Christmas and the titled Dark Phoenix episodes of the 90s X-Men series. Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he wrote the Incredible Shrinking Turtles and It Came from Beneath the Sewers.
That’s the deal with this pilot. It originally premiered on September 16, 1989. It is definitely a product of its time. The animation and voice talent is the best of its era.
I wish I could say that I remember the buzz for this, or that I watched it when it debuted, but I didn’t. I would have been seven, so it would have been in my wheelhouse, but my first exposure to the X-Men was the animated series of the 90s.
Which means when I adopted Kitty Pryde as my favorite fictional character of all time, people were kind to direct me to this. Which was before YouTube so I had to buy a bootlegged copy. Which I don’t believe is illegal as there is no official version to buy. If they release one next year, I would totally buy it. Slap a making of feature and a legacy feature, make it $14.99 and sell a million of them.
This pilot sets up the Konami X-Men game of the 90s which is pretty awesome. It works as a sort of sequel or a complete extension / revision of the pilot.
It is narrated by Stan Lee, you all know Stan Lee, co-creator of the X-Men and so much more. Just looking at the characters he co-created for the X-Men (during the first 19 issues), the Original Five (Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Jean), Xavier, Magneto, Blob, the Danger Room, the Vanisher, the concept of the Brotherhood, Mastermind, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Toad, Cerebro, Unus the Untouchable, Lucifer (the guy who paralyzed Xavier), The Savage Land, Ka-zar, Zabu, Stranger, Juggernaut, The Sentinels, Bolivar Trask, Bernard the Poet, Master Mold and that’s just the first seventeen issues! Didn’t know it was that many, I just went to comicbookdb.com and clicked the first issue of Uncanny and went from there. Thought they both were only on the title for the first 12 or so. Then Lee wrote issues 18 and 19, then he was out. 19 is the first appearance of Mimic.
This came out in 1989, so we had six more years with Jack Kirby, shame he doesn’t receive a credit for any of this, especially as Xavier, Cyclops and Magneto are all present. Kirby did the first seventeen issues.
The episode starts with Magneto being a prisoner and they are transporting him to a prison. Magneto is voiced by Earl Boen. Who is in the first three Terminator movies as Dr. Peter Siberman.
It has the first animated Emma Frost. She is voiced by Susan Silo. She voiced Neptunia from Darkwing Duck and Sue from Pac-Man.
Before this pilot, Kitty had made her animated debut with The X-Men Adventure episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. Next, is this pilot and then it is X-Men Evolution, Super Hero Squad (two appearances!) and Wolverine and the X-Men.
Which I have this theory that both Kitty and Lockheed were punished for the lack of success if this pilot and that is why they never make an appearance at all in the 90s cartoon. Especially with how much they included her in Evolution to make up for the lack of appearing in the most watched series.
I like how the Brotherhood are called mutant terrorists, they are not fooling around.
Once you hear Col. Chaffey speak, you know this is going to be a high quality program. Chaffey and the Blob are voiced by the legendary Alan Oppenheimer. Who is the voice of Skeletor, Man-at-Arms and Gringer of He-Man fame. On the Smurfs, he voiced Vanity and he was Rhinokey on the Wuzzles.
Growing up, I was a huge fan of Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters and He-Man. They must have been on the same channel or something. I never really got into GI Joe, Transformers or Captain Planet, I watched them and had a few toys but those other three shows? I had nearly every toy from those lines. Or at least, it felt like it.
At the two minute mark, we get Kitty Pryde. Voiced by Kath Soucie, who is a legend in her own right with just being the voice of Janine from Ghostbusters. She was Morgana McCawber on Darkwing Duck and Fifi la Fume on Tiny Toons, two mire favorite shows. She has been the voice of Kanga on most Winnie the Pooh programs and Lola Bunny from Space Jam. She is his mom on Dexter’s Laboratory and Butch from Recess. Which I know I was too old for Recess but it is a pretty amazing show, give it a chance, it will surprise you. I like how she is like Jodi Benson, Ariel of Little Mermaid fame, whenever you have heard Ariel speak, it is always Benson’s voice, same goes for Lola Bunny and Kath Soucie.
So Xavier projects a mental image of himself to Kitty and guides her into the control room of the Danger Room.
Xavier is voiced by John Stephenson. Who is from the original Flintstones as Mr. Slate and Chief Quimby from Inspector Gadget.
The funny thing about Xavier and Kitty in this scene is that he just straight up tells her everything about the X-Men. I do like how it is implied that the X-Men have had various other adventures prior to this one. I like that as it creates a great energy, you feel like you are catching up on something, they have a bunch of room to grow on and hint at previous adventures.
Xavier introduces the current team and not only their code names but real names, powers and weaknesses.
First up is Cyclops, voiced by Michael Bell. He was Zan and Gleek in Super Friends, the Riddler on Challenge of Super Friends, he was Plastic Man on Plastic Man’ Comedy/Adventure Show, he was Doc Ock from Amazing Friends. On Smurfs, he is Grouchy, Lazy and Handy. He’s Duke from GI Joe (a bit of a type casting there – but in animation that is how it works, you want that same guy).
Second, Colossus voiced by Dan Gilvezan
Third, Dazzler in her Outback era costume. She’s voiced by Alexandra Stoddart.
Fourth, Nightcrawler and fifth is Wolverine, both voiced by Neil Ross. On GI Joe, he is Shipwreck, He’s Clyde from Pac-Man, on the 90s Spider-Man cartoon, he was Green Goblin/Norman Osborn, who he also voiced on Amazing Friends along with Wolverine and Cyclops.
So let’s get this out of the way, Wolverine is apparently from Australia, it is such an odd choice and the voice director, Stu Rosen, must have been pleased with himself once Hugh Jackman was cast as Wolverine.
Nightcrawler has a very interesting costume design, it isn’t quite the Cockrum design, it’s more of a weaker design and his eye patches are weird, like if those diamonds were white, it would be like Dazzler’s first appearance.
Wolverine is in the brown and tan costume, so that’s a plus. Wolverine keeps calling Kitty a kid or a brat, like over and over again.
Sixth is Storm, in the classic Cockrum outfit. She is voiced by Andi Chapman.
I liked how they kept Kitty being scared of Kurt, they did the same thing in Evolution. It only works if by the end, she likes him. I remember thinking that they ran with it for like three additional episodes on Evolution and thinking that that makes Kitty look like a jerk but it is probably only one additional episode.
Kurt keeps trying to charm her.
One side effect of having phasing power is that when she phases through electronics, she completely ruins them. It happens twice in this show.
Act Two
The Brotherhood attacks and the X-Men have to go investigate. Cyclops makes an awesome comment about “what if it is a trap and Magneto comes here” and then of course, that happens!
Magneto and Juggernaut attack the mansion. The Juggernaut is voiced by Patrick Pinney, who sings the Spongebob Squarepants theme song.
Kitty phases through a computer and the security system goes haywire.
They establish that Juggernaut is Xavier’s stepbrother.
Kitty stands up to Magneto and tries to out run him but it is like a 14 year old child fighting a war criminal, all she can do is delay.
Magneto gets the device he wanted the whole time.
The X-Men go and fight Blob and Pyro who are only there to distract the team. Colossus, proving he is an idiot, just walks up to the Blob and hugs the heck out of him as hugging equals caring. Blob wants nothing to do with it and tosses the fool.
Storm fights Pyro
At the 10:45 mark, Lockheed shows up!
Magneto keeps trying to kick him throughout the rest of the show.
We see Toad chasing Lockheed around the base. Lockheed is clearly modeled after Paul Smith’s version, which makes sense as Smith created him and by September 1989, the cover dated issue of Uncanny would have been issue 248 but who knows when they first started working on the production. I was going to say by then, only Smith would have drawn him but by 248, Alan Davis would have had his chance and various others too.
Now is a good as time as any to speak of our final voice actor. The legend that is Frank Welker, who voices both Toad and Lockheed, which makes sense as those two share nearly every scene together that Lockheed is in. People should just know who Frank Welker is, as what Stan Lee did to creating comic book characters, Welker has done to voicing characters. He’s Fred Jones from Scooby Doo (like everything with few exceptions) and last year, he became the voice of Scooby Doo. He’s Jabberjaw. Dynomutt, the Dog Wonder (from Blue Falcon), he’s Doctor Claw from Inspector Gadget, Slimer and Ray Stantz from Ghostbusters, Hefty Smurf, Nibbler from Futurama, Malebolgia from Spawn, Abu in Aladdin (he’s like Jodi Benson, he’s always Abu – and himself with Fred Jones), he is the new Garfield since 2005. And all of that before even saying the thing that we all know and love, from Transformers, he is f’n Megatron and Soundwave. Still a crime that he is not Megatron in the live action Transformers films. One of the reasons why I have only ever seen the first one. I’m still glad they used Peter Cullen for Optimus Prime but why him and not Welker? I thought I was over this but I guess I’m not.
Anyway, so the X-Men find out that the Scorpio Comet is coming to Earth if Magneto has his way.
Act Three
We find out that Magneto wants the comet to hit earth to create a new Ice Age and then, from the safety of his asteroid base, he will come down and claim the planet in a decade.
It dawns on me now that I really don’t need to do a play by play of the episode if you can just watch it above. But I’m committed at this point but I can read your thoughts and I guess it is unnecessary but I have to do it this way so that I make sure I hit on all the points that I want as I need to segue from moment to moment. Thanks for bearing with me thus far! I’m trying to pepper it with side stories and such but this is definitely becoming one of my longer posts.
Kitty is 14 years old but dresses like a 30 year old woman.
Kitty of course, sneaks on board of the Blackbird. Too late to take her back. I like how she sort of forces herself onto the team. Xavier probably just wanted to introduce her to the team and show her how cool things are and then put his teaching degree to good use and guide her through her powers, as really, how much X-Men time does a traditional day take? Sometimes the missions expand to days but mostly, Cerebro goes off, jump on a plane and you are back in maybe 12 hours. Then you have to do something for the next couple days, might as well teach some new mutants.
I like how their space suits work along with their powers, Xavier thinks of everything!
This is where the video game aspect kicks in, the team does a bit of a divide and conquer. The group comes across a villain, one of them chooses to stay behind and then the rest move on to run into another foe.
Dazzler fights Pyro
Toad fights Wolverine
Juggernaut fights Colossus
At the 16:50 mark, we get Emma Frost and Scott Summers!
Blob and Nightcrawler fight, as they are the last ones left. So is over before you know it as Kurt has places to be!
Then it happens, 17:25. Kitty and Lockheed are on the screen at the same time. This episode and the Mutant High episode of Super Hero Squad, they have two animated appearances together. That and the episode of Evolution where Kitty sleeps with a plush dragon, but that isn’t enough for this fan right here.
Kitty v Magneto, the rematch!
Kurt is so brave, making himself part of circuit to prevent Magneto’s plan to throw the comet off its course.
18:30, Lockheed is flying around Kitty
Kurt yells at her to leave as he has to wait until the last possible second.
18:37, Kitty picks up Lockheed and a friendship begins! So beautiful man
Kurt teleports into space and they shoot some hooks after him.
Storm sort of disappeared during all of those fights, now that I think of it.
They believe Kurt dead and at 19:30, Kitty hugs Colossus, gross!
At 20:01, Kitty finally gets to redeem herself and hugs Kurt.
20:07, Lockheed lands on Kitty’s shoulder. So precious
I do prefer a classic number of seven or eight characters for a X-Team. Five is too little and ten is way too many.
Wolverine, Dazzler, Colossus, Storm, Kitty, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, that’s a pretty decent line up. All seven have never served on the team at the same time to this day but it is largely the Paul Smith era, its Dazzler instead of Rogue.
I can only imagine what the next episode would have been.
I only own this with my bootleg copy of the first season of the 90s X-Men series, but it only works in our portable DVD player and only this episode was the only quality transfer. The 90s cartoon on that DVD does not look good at all.
I also own this as the X-Men Animated Special comic.
I can’t stop thinking about the era of X-Men comics when this came out. At the beginning of the Chris Claremont / Jim Lee era but the cartoon itself harkens back to years earlier, from 1989 all the way back to 1983/1984. Probably because no one would have wanted an Outback era cartoon at that time. Would take like three episodes to introduce why they were not living in Massachusetts. I imagine that is why Dazzler was added to the cast, to show that production knows who is in the X-Men at the time. Only Nightcrawler, Cyclops and Kitty don’t belong in that line up now as Kurt and Kitty would be in Excalibur and not sure where Cyclops is at that moment in time. Jubilee is a brand new character so the crew went with the original introductory character.
It just strikes me how much of a response to this failed pilot was the 90s cartoon. Like all the choices are based around what they imagined didn’t work. They made it exactly like the current comics, right down to the Jim Lee redesigns. The cast would have matched the comics’ Blue and Gold rosters as a combination, Jubilee is the introductory character. Kitty was the lynchpin that kept the pilot together and thus, the pilot didn’t work out and so they wanted to keep her away from the show completely. And the 90s cartoon suffers for it too, they try to do some classic stories but without those line ups they are lessen for it, you can’t just add Gambit to everything and expect it to be cool. That’s too much pressure for the cajun.
This would be my only time I can go at length for Pryde of the X-Men so I wanted to get all of my thoughts about it written.
Hope you enjoy the show! If your can’t get it the video to work, then you can just read along.
I have to admit that I liked Irving’s style a great deal more this time out than last time. Glad he got another chance. Most likely because he’s drawing real people instead of demons. I can relate to that.
Seems to me that the foundation has been built and now Bendis can tell his revolutionary story.
Magik training with Tempus is cool. Shows the danger of not only knowing what your powers are, but also not even knowing your limits.
An interesting choice Irving makes with the layout with the Magneto texting scene. I don’t blame him for wanting to draw the classic Magneto, as the all white suit still isn’t doing it for me, either.
Glad someone included the real conversation in the text as I had no idea.
I liked the Magneto / Maria Hill scene. Both really are in character.
Hopefully with Battle of the Atom, that people don’t forget Dazzler is in a closet and five years don’t pass and no one notices.
I do like the idea of college students liking the X-Men. I never have understood the whole “because they are mutants, we hate and fear them” story point. Like, to the general public in the Marvel Universe, is there really that much of a difference between the Fantastic Four and the X-Men? If a new hero comes onto the scene, does the press wait for confirmation that the new hero is a mutant or not? Why would anyone say mutant then?
That’s sort of why I liked in recent years that the X-Men went from being a racial metaphor to a persecuted minority metaphor. Whatever you are, be proud of who you are and what makes you unique in this world (unless you are a Colossus fan, of course). If I was living in the state of Montana, but the Marvel Montana, I probably be more annoyed with the whole super community at large. The news would be constantly following their exploits. Your favorite shows will be constantly being interrupted with urgent bulletins. DVD sales are probably high in the Marvel Universe.
Mutants shouldn’t also have to lie about who they are. I never understood either why its okay that a 16 year kid got bit by a radioactive spider and that’s okay but a 16 year old who’s X-gene kicked in is now a problem. It’s biology, there’s nothing that kid did or done that caused the gene to become active. I can see why if you are a mutant, you would want to pretend you are not and just tell people that you got expose to some cosmic rays or something like that and just go on being loved by the public. But that isn’t right, be mutant and proud, that’s what I say! Well, Magneto then Mystique said it in the First Class movie but now I’m typing it too. Magneto, Mystique and me, yeah, that’s a good team to be a part of. Shouldn’t have to lie or fake who you are just because another group of people can’t handle who you are. Especially if all you are doing is living your live and not even talking or interacting with those people. Those people just don’t like a concept and you happen to be near by and that isn’t right.
Back to Scott at the college. Nice character beat with him getting caught up in his own speech. I like that he probably had a couple sentences in his head but because they teleported there, he doesn’t have much time to rehearse at all.
Terry Austin turns 61 today. Without Austin, John Brynes’ pencils would not have looked as legendary as they do. Also, we would not have known that Popeye is always present at big events, no matter the location.
Inked by Mark Morales with John Livesay, David Meikis and Jim Cheung
Colored by Justin Ponsor
Part One of Six
To get it out of the way, I must admit that I was pretty excited when I turned to the list of characters and saw there was an X-Men roster.
Then I was disappointed that Kitty, Storm and Wolverine’s one page was a reprinted material from the Free Comic Book Day issue. It holds promise that the X-Men might, at least, be appearing in this series.
Really like Cheung’s art, it is very clean and nice. I bet that if I look it up, every time I’ve seen it, Ponsor has colored it.
I like how Beast is the X-Men substitute for Xavier in the Marvel Illuminati.
I like looking at the list of characters, for these big crossovers, and seeing who I don’t know:
Black Swan
The Builders
The Spaceknights (If Rom isn’t there, do they matter?)
This version of Captain Universe
Ex Nihilo
Nightmask
Starbrand
Manifold
Not to bad. Took me til I was looking at the list to notice Iron Man is listed twice, for Illuminati and Avengers. Different suits for each. Do not like the Avengers helmet at all, looks silly or something.
Nice seeing Abigail Brand again, been a fan since her first appearance.
Black Bolt has five wives!?! Oooof, I wonder how Medusa felt about that? And which story did all of that happened in? Miss those little editor’s boxes at times like these. Or a note in the back. This is my first exposure to Hickman, so it was probably in his previous work.
He loves one, Medusa, and hates one, hopefully not the horse headed one.
I’m a sucker for the whole, look at this panel, now notice the difference in this panel. It’s a great use of the medium. The Illuminati, first with their proper faces, then with skulls.
I really like the idea of seeing which word Black Bolt says with his power. Every time I’ve ever seen it depicted before, you only seen the sound wave, and I’m left wondering what he said. It’s a very nice touch, hopefully it’s a new policy. Like in the late 90s, when they decided to actual make Sye Richards really invisible, even to the reader, that was a very awesome touch. It didn’t last long though.
The Earth may not have Avengers, but we still have X-Men, New Warriors, Slingers and The New Fantastic Four as options. So don’t fret too much ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be okay.
Looking at the tie ins, not slated to get any, I’ll see if I’m getting issue two or not. I like the break down in the back, makes sense, that if Hickman is writing the main mini, that you should buy his Avengers series, as they tie in. New Avengers 12, looks to be the aftermath issue, which I like those, and most likely sets up the next crossover. Which might be Cataclysm from the Ultimate Universe.