Wolverine and the X-Men Season One

When I first heard that the new X-Men animated series was called Wolverine and the X-Men, I did not have high hopes for it. While I've nothing against him, Wolverine is the most over-exposed character in the Marvel stable and I wasn't looking forward to twenty-six episodes of what I assumed would amount to Wolverine and His Amazing Friends. The trailer looked cool, but raised some new doubts. It quickly became clear that within the first forty-five seconds of the show Professor X would get taken out of action, leaving Logan in charge of the team. The prospect of an entire X-Men series without my beloved did not fill me with joy.

However, having watched the whole first season, my worries were for naught. The series draws on the depth and breadth of comic book history to create a three-dimensional world, making especially good use of characters and concepts introduced in the last decade or so. While I don't love it without reservation - more about that later - this is my favourite animated adaptation of the X-Men so far, maybe even my favourite screen adaptation.

First of all, if you're a Charles Xavier fan, the premise is actually a blessing in disguise. ( Spoilers for the basic set-up of the show re: Xavier, Charles F. )

Also, Charles and Magneto manage to be hella slashy on the strength of about three scenes together.

This brings me to my second reason for fangirling this series: Magneto is a complicated bad guy, which is just how I like him. He does reprehensible things, but they make sense in context and he never acts like a raving two-dimensional lunatic. His relationship to his children is also intriguing: ( more spoilers. )

Once I actually watched the show, I found that the title helped reconcile me to the fact that it's Wolverine-centric. I mean, I might complain that there's too much Logan in the X-Men movies, but I'm hardly going to make the same protest about the upcoming Wolverine film :). The title is a clear mission statement: Wolverine is the central character, but that doesn't mean nobody else gets to be in the spotlight. There are some episodes in which he barely appears.

It helps that Charles putting him in charge of the team is pretty logical under the circumstances. Cyclops is very young in this continuity - early twenties, I'd say - and badly traumatised by the events that take Charles out. I'm still puzzled that Storm didn't get given the job, though, which brings me to one of my few problems with the show.

Ororo has very little characterisation and just doesn't get much to do, which is frustrating because it makes it impossible to know if she'd have been a suitable leader for the team or not. Shadowcat, likewise, doesn't seem to have much of her comics personality in evidence - she comes across as a generic sassy teen rather than the brilliant computer scientist I know and love. Emma Frost, Rogue, Marrow, Wanda and the female villains do get better characterisation. However, ( HUGE SPOILER FOR THE LAST EPISODE )

Also, Episode Seventeen, Rise of the Silver Samurai, is made of 100% pure racefail and bad Japanese stereotypes. Fortunately it is completely irrelevant to the ongoing plot so you can easily skip it.

All in all, though, I really enjoyed the first season and am looking forward to the next. ( Major spoilers for the last scene of the last episode. )