Marvel’s animated series has continued the tales of the X-Men from the ‘90s cartoon, adding in timely relevance with great aplomb. Here’s a short tease of the next installment, featuring a fashion shake-up as well as more hints about the story, which finds humanity needing to trust in the X-Men once more. As tends to be the case, they may be the best hope the world has to survive.
Marvel Animation’s X-Men ‘97 | Official Clip ‘Trust In The X-Men’ | Disney+
To avoid early anxiety about what is actually going to happen in the next episode, let’s just geek out for a moment about the costumes here. We see Jean reach for her mask without her Dolly Parton-sized wig, Wolverine grab his red-tinged gloves, Storm put on her crown, and Cyclops don his visor. We see you, Marvel: using the old costumes for the main team from the 1980s Uncanny X-Men era. It’s just really cool to see the show pay homage to the comics and iconography in this way.
Image: Disney+
“Tolerence Is Extinction, Pt. 2,” the second piece of X-Men ‘97‘sthree-part finale, starts streaming May 8 only on Disney+.
Like the original series, X-Men ‘97has been adapting a variety of comic book storylines from the 90s. Thus far, the likes of Inferno, The Trial of Magneto, and Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’sNew X-Men run have been brought to life, with varying levels of time and success. The show has a lot of stories it can tell, and one of them may bring the team in conflict with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
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Speaking to ComicBook, Ross Marquand (who voices Professor X) indicated there was a “real chance” the show gets to adapt Avengers vs. X-Men. Speaking to Captain America’s appearance in the seventh episode “Bright Eyes,” Marquand noted how it could be the first step toward adapting that storyline. “[Rogue] threw [his shield] in the side of a snowy mountain,” he said. “He ain’t gonna find that shield. It’s not like Mjolnir where you can just like pull it back, it’s stuck in that thing. He’s gonna be pissed at Rogue for a while.”
Released in 2012, the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline—from writers and artists like Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, Matt Fraction, Adam Kubert, and Olivier Coipel—was arguably the last big event before Marvel went into its MCU synergy phase. Like the title implies, the two teams went to war over the returning Phoenix Force, which eventually split itself into five pieces that bond with Colossus, Magik, Emma Frost, Namor, and Cyclops. Things eventually end with the Phoenix Force restoring the then-dwindling mutant population, Cyclops as a mutant revolutionary, and Cap forming the Uncanny Avengers to mend fences with mutants.
What makes a potential adaptation interesting in the context of X-Men ‘97 is that it’d how, by design, the X-Men’s POV would take center stage instead of the Avengers like in the comics. The show’s shown how characters like Rogue and Cyclops are fed up with how mutants are currently treated, and how Cap’s “by the book” approach with violent acts against them is unacceptable. If anything, its version of the storyline would be titled X-Men vs. Avengers, and make whatever the late 90s/early 2000s version of the Avengers out to only stick their neck of mutants if they get to look good.
AvX is a big story, and it’d probably be easier (and more fun) to pull off in animation than the movies. Recent episodes have had no problem showing that characters like Scott and Magneto are right in their anger and actions, and one can imagine that it’d find an interesting way to present those viewpoints (and those who are swayed to their side) when they’re influenced by the ever-corrupting power of the Phoenix Force.
X-Men ‘97’s already got a second season secured, and it may have a third under its belt as well. Let us know in the comments how you think it’d do tackling Avengers vs. X-Men, or if it’s even worth doing in the first place.
For the past few years, toymaker Sentinel’s “Fighting Armor” toyline has transformed Marvel heroes from across the comics into mechanized warriors better than even the actual Marvel Comics crossovers to do so. While its forays into the worlds of Mutantkind have been few and far between, its latest turns an X-Men stalwart into maybe its best spin on the idea yet.
Announced overnight, Sentinel revealed a first look at the Fighting Armor Cyclops, which takes an amalgam of several of Scott’s classic comics looks—from the legendary ‘90s Jim Lee design to his completely-over-the-head cowl aesthetic from earlier iterations of X-Men and X-Factor—and turns them into a very cool armored hero design that’s equal parts Iron X-Man and Mutant Suit Gundam.
To be honest, the Iron Man comparisons that founded the Fighting Armor line even really fall away for Cyclops, who looks much more interestingly robotic than most Iron Man armors do thanks to the little things that make Scott’s design what it is, like his mono-eye visor—he definitely leans into more looking like what if the X-Men made their own giant robot to fight a Sentinel, rather than strapping armor over themselves. It’s perfectly Scott Summers: a little dorky and nerdy, but also extremely cool when your back’s up against the wall and people are ready to throw mechanized hands.
The Fighting Armor Cyclops is set to release in June 2024 in Japan, and comes with multiple bonus accessories including a “smoking” and regular-firing optic blast attachment for Scott’s visor, alternate hands (including a thumbs up, which is definitely something Scott would be doing after realizing he’s fighting in a robot suit), and opening parts on the suit for extra articulation and posing. He’ll cost around $100 on import sites, and is available to pre-order now—click through to see more pictures of him, as well as the other X-Men Fighting Armor figure releasing in June along side him: Magneto, the master of magnetism!
