Wolverine et les X-Men

It's been a few years since the last X-Men animated franchise. It's a bit hard to follow in the footsteps of the original series, and these days, Marvel has improved their quality of work (compare "Daredevil" & "Elektra" to "Ironman" and "The Incredible Hulk"). The only word to describe the series, so far is..."WOW". The animation is quite spectacular and they've integrated a lot of the original characters, people you only had a glimpse of in "X-Men: Evolution", so that the series becomes fun to the people who have been X-Men fans for most of their lives. Even to those who aren't aware of the storyline can have a lot of fun watching this series. The plot develops well, leaves you hanging onto your seat wondering, "Oh Lord, what now!". The characters are reminiscent of the original series, like the voicing and such - you can actually HEAR the difference in their accents and speech patterns. One of the best parts is that because of "X-Men: Evolution" and the live action movies, and we have forgotten that the X-Men were full, mature people, this series puts things back in perspective. They're adults, fully developed in their powers and thrust into our world. You're there, watching and anticipating the next characters to make their appearance. My advice? "You will be surprised." Take a joyride, immerse yourself all over again in the saga, keep the original storyline in the back of your head, but leave your mind open and clear. Because the way this series has started, I don't think anything is impossible....

What has happened to Marvel TV cartoons?? On the DC side, excellent reimaginings of Batman, Superman and the Justice League have been plentiful with so, so many substandard versions of Spiderman and X-Men based on Manga for Generation 'Teen'. The recent 'Next Avengers - Heroes of Tomorrow' was better but again for a younger audience in my opinion.

I don't need to see a bunch of kids reenact adult X-Men situations where there's no risk. This series bodes much better, feeding off the 80s X-Men series. Yes, there are some serious plot problems having Wolverine lead but they're addressed in the right way where many X-Men don't want to follow him.

Fantastic, and well overdue.

I caught a screening of the first three episodes of "Wolverine & the X-Men" at this year's Comic Con and although my expectations for the series were quite low, I found myself pleasantly surprised. I shouldn't give away too much, but I will say that despite being aimed primarily at children, "Wolverine & the X-Men" deals with some adult issues that will make the show appeal to an older audience while still being appropriate for the little ones. The violence is kept to a minimum, though the action is still exciting. Despite the numerous action sequences, there are plenty of moments of humor so things never get too overly serious. Thankfully, the the jokes aren't corny. They are actually quite funny as opposed to a lot of the jokes in X-Men: The Last Stand. I have to admit I can't remember if anyone on the Comic Con panel mentioned if "Wolverine & the X-Men" is supposed to exist inside the continuity of any of the live-action films, though there were several references to live-action films being a bit of an influence on the show, especially in terms of how the excellent voice work is done. Like the films, the main story is relatively faithful to the comics. The characters look similar to the way the characters are drawn in the comics with some understandable changes. Those who are fans of the comics or just fans of the movies shouldn't be disappointed. Based on what I've seen...8/10. This is the best superhero cartoon in a long time.

So I'm real happy I'm Canadian. Why you ask? Because I got to see the premiere of Wolverine and the X-Men last night! Now for those of you who are not Canadian or can't download the episode I shall provide a review of sorts.

Story: The story definitely has me intrigued. The episode takes place a year after the attack at Xavier Institute where Charles Xavier and Jean Grey have died?…disappeared?…on vacation? Its never made clear to us, but all we know is that they are gone. The X-Men have apparently disbanded because when Wolverine meets up with Beast (Hank Mcoy) in his underground laboratory, both admit they don't know where the others are.

Anyhow Wolverine helps out a family (A interracial family by the way which made me very happy, you don't see that enough) when they get in a RV crash, in return they take him to their home to heal. However, they have an anti-mutant neighbor named Carl ("He's got razors in his hands!") calls the MRD on them, which I think stands for Mutant Registration Department but I could be wrong. The family gets taken to MRD headquarters for helping out wolverine, which seems to also be a prison for mutants the ones we see are Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair), Rockslide (Santo Vaccarro), Boom Boom (Tabitha Smith), Dust (Sooraya Qadir), Pyro (John Allerdyce)…and possibly X-23...

I won't go into anymore then that since most of you might not have seen the episode yet, but I will say that I'm looking forward to see what will happen in future episodes. One of my main concerns is that the show will focus too much on Wolverine and forget the rest of the characters. I can't tell from seeing only one episode but I hope those who are working on it will remember that one of the best things about the X-Men franchise is the large cast of distinctive characters.

The story isn't your atypical Saturday morning cartoon, and its obvious they want both kids and adults to enjoy it. IMDb said that the cartoon is a spin off of X2 and I can see that, especially with the strong familial bond between Rogue and Wolverine in this episode. However, its not really a continuation but more like they were influenced by the films (The first two anyhow…) It has a lot of potential that the will hopefully be carried out.

Animation: The animation is top notch. The colors are subdued and dark, I guess to avoid the whole bright colored cartoon cliché. The designs are similar to X-Men: Evolution which makes sense since Steve E. Gordon the character designer for X-Men: Evolution is the director of the series.

But if you didn't like the designs from Evo there's a high chance you won't like these ones, even though the looks and costume so far are faithful to the comics, (The X-Men we see are wearing the original yellow and blue costumes…with the exception of Nightcrawler) the designs have a stylized look to them.

Voice Acting: Here is a quick low down of the voice actors.

Wolverine played by Steve Bloom: Bloom has the whole gritty and growl tone to Wolverine voice (One of my biggest disappointments with Hugh Jackson is that he didn't sound like Wolverine, its not his fault but it still made me sad), I personally think he will do a great job. He's is certainly no slouch when it comes to voice acting, anime fans will recognize him as Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop and Orochimaru from Naruto.

Beast played by Fred Tatasciore: Tatasciore is mostly a video game voice actor but he has provided additional voices in popular shows such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and Invader Zim. He's a great Beast with the deep yet calming voice that displays Beast intelligence, though I will always love George Buza… Rogue played by Kieren van den Blink (best name EVER): I'm reserving my judgment for Karen, Rogue is not an easy character to play since you want to show her frustrations of being an outsider while not making her sound too emo. Also she doesn't have a strong southern accent which bothers me, but my favorite Rogue voice is still Lenore Zann from the 90s X-Men show so I might be biased.

Shadowcat played by Danielle Judovits: I'm very pleased with Danielle she managed to have the haughty teenage attitude without sounding annoying. Though she's a relative newcomer, she has already worked in animation with being Barbara Gordon/Batgirl from The Batman cartoon.

Nightcrawler played by Liam O'Brien: Another veteran of voice acting especially in Anime where he has played roles such as Gaara from Naruto and Vincent Law from Ergo Proxy. Though his appearance was brief I think he will make a great Nightcrawler, and I'm looking forward to his Angel.

Cyclopes played by Nolan North: Nolan is primarily a video game voice actor most notably Prince of Persia (The Prince). He has however done voice work in animation playing Hank Pym/Giant Man in the direct to video Avengers movies and Raphael in the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. He says very little in the episode but what I've heard sounds good so far. He will also be playing Deadpool.

Colossus played by Phil Morris: Here's the sad thing. Phil Morris did a great job with Colossus and he had the accent without it being exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness (I'm looking at you Robert Cait!). Sadly IMDb does not list him as playing Colossus and Wikipedia has him on the cast list but not who he is playing…I had to narrow it down that he was playing Colossus. This could mean that he and Colossus won't have a big role in the series, which makes me sad.

So thats the dirty low down, hope you all enjoyed it.

Wolverine and the X-Men is a really engaging and addictive show and needs someone to take it up for at least a second season.

The premise is that Wolverine must gather the X-Men to correct what caused the downfall into endless war and suffering in the future after an explosion at the institute works really well as a framework for the overall story. Gradually the pieces are put back together and never feels dragged out.

Though Wolverine is the central character to the story we also get a well done character arcs for others like Emma Frost, Jean Grey and Cyclops which all serve the story to perfection.

Though the violence is toned down to make it suitable to younger viewers the writers didn't shy away from keeping the tone rather dark with thrilling action scenes told through smooth and slick animation. Some shots of different places in here look absolutely gorgeous.

And the voice acting is top-notch! Steve Blum does a pretty convincing impersonation of Cathal Dodd from the 90's series and Jim Ward is suitably suiting as Charles Xavier. There are cases of truly powerful acting especially from Nolan North as Cyclops which amazed me.

Wolverine and the X-Men is very underrated in my opinion, because despite its short running time it manages to get on par with the 90's series which many use as a tool for comparison like Batman: the Animated Series is to later incarnations. But this deserves a second season, because such a cliff-hanger ending is begging to get a second season.

A must watch for X-Men fans on par with the 90's series.