Past the Expiration Date: Beta

I know you thought we reached our apex of bad X-Men TAS episodes back when I covered Jubilee's Fairy Tale Theatre... and suddenly I wish I'd make a joke about Shelly Duvall in that one. Sigh. Life is always so much clearer in hindsight.  Alas. However, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Many people accuse it of being the outright worst entry in the series, but I would argue that it is simply the most remarkable of the bad episodes.

In "The Fifth Horseman," the show runners were probably blitzed and tosses together a bunch of elements from the comics that aren't strong enough to form their own distinct plots then merges them together in ways that don't make sense. The basic premise is that Beast is taking Jubilee on an educational trip to Latin America where they foil a plot to revive Apocalypse.

Before I continue, however, I feel like we need to ask ourselves an important question that will perhaps guide us through this experience: how does a writer adapt years and years of storylines and characterization into easily digestible 20 minute episodes? When adapting a comic like X-Men into mostly stand-alone episodes, you would think that the ethos would be to distill the essence of the story you're trying to tell into something that can be easily digested in a half-hour's viewing. "The Fifth Horseman" takes quite a different approach, as we shall see. 

After the opening credits, we are introduced Caliban, a former Morlock (not that he'd ever appeared in the series before now) and now a Horseman of Apocalypse. Instead of working with other Horsemen though he is working with Ahab's Hounds. The hounds are from one of the X-Men's many dark futures, Days of Future Past. They are mutants enslaved by humanity because their particular abilities make them ideal tracker/hunters for mutants. living outside of captivity. There is no reason to make these guys henchmen of Apocalypse except that their character designs are more or less uniform and less complicated than the actual Horsemen. 

Trick or Treat! Give me your soul!

Also, this just might be a matter of taste, but the less conventionally human a character in this series is, the more likely they will look like butt-ugly nightmare fuel with the budget cut animation of these last episodes. Caliban's face looks more like a kindergartener's "spooky" Halloween mask than a fully believable face, albeit even that of someone with a physical mutation. Of course having light up irises and blackened out whites of the eyes isn't helping on that front. 

The episode isn't even a full minute in and we can already see that the writers don't know how to adapt the material. Perhaps the writers had forgotten that the rest of the Horsemen were still on the proverbial chess board. Perhaps they knew the show's number was up and didn't want their character design for the Hounds to go to waste. Regardless of motive, the result is that this feels like a story cobbled together from the scraps of other stories. 

Recruited from the same leatherbar as Trollverine.

The Hounds themselves are pretty nondescript and in the future I probably won't be citing them much as individual characters, but just to prove I did the assignment... one is big and either hunchbacked or has muscles on his muscles on his muscles, making his head look lower than his neck. The other two are both dollar store knock offs of Green Lantern. The female uses hers to form energy boomerangs while the male (who has pretty decent mutton chops) uses an energy whip. I'll be shocked hereafter if I refer to any of them individually moving forward. They might as well all be joined at the hips for all the individuality they're given. 

They are tracking down a boy who is intended to be a sacrifice, but he manages to escape. Have I mentioned Caliban's primary ability is tracking? As in he can actually sense the presence of other mutants? He had one job...

They stole the set design from Yogurt's Temple in Spaceballs.

This comes as quite a setback to Caliban's master, Apocal-- Fabian Cortez?! Um, okay, yeah, Cortez, who is communicating with his beloved master Apocalypse who is now a floating extra-dimensional ghost head in an Incan temple. Yeah, again this episode is just throwing elements that have nothing to do with each other in. Of course, you could make the argument that the series was forever doing that with Mystique except for the fact that they were forever addressing the fact that her sense of allegiance was sticky to say the least. Instead, this just feels like the writers were playing X-Men Mad Libs and accidentally submitted it for production. Either that or they were limited to voice actors who they could afford on their newly limited budget and they were determined to fit Fabian Cortez into an Apocalypse story somehow. 

We then cut to the pre-Columbian temple that serves as villain HQ in this episode. Cortez and the Apoca-head exposit that they needed that mutant boy for a ritual sacrifice at a specific time (a Celestial alignment, natch). Cortez needs to find Apocalypse a new mutant, who has to be particularly powerful, in order to fit their needs. Oh, and Apoca-head gives a very threatening "don't fail me again" before he fades away. But what kind of threat can be given by an incorporeal head floating in an ether of nothingness? It's about on par with when a parent tells their kids to behave because Santa's watching. 

Worth all those Nobel Prize snubs over the years.

Elsewhere, Beast is parked outside a shop waiting for Jubilee to get some supplies for the their trip. It's one of those rare episodes in which in lieu of his usual blue X-briefs, he has opted to actually be fully dressed, decked out like he's going on safari. He's also wearing thick glasses in this episode so that they don't have to take the extra time to animate his eyes. Jubilee comes out of the shop with a box of groceries and I right away it becomes obvious that she is once again off-model. And I mean from the previous episode. This cheap animation studio cannot maintain a sense of consistency from episode to episode. Jubilee has purchased a little gift for Hank in the store: a "World's Best Teacher" mug. Oh, I'm sure that all the grocery stores in South America are always fully stocked with "World's Best Teacher" mugs. In English. Again, in the Peruvian Andes. 

This totally feeds into Cortez' pre-existing god complex.

Back at Club Cortez, Caliban returns empty handed. Just to demonstrate his rage, he uses his powers to remove the enhancements that apparently he gave Caliban, reducing him from a big, roided out behemoth into a wormy looking little green guy. Okay, backstory time. Cortez has the ability to supe up other characters existing powers. As I said, Caliban is a mutant tracker, so how they thought they could use Cortez to explain his big Horseman form is amusingly stupid. This is the sort of mental gymnastics that has to happen when a series kills off its biggest antagonist a season and a half before it goes off the air. Having proven his point, he restores Caliban and orders him to seek out another mutant powerful enough to house Apocalypse's essence. 

Meanwhile, Hank and Jubilee go from excellent adventure to bogus journey when due to a lack of a roadmap, Beast apparently loses the ability to see their surroundings (see what happens when they forget to animate your eyes?) and nearly drives their jeep off a cliff. They continue on foot and go immediately to a rope bridge across a waterfall. Okay, I guess we can Allan Quartermain/Indiana Jones/Scrooge McDuck to the list of things this episode is throwing at the wall to see what sticks. I love that in their line of work, they don't even question how strangely convenient to find a rope bridge literally right next to them. Between his book smarts and her street smarts, there is not one genre savvy bone betweeen them. 

Something about Jubilee's voice triggers Caliban's mutant detecting powers... and it also triggers some flashbacks of some much better animation of Jubilee. Although that seems to be for the audience's benefit (apparently the animators either thought we were stupid or saw it as 72 fewer frames to animate), as Caliban will later be shocked to discover who it is he has found. 

Despite being lost and clearly nowhere near what few cellphone towers existed in 1997, Beast is more focused on sussing out the origins of the temple. Despite having a lot of surface-level Incan indicators, upon closer inspection it's Mayan. He also has to dispel the notion in Jubilee's head that the Mayans were cannibalistic murderers. Sigh, the problem with having Jubilee being the only student-aged member of the cast is that she makes the education offered at Xavier's look incredibly under-achieving. 

Maybe that's why so many X-Men become part of the teaching staff. They don't have any real-world skills. In the comics, you see them teaching things like temporal mechanics, quantum biophysics, aerial combat, and outer space survival skills [sidebar, the Jean Grey School's courses are listed on www.Marvel.com/jeangreyschool. Kitty Pryde taught a course called "Ethics 101: Forgetting Everything You Ever Learned From Emma Frost, and it's probably my favorite of the lot. Meanwhile, Gambit teaching sex ed is undoubtedly, objectively the worst.]. Seriously, the only one who could survive a normal 9-5, is Iceman, who somehow ended up with a fairly "average Joe" degree in accounting. 

That little "the more you know" moment feels a little out of place, even when it's coming out of human text book Hank McCoy's lips. By that token the fact that Jubilee is familiar with ancient Meso American cultures at all sounds a bit suspect. Still, that little bit of info counts as the episode's educational lesson, such as it is. 

Beast's translation of a Mayan stele (because of course in addition to everything else he knows, we can add ancient Mayan) culminates in the realization that the temple was consecrated to Apocalypse, then as if on cue the Hounds attack. 

Yup. These guys are totally typical of modern Peru. 

Much to Caliban's chagrin, he recognizes his quarry as Jubilee, with whom we are inferred has a standing relationship. I'm just going to assume that they definitely played extended sessions of gin rummy or something off-screen somewhere whenever there was a Morlock episode. He saves her from falling down the waterfall after one of the Hounds breaks the rope bridge. This seems to be framed as altruism, but he's just keeping the new Apoca-bod from getting ruined. With Jubilee captured and Beast in tow, he leads our protagonists to the Temple of Apocalypse... or the other one, since they were apparently already at a Temple of Apocalypse.

Oh, and we scored the jackpot! Behold the Apocalypse cultists. I'm dying here. I love when Americans try and fail to respectfully depicts other cultures. Believe it or not, modern Peruvians do not dress like pre-Columbian Incans... not even pre-Columbian Incans with Apoca-lips.

CaveBeast gets hella shoulder pads. 

Cortez uses his powers on Beast to turn him into a hyped up feral version of his existing powers, causing him to grow much larger, bursting through his clothing... except for his shorts because Standards and Practices would not be cool with exposing young viewers to Dr. McCoy's big blue butt. Again, how do Cortez' abilities work? Somehow, making Beast even more apishly bestial involved making him grow big blue spikes along with back and forearms. Well, it was the 90's. Spikes were totally in vogue. 

This is chilling and it would be cool if cruel, impenetrable logic didn't have to keep rearing it's ugly head. Cortez' powers are to amp up a mutant's existing abilities, which in Hank McCoy's case don't include a funny feral temperament. Was Wolverine originally supposed to be in this episode? 'Cause that would have made a lot more sense. However, does imply that Apocalypse granted him this new power, granting the ability to turn people into roided up primitives seems pretty dubious. How would you control them? Why do the Hounds all look like they only got the muscle treatment? This makes no sense. Oh, and like I was saying about being able to control the primitives? Yeah, uberBeast just goes bounding off and Cortez couldn't give any fewer fucks. 

He is only too happy to retreat to the bowels of the temple where he can report to Apocalypse that everything has been fixed and collect his brownie points. Caliban interrupts the seance, which ticks Cortez off. He suggests that maybe he can find a different mutant to be Apocalypse's vessel, which only serves to aggravate him further and accuses Caliban of... well, from the tone it sounds like an accusation of betrayal, but the actual spoken text could easily be replaced with simply being accused of "being a decent person." In short, no. Caliban doesn't get a third go at recruiting a victim. 

Later that night, CaveBeast is leaping about until he arrives at their jeep. Even for an amped up Beast, it's fairly impressive that he managed to leap across that waterfall. And that's when I notice that even in ripped up khaki shorts, still he sports his x-belt buckle. Granted in the animated series, the X-belts/badges function as communicators, but they are a hemisphere away. My guess is that it's his security blanket. He totals the car, flipping it over and knocking out its contents, then finds a picture of the team, the new (and now-broken) World's Best Teacher mug, and a polaroid of him and Jubilee. Well that triggered something in his primal brain, so he bounds off into the night. 

I'm still not comfortable with the new animation's
obsession with giving Jubes cleavage.

The following day there are three planets (asteroids?) hovering in front of the sun, meaning the Celestial alignment is at hand and thus it is Apocalypse O'clock! The hounds bring forth Jubilee, who is now dressed in Mayan garb, including a feather headdress. And it dawns on me that this is the third episode in a row in which Jubilee ends up in a ridiculous outfit. Cortez conducts the ritual while Jubilee pleads to Caliban, reaching his better angels. Caliban pleads to take him in Jubilee's place, but Cortez scoffs at the notion, and makes some really racist remarks about Caliban being a Morlock. 

Because insulting your hired muscles' family right before
an critical event always goes well...

Did the writer not understand that Morlocks are just mutants who tend to have physical mutations or otherwise are denied passing privilege and have abjured mainstream society? Granted, elitism and sycophantic behavior sound like they'd go hand in hand with racism, but this really sounds like episode doesn't quite grasp what the Morlocks are. 

Well, badmouthing the Morlocks seems to be the straw that breaks the camels back and he strikes against Cortez, only to be subdued by the Hounds. Cortez disempowers Caliban, turning him back into the mousy little guy he truly is. This is yet another aspect of Cortez's newly revised power set in this episode that I don't buy in the episode. Ignoring the fact that I don't know how Apocalypse managed to subject him to his Celestial technology to grant him the new powers, I'm not buying this on/off switch kind of transformative power. On a physical level, there are questions to be asked about this ability to create the mass that is added to/subtracted from Caliban and the hounds when he transforms them. More to the point, I don't buy it in the story because it makes the story feel a bit too pat. If Caliban had been a series regular and this had been a story about his temptation, removing the gift would have basically been like his personal reset button for the next episode.

Floating around like Glinda the Good.

The temple starts to shake as Cortez preaches the glory of he who walks behind the rows Apocalypse. A green swirling portal appears with Apocalypse on the other side. Cortez offers him Jubilee, but just then we have an attack from a wild were-badger/CaveBeast. While they are busy contending with the big, spiky blue behemoth, Caliban uses the distraction to unstrap Jubilee from the sacrificial altar. Remember what I said about Cortez' powers acting as a reset button? Yeah, he resets Beast back to standard issue. Man, does this episode have absolutely zero consequences.  CaveBeast's entrance includes busting up all the pillars in the joint, which were apparently all weight-bearing. This causes the temple to cave in on itself, because in addition to copying off Temple of Doom this episode had to crib a little off of The Last Crusade. Everyone manages to escape except for Cortez. 

Here's Johnny!

Outside, Jubilee assuages Caliban's sense of guilt over having been a party to the events of the episode by reminding him that his better nature prevailed in the end, and convinces him to go with them back to New York. Of course, we'll never hear from or of Caliban again in the series, so a fat lot of no consequences on that front, either. 

This isn't sexual at all...

Back in the now caved-in temple, Cortez apologizes to his benefactor that he has no powerful mutant to offer up as his vessel, but Apocalypse is a glass half full guy, considering Cortez is pretty damn powerful in his own right. His essence enters Cortez (paging Dr. Freud) and instantly transforms into a fully incarnated Apocalypse. He stares directly into the "camera" and laughs menacingly as we fade to black. Oh, what portentous story arc does this presage? None. We neither see no hear from Apocalypse again for the duration of the series. Such a fucking waste. 

Worst "Oh-face" ever. 

As bad an episode as "Jubilee's Fairy Tale Theater" is, it's still amusing in it's failures. And it realizes that it's a light and fluffy palette cleanser of a diversion. "The Fifth Horseman" fails on a number of levels. It is a plot element loaf with characters from very disparate corners of the X-Men universe jury rigged together with very little rhyme or reason. It hinges upon a prior relationship that the show retcons into existence in order to propel Caliban's arc and thus the viewer has no reason to feel invested when the show comes across as making shit up on the fly. There is no investment in our antagonist either, since he is neither as nuanced as Magneto or Mystique, nor as imposing as Apocalypse himself, or as scene-chewingly delightful as Mr. Sinister. He's just some jerk. I think the greatest sin of all is that nothing that happens in this episode has any weight behind it. Jubilee's abduction, Caliban's compliance with evil, Beast's transformation, they all get resolved in under the span of 20 minutes, including opening and closing credits, without we the viewers learning anything new about our main characters and not enough about our focal character. The events just unfold and then then are never remarked upon again. Not even the the return of Apocalypse gets any follow up. 

When it comes down to brass tacks however, the quintessential failure of this episode is that if you remove the character names, it becomes apparent that this really isn't an X-Men story. It's a story out of a pulp dark fantasy/adventure story from the 1930's that had some X-Men force into it. Not that throwing these characters into something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, or HP Lovecraft can't work, but the story has nothing to do with them the mutant metaphor, or the X-Men's extended metaphor of found family and community. This isn't even their story on a narrative level. Jubilee gets damseled pretty damn quickly in this story and Beast is effectively a cave troll. This episode is about Caliban discovering his own sense of agency. But he's such a thinly characterized depiction of the Caliban from the comics that again, he could have easily been any character from the X-Men's past, let alone one who had to be retconned in because the writers forgot to include him in any of the previous Morlock episodes. 

This feels less like an episode of X-Men than it feels like proof that writers, voice actors, and animators earned a paycheck in between "Jubilee's Fairy Tale Theatre" and our next episode. And speaking of episodes that don't feel like X-Men stories, the next time I cover X-men TAS, I hope you like WWII era Captain America because Wolverine is having flashbacks in "Old Soldiers." Next week, however, we're headed back to the mean streets of Gotham as I continue covering Batman: Under the Red Hood.

Past the X-Piration Date: Alpha

Gather round, kiddies. Let me tell you of a time when the Avengers were just barely members of Marvel's third tier titles and the X-Men ruled the mother-f#%&ing world. In 1992, with two main X-Men titles and no fewer than four ongoing concurrent spin-off titles (nowadays, that is considered a very lean X-line, but back then it was massive), the X-Men summarily crushed any other comic book property that hoped to compete with them. And this hegemony over the known universe reached its zenith when the X-Men finally made their way into people's living rooms with X-Men The Animated Series.

Based around the cast of the then-newly launched "adjectiveless" X-Men volume 2, it subbed out Psylocke (for reasons that probably included racial/cultural iffiness and having a backstory that could actually be explained in a 23 minute runtime without a flow chart) for Storm and Jean Grey and it was the best damn thing! Filled with many different, interesting, compelling characters both as protagonists and antagonists, it presented young viewers with a show that mirrored the vexed sociological minefield of real life and actively combined blatantly progressive social attitudes with kicking all sorts of ass with powers that made you both a wonder and an outcast. Being a nerdy little gayboy who on some level already could tell he wasn't quite in step with those around him, I imprinted on the X-Men for life. Yes, they were the greatest thing ever.

That is until they weren't. About halfway through season 4 they had a four-part epic called "Beyond Good and Evil" that could have easily been a capstone to an excellent series. And yet it continued. Nothing else in season four ever managed to match that amazing high point. And probably against common wisdom, they continued on for one last season after that.

Now, to be fair, their final season starts out more or less well. However, after the first half of the season, the show started to plummet like a stone.  Of course, it probably didn't help that they started it off with a guest character and antagonist who very much demonstrate just how far the animators' reach surpassed their grasp: Warlock and the Phalanx.

The two-part story itself, "The Phalanx," is actually fairly challenging and intriguing for a young mind. It's a story in which the Phalanx (which narratively is a rough merging of the actual Phalanx and the Technarchy) goes about attempting to assimilate the entire earth. In the process, all the X-Men save for Beast is captured. He meets up with the renegade heir apparent of the Phalanx, Warlock, and together the two basically have a life-or-death roadtrip trying to stay one step ahead of the Phalanx and making some unlikely alliances along the way.

And we arrive at why this story fails just so damn hard. Warlock and the Phalanx are techno-organic life forms. Warlock has always been depicted as physically very fluid being, constantly shifting form from panel to panel. The various circuits and mechanical bits that comprise him always in motion. He's less of a solid being than he is a metamorphic creature willed into roughly anthropomorphic shape. Granted, this Warlock can shapeshift like his comic book counterpart does, but he only does it as necessary. Moreover, his standard humanoid form, is incredibly static. The Phalanx is slightly better, but that's mainly because as the villains they can do weird and creepy things, unlike our guest-protagonist Warlock.

In some odd ways, the Phalanx have affects that seem like the story adapters were fond of Star Trek's Borg and Changelings. At one point the Phalanx literally say "resistance is futile." Resistance to what, you might ask? Why resistance to joining the Phalanx collective by merging into the big blob of Phalanx. This is best illustrated with Warlock's lifemate, who was forcibly absorbed into the collective prior to the start of the story. For the record, Warlock's lifemate an invention of the cartoon and he is largely depicted as asexual... unless you count his mergings with Doug Ramsey... up until very recently in continuity, at least 30 years after his initial appearance.

The funny thing about his lifemate though is that as an individual Warlock's lifemate seems coded as traditionally female. I kind of want to point out the oddity that a race of basically living circuitry has a gender binary, except that I keep referring the Warlock as "he," so I guess I don't have a leg to stand on. Once absorbed into the Phalanx however her default form becomes something that I feel fairly certain must be referencing, but I have no idea what. It strikes me as one of those Easter eggs Marvel animators would put in for the savvy viewer, but your guess is as good as mine.

One last nugget before we move on to the rest of the season. Early in the episode, the Phalanx implant themselves in the form of Sabretooth, who allows himself to get captured. Wolverine goes down to the cells to confront his adversary and that's when you notice the colorists just giving up on trying to find where Wolverine's uniform ends and his face begins. Yeah. That goes all the way up to his lips. He swallowed the zipper.

In "A Deal With the Devil," the animation is still relatively okay, but you'll notice that Storm will generally either have her hair in a ponytail or in a submersible uniform. Yeah, this was a shortcut the animators used a lot toward the end of the season. Having her hair pulled back and less vibrant and luscious meant that the animators didn't need to worry about animating all those loose flowing locks. To be fair, though, the art is not why this episode sucks. For that, look no further than the fact that it's trying to make Omega Red happen. It's not going to happen, Marvel. Note that he is effectively a Cold War Era villain... who was first introduced in 1992. For any younglings out there, ask Dr. Internet when the Berlin Wall fell. Yeah, Omega Red isn't a compelling villain in his best moments, but he bears the additional sin of being a villain without a purpose. In a series where all of its heroes and villains all stand for something greater than themselves, he's obsolete from the starting gate.

Next is "No Mutant Is An Island." It was supposed to air during Season 3 between the two Phoenix arcs. However the animation was so bad that they backburnered it and it wasn't for another two years before they both had it fixed and had room in their schedule for it. It's... fine. It's not all that great an episode, but for the standards of X-Men TAS it is presentable. In this one, a grieving Cyclops quits the team and goes to the orphanage he grew up in for... reasons... and rescues four of its current residents when they are adopted by the Purple Man as part of a nefarious plot. Those four orphans are Taki Matsuya (technopath), Tabitha Smith (energy-based "timebomb" creation), Skids (personal force field), and Rusty Collins (pyrokinetic), all members of the short-lived X-Terminators, the latter three later joined the New Mutants, and Tabitha Smith even has been on various incarnations of X-Force. Of course, the animators sided with recognition rather than common sense. In 1996, they have Boom Boom dressed like she just got back from see Tiffany and/or Debbie Gibson live on tour (hint: she looks like the 80s incarnate). Meanwhile, Taki, who is not a superhero, apparently wears casual apparel that would do Flash Gordon or the Rocketeer proud.

So, hilariously, at one point Scott attempts to gain the young Rusty's trust by demonstrating his abilities. He shifts left to right to see if anyone's looking, then instead of doing something small like simply shooting at the ground nearby he fires off a huge blast at an abandoned building. That's the X-Men's master strategist for you. Instead of embracing discretion, he does something that not only must have drawn people's attention but also could have caused a building to collapse and potentially fall on both him and Rusty. Nice going, Cyke.

The Purple Man is an odd choice for a villain, considering this story is begging for Mr. Sinister and Purple Man has no ties to the X-books, as far as I'm aware.

Not much else to say except that Rusty's voice actor sounds ten, but the art makes him look like a 29-year-old with a bad middle-part haircut. Oh, and Taki's powers are referred to as his wheelchair transformation powers, which is so ridiculously amazing that it deserves an award for how hard it fails.

In Longshot... the X-Men help Longshot against Mojo and Spiral. If that sort of thing floats your boat, more power to you. I was bored. But then I started noticing something sounded wrong about Mojo's voice actor. I checked the episode's IMDB page (and it won't be the last time I felt compelled to do so), but it lists the same voice actor as his last appearance in "Mojovision." My only conclusion would be that whoever has been editing the sound, especially on the actors' recordings have changed equipment and can't replicate whatever effect they used in previous seasons. He kind of sounded like a maniacal Bobcat Goldthwait. How he just sounds like a Bobcat Goldthwait.

However, the animation in "Longshot" can not be faulted. It's actually some of the best in the season. In a series where the animation can in hindsight be a little clunky at times, they make Longshot look as effortlessly agile as luck would have it. Of course, if I were a kid watching this (I think I watched it, but Longshot doesn't really hold my attention), I would have been really confused by his demonstration of psychometry. They don't even explain it in the episode. He just does it while they are trying to rescue Jubilee and everyone just accepts that he is speaking with authority instead of asking how he knows this shit. Years later, Layla Miller would just know shit, but everyone will give her grief about the why of it all.

Moreover, there are Warwolves. Okay, they aren't the verbose very anthropomorphic Warwolves of Excalibur, but I appreciate such a late-in-the-series episode is willing to not only bring a weird-ass villain like Mojo back, work in a narrative around Longshot's rebellion, but then even throw in the Warwolves, whom for a first time viewer would just seem like weird, scary metallic wargs. Throw in more of the weird shit, X-Men. More, I say!

"Bloodlines" is all about Rogue and Nightcrawler. At first, I thought I'd be too biased by their inclusion in primary roles to have that much of an objective opinion. Or that's what I thought until I saw the Friends Of Humanity's version of the KKK grand wizard get-ups. Oh, god(s). Fox Kids, what were you thinking? You should have quit when you were ahead instead of trying to pull a fast one on Broadcast Standards and Practices.

What what what are you doing, Fox Kids?

Think of your life! Think of your choices!

Anyway, what we are watching here is a spin on X-Men Unlimited #4, in which the biological relationship between Graydon Creed, Nightcrawler, and Mystique is revealed. Just throw in a dollop of Wolverine having mutant passing privilege issues and a pinch of Jubilee's abandonment issues, having grown up in the foster system, and you more or less have the same story in the broad strokes. Wolverine takes out his resentment of trick-or-treaters by putting on a Beast mask and scaring them. I think it's oddly hypocritical of Logan for begrudging baseline humans for dressing as mutants on Halloween when he made a mask of one of his own friends who is explicitly deprived of the same passing privilege he enjoys. Sidenote: it appears that the kids he scares off are dressed as the original Daredevil, an extremely off-brand looking Spider-Man costume (maybe it's a clone saga variant I'm blissfully ignorant of), and freaking Devil Dinosaur. Oh yeah!

 Of course, as much as I like the fact that this is an episode centering on two of my favorite X-Men, while Rogue is pretty much peak Rogue, TAS Nightcrawler is the genesis of "boring Priest Nightcrawler." He's basically Ned Flanders with a tail. Mystique tries really hard to balance out Kurt's high-handed forgiveness at all costs approach by being boss AF, but even she succumbs to his charms. Even when he's all preachy and priest-y, I'd still fuck Kurt. Though, I'd refuse to do the missionary position so he'll have to go to confession or something.

Holiday greeting cards from Raven are probably very hostile.

Arguably, that was the last of the good episodes. The common wisdom is that it is only the last six issues, but the two-parter that precedes them is such a raging POS that it earns its place. Perhaps I'm being a little harsh on it, but I have issues with a story that does such short shrift to a character by placing them front and center. "Storm Front" as the name might suggest, is a Storm-centric episode in which she is acting wildly out of character from the top. In the first five minutes alone, she's panicky, unable to maintain her composure, and is easily subdued and kidnapped. Granted she seems to do it in a histrionic "no indoor voice" style, which in retrospect is at least her TAS defining trait.

The  It does play into one of Storm's long-standing tropes: the more exalted the villain, the more likely they're going to be into Storm. Our villain du jour is Arkon, ruler of the alternate dimension of Polemachus. Note that those names, transliterations and neologisms aside, translate to "Ruler" and "Warrior Land."

Come, my land has tyranny and all the loin cloths
you can ask for.

He's basically Space Conan. He was even created by Roy Thomas, who is most notable for writing Marvel's Conan comics. As such, he's arrayed in a furry loin cloth and boots that he probably skinned himself, but also a gold chestplate and silly crown that kind of looks Viking by way of the Aztecs, a purple cape, and belts both across the chest and the waist with then-futuristic gizmos and laser pistols holstered on them.

And like any self respecting noble antagonist/warrior space-king, he wants an exotic-looking beauty with Amazonian proportions to be his bride. No, really, in the comics just under the pen of Claremont alone she is sought after by Dr. Doom, Dracula, Loki, and extra-dimensional space-emperor Khan, so this guy is... I don't want to say she has a type, but she definitely attracts a certain type.

Anyway, the reason he kidnaps her is because his world's environment has turned against them and they are in need of a weather manipulator to save the day. Of course, if he'd simply come and asked, I'm sure a compassionate woman like Storm would have acquiesced, but I'm fairly certain there is some psychic whammy going on here. I mean, look at her face. They make a point of having a close up of her early in the episode just to highlight how blue her eyes normally are and then for reasons that defy logic they display... this. I mean, changing her physical features ever so slightly is great visual shorthand to communicate that something is awry, but she just looks wrong. The face... the Animated X-Men, even the women always felt like they were lovingly, laboriously carved into the page, but now Storm's face has been drained of definition, making her look listless and more than a little like a chubby baby.  And her eyes? Those are dead, lifeless eyes, utterly failing to convince the viewer of the illusion that the sequence of 24 frames per second is a living, breathing character.

The animation has eaten her soul.

So, as the first half ends, Storm, probably within hours of being forcibly kidnapped declares her unending love for Arkon and declares that she will remain in the alt.reality as Arkon's queen. As we pick up in the next episode, every one of her rescuer teammates seems fine with this. The only exception being Wolverine, who seems to be the only character that remembers that mental manipulation is an actual thing that happens on the regular in their world. Storm has gone native to show how happy she is here. Also, there's the "happy accident" of her hair being in a ponytail and thus easier to animate. Jubilee is fully supportive, in love with the idea of Storm being a queen, and quite honestly reminds me of the dynamic between Susan and Barbara in the classic Dr. Who story "The Aztecs." Beast and Cyclops fall mainly in the camp of "respecting Storm's decisions." This would be excellent behavior from teammates who have her back if it weren't so clearly she is not in her right mind. Instead, they look like shmucks.

It isn't until it becomes increasingly clear that Arkon his a cruel and sadistic authoritarian who punishes his people at the slightest of perceived slights that his romantic whammy starts to wear off Storm. His people are so downtrodden that they don't even get irises and pupils. Either that or the animators were cutting corners again. Wolvie, Beast and Cyke  team up with freedom fighters while in the palace Jubilee is still in supportive little sister mode as Storm vacillates back and forth on her feelings about Arkon. Good God Get A Grip, Girl!

Even with Arkon's thrall weakened, her face still looks wrong. And what the hell is Jubilee wearing on her head?! From the front, it's a tiara, but in profile, it might be Halloween cat ears. I've heard people describe animated Jubilee as kind of a merging of her and Kitty Pryde, but I never bought it until I noticed how quickly and how badly she took to playing dress-up here. But at least she does have the virtue of telling Jubilee the obvious "he's not worth it," and that's that. Storm puts her hair down, which is shorthand for being all better and she peaces out. End credits.

Remove her rain slicker and she'll find amazing new ways to
be a fashion victim.

Just for a sense of perspective, this is still before the quality goes completely to shit. These last six episodes were ordered last-minute and were not originally budgeted for. In order to cut costs, they were made by a much cheaper, lower quality animation house.

You can immediately tell that something is deeply, wrong even in the opening credits. The traditional opening that highlighting each member of the main cast has been replaced by a sequence of clips from prior episodes. The clip show is one of those television staples that a show has run out of time or money or both, but this wasn't necessary. It's not as though the opening sequence has to be reanimated every single episode. Thus, my theory is that this was an intentional warning from the showrunners that they cobbled together after seeing what they had to work with just to give viewers a hint of the shitshow that laid before them.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and any multitudinous designations that do not fit a gender binary, welcome to "Jubilee's Fairytale Theatre." This is one of the show's many attempts to try to directly retell one of the classic Claremont stories, "Kitty's Fairytale." The problem being that premise aside, these are nothing alike. "Kitty's Fairytale" is basically a fairytale retelling (told to Colossus' baby sister as a bedtime story) of the Dark Phoenix Saga with a happy ending and included heroic swashbuckling pirates (pirates were fairly on-trend in the 80s) as its protagonists, Jubilee's Fairytale Theatre is quite the different animal, as we shall see.

As this episode begins, you might be wondering, "did I turn on Captain Planet by mistake? And how did Gi get her hands on Jubilee's signature ray-bans (remember ray bans, you guys)?" But no, you're still in the right show... technically. Yeah, the animation is drastically different, but hey at least we have a silver lining of having the animation actually making Jubilee look like her appropriate racial background. So progress...(?). Also, she seems to have grown 8 inches overnight. Yeah, the original airdates between this and the previous episode were a week apart, so this had to have been jarring as fuck. I vaguely remember young seventh grade David watching this and wondering if I was taking crazy pills or something.

The new animators must have never been given any visual
references for Jubilee. 

The rest of the team has gone out on assignment including the Professor who had made a commitment to a local elementary school to show a local group of elementary students the cave formations beneath the estates. So, being that Xavier is a jerk with a penchant for childhood endangerment, he saddles Jubilee with his responsibilities. Aside from the fact that he left a  group of kids in the hands of a minor who tends to accidentally blow things up when she's upset, you also need to take into consideration that their parents signed permission slips with the understanding that they were entrusting their children in the hands of mature adults... mature adults who have Act 33 clearances and experience leading tourists through potentially dangerous environments, such as treacherous caves that just happen to turn out to be seismically active. In Upstate New York. Just go with it everybody.

Jubilee is less than pleased to be here, naturally, so she's reading fairly listlessly from a guide book. Somehow, an earthquake happens in New York. I'm just going to let it pass because they needed some sort of contrivance why Jubilee of all people would be both trusted with children and willing to BS a fairy tale on the fly. If you need an example of how this episode dates itself, note the tone of wonder one of her young charges has at the sight of the cutting edge beeper she uses to contact her teammates.

Were these kids were bused in from Stepford, Conn.?

Jubilee manages to completely hide the fact that they've been caved in from them by suggesting that the kids all sit in a circle. And oh my god do these kids not exist in any feasible reality. They're just all so twee. There are the girls that immediately ask if there will be handsome princes and true love in the story only to be countered by boys who say "True love? Yuck." Oh and the boys are twins, so of course, they say it in unison. And I owe an apology to Storm's animator in the last episode. I thought her eyes were dead and lifeless. And then I watched "Jubilee's Fairytale Theater" and it totally reset the bell curve.

I've seen more effort in PowerPoint Documents. 

Jubilee's story has some pretty lazy exposition. Story book pages with cheap sparkly transitions that I could probably whip up after a five minute tutorial with Windows Movie Maker. It sets up Scott and Jean and the good prince and princess... who will have little bearing on the plot, the macguffin of the story is the MacTaggart crystal, and our villain is the unfathomably evil wizard Magnus the Malevolent. Yeah, Jubilee seems to be forgetting all the times Magneto has allied with the X-Men or at least been on uneasy truce terms with them, which I think actually outweighed his outright antagonistic appearances by the end of the series.
So we leave bad transition land and enter into a generic road in a forest. There we find that

The best mullet in all the Seven Kingdoms

Gambit is playing a rogue whose metal bo staff gives him +2 sexterity. He flees from metal suit henchmen with Magneto helmets for heads and could have been repurposed henchmen from the Felix the Cat movie. He happens upon some kindly peasants who resemble Longshot, and her adoptive parents who haven't been seen since "Night o the Sentinels." Something tells me a kid would need a keen eye to pick up on Longshot here, though how many four-fingered blonde mulleted characters could there possibly be? And it's only because I sat through multiple viewings that I'm about 75% positive about the other two being the foster parents. I'm guessing since we're plumbing Jubilee's subconscious in this story, it is only reasonable that guys she has recently crushed on and people who have treated her as family should work their way into the narrative.

Magneto's off-brand Doombots

The kindly NPC's attempt to hide Remy under the hay in their wagon but the "Clankers" catch up with them. At that moment, what should happen buytthey are rescued by a messianic hero that the Clankers think is a myth peasants tell themselves. And so we meet Jubilee's author avatar/Mary Sue character. She's the best of the best without any real struggle, instead of low level fireworks, her powers are treated like potent lightning bolts, and say, is it just my imagination or does she have hella large breasts that she doesn't have in real life? Well, I guess that's what middle-aged straight white men in a writers' room think a 15-year-old would include in an idealized version of herself. Of course, maybe it's just my imagination. I would go back and double check, but examining the cleavage of an underage girl in a children's cartoon sounds like a sketchy way to spend your free time.

Her greatest magical treasure is her wonderbra

She's so invested in making her self-insert character an unrepentant 90's hero protagonist that she speaks in nothing but quips (whether they are clever is up for debate) while she fights and even has her own lame catchphrase: "Getting out of tight places is what I do." Undoubtedly, it's intended to be Jubes' kinder, gentler version of Wolverine's catchphrase. Also, she seems to be an elf. I'm wondering if the writers were intentionally poking fun at fanfic writers in this episode. Or maybe they actually bought someone's fanfic just to save time.

Being a fanfic protagonist, she is the best, most perfect Jubilee elf playing as ranger that ever was and single-handedly takes down all the villainous clankers. Then the party is joined by Trollverine. And oh my god(s) this is amaztupid. He's green from head to toe, has tusks, wears tattered shreds of his usual attire rendered into a kilt, hood, and harness, which makes me think he's a submissive at Ye Olde Leather Bar, and has broken shackles on his wrists like my old My Pet Monster doll. It's fairly remarkable. Additionally, he speaks with an odd sort of lisp that makes him sound like a congested Bessie Higgenbottom. The stuffed up nose might be due to the giant ring pierced through his septum. Oh, and he's Jubilee's sidekick.

His day job is cage dancer at the popular troll bar, The Tannery.

Just for reference, this is his analogue in Kitty's fairy tale.

So it turns out Gambit is relevant to the plot because he was hired by the bad guy to steal half of the macguffin (it's kind of a triforce deal, so whoever gets both half is all powerful yadda yadda), but he hid it instead. Jubilee clearly knows what's what because not only is her story version of Gambit morally ambiguous and self-serving at best, but he's also a creeper, hitting on Jubilee as he offers to show her where he hid the crystal. Yeah, Jubilee is 15 in this series. Gambit: total creeper, habitual liar, AND a pedo. Yeah, if you're going to read my X-related posts, just accept and embrace the fact that I think Gambit is the worst of the traditionally accepted X-Men.

He leads Jubilee and Trollverine (he's called "Logan" in the story, but I'm sticking with my wording) to a poor man's cave of wonders-- no really, it's a cavern laden with treasures that has not one but two entries that resemble giant heads and I think the only reason they don't resemble tiger heads is to avoid a "cease and desist" letter from Disney -- where Jubilee immediately gets distracted by a gem encrusted diadem.

The Poor Man's Cave of Wonders has not one, but two
security check-points.

And oh my gods Sabretooth! I have no words! None. He looks like one of Sid's Frankenstein'd action figures in Toy Story. Creed's head was ripped off his action figure and stapled onto Grizzlor's, from Masters of the Universe. Just bask in the glow of this ridiculousness for a moment, everybody.

The head transplant was a success... after a fashion

Back in reality, even with with application of shaky cam, these kids still have no idea that they are in any kind of danger. These kids are a special kind of stupid. Is this what the story writers thought of children? If you were the target age demo when this aired, you should take it as an indictment. The area is destabilizing and Jubilee convinces the kids to go for a little walk up not an incline, but a fairly professionally installed-looking set of stairs in the cave just in time for an underground river to burst through the rocks and flood the area they were just in. The just left the chamber when the water rushes in. Believe it or not, showrunners, kids notice shit. And they're really good at picking up on things when adults don't want them to notice.

After the commercial break, Jubilee has led the kids into a dead end, but goes back and blasts some rocks down from overhead in order to stopper off the water level. I'm just not going to address the fact that she could have quite easily have accidentally caused the entire cavern ceiling to collapse on her and the children because the episode relies so heavily on Jubilee's fanfic insert character playing in god mode that we can only assume the writers were writing the actual Jubilee that way too.

The kids ask her to resume her paint by numbers fantasy story. Even if this hadn't been prior to the era of smart phones and portable devices, the kids wouldn't be getting reception down there and would simply be incapable of amusing themselves without external stimulation, since we've raised a generation of children who have had iPads instead learning to amuse themselves during long car rides, camping trips, etc. They'd be as desperate for something, anything to hold their attention that this stupid story is a point of focus.

After another cheap looking storybook page to remind us what was happening before the commercial break, we find ourselves back in the ye old Money Bin where we last saw Jubilee and company being confronted by a yeti wearing a Sabretooth mask. Jubilee singlehandedly takes him down with all the pathos of Sonic the Hedgehog and they get the hell out of dodge before his backup dancers, more of Magnus' Clankers (btw, they're animated suits of armor, which makes me really want to watch Bedknobs and Broomsticks now) can do much other than levy some threats.

Having made it out of the cave with their half of MacTaggart crystal, Jubilee's party is joined by the floating disembodied head of Oz the Great and Powerful  Jambi  Xavier the All-Knowing. He announces that Jubilee is the chosen one destined to save them all. Ye gods, for such a departure from the original "Kitty's Fairytale," this episode is utterly devoid of original ideas. Then Xavier just disappears. Yeah, his inclusion in the narrative felt organic and motivated.

Meka leka hi meka hiney ho!

Anyway, the gang walks off-screen to actively fulfill Xavier's prophesy, then a rat scurries down and transforms into a mage and tells nobody in particular that he's off to inform his master of what he has heard. I think this is supposed to be Morph's analogue. I tried to figure it out on IMDB based on the episode's voice cast, but only four actors are credited in this episode. I guess it was either remove their names or let everyone list themselves as Alan Smithee.

The heroes break into Magnus' palace and find their way to Magnus' half of the crystal just in time for Magnus to shut them down. Magneto as a LARP sorcerer is a revelation. I kind of want to cosplay as this. No, really, I'm actually being serious. Most of the character designs go so hard for fanciful that they overshoot their target and land on silly, but Magnus' design is such a fantastic blend of things that seem like they should feel ridiculous that they work incredibly well together. The drape and flow of his cape is amazing, especially when he's in flight. His arch cowl brings to mind a lot of 80's high fantasy, his large grometed pauldrons are simply perfect. He's got pointed wizard shoes, guys! Plus look at that visage. Even just from the neck up, he's a wonder to behold. He's got long 80's metal band power hair, a goatee of evil, and they even worked the stylized horseshoe "hood ornament" of Magneto's helmet into his circle- crown. Let's face it, gentle readers-- I have a strong contender for my next Halloween costume.

Magneto's got swag.

Magnus takes both halves of the crystal, and fail fail fail. Okay, animators. Did you guys even read the script? These are supposed to be two halves of one precious stone. The script even goes so far as to refer to them as shards. And yet these are clearly two discrete precious stones, identical gems both of which processed into a baguette cut. Gem cutting wasn't even a thing that could be accomplished until the 18th Century, by the way.

Magneto loves man handling his stones

He only uses his Clankers to restrain Jubilee however because he needs her to enact his plan. Jubilee is the key to unlocking the power of the crystal and he threatens the life of her stalwart trollfriend in order to ensure her compliance, ensnaring him it what I think it supposed to be giant amoeba made of quicksilver that seems to want to strangle him. I feel like this specific is a plot point gets reused in the third act a lot of kids' animated adventures, but my mind immediately goes to the Care Bears Nutcracker. Yeah, I'm plumbing the depths of things I'm willing to admit I've watched enough to be able to cite them. So Jubilee basically uses her fireworks to power the crystal, delivering unto our villain his ultimate objective.  Now Magnus has no further need of his henchmen, he blows them to pieces. Yeah, it seems like we're supposed to read that as his cruelty, but they were suits of armor his own will was animating. It's like pulling your arm out of a hand puppet and expecting to be treated like he disemboweled someone.

He refuses to uphold his side of the bargain to free Trollverine, so she unleashes her powers on him at full voltage. He taunts her, declaring that she's only making her stronger, but it seems that was the idea. She has turned his suit into an electric magnet, drawing anything metal, even if it's bolted to the wall. Nuts, bolts, discarded armor, torch sconces, etc fling themselves at him, knocking him to the ground. I guess we're playing by "king of the mountain" rules because him falling on his ass is good enough for a conclusion.

We cut back to reality where apparently Jubilee used her actual fireworks to get the kids out of the cave (is the Xavier School open about their mutant status in TAS's version of continuity?). Cyke, Gambit, and Wolvie are there to meet them in their civvies. And for some reason it was determined that Gambit's idea of what to wear at a plain clothes rescue/excavation mission is strikingly similar to what he wears out on date night. Although considering Cyke is dressed for a night with his bowling league, maybe we can assume that they both would rather be somewhere else. Also, just in case you've gotten used to the cheaper quality of the animation, Logan, Remy, and Scott are here to remind you. The rest of the story looks positively photo-realistic compared to how they're rendered here. There is no effort beyond what is minimal. They didn't even draw in the blacks of Gambit's eyes. Maybe the animator was a "Third Summers Brother Gambit" truther and wanted them to have matching eyes. Regardless, this is how I'd expect to see them drawn in a tie-in activity book or maybe even on the back of a Burger King Kid's Club box, but not in something that a director/editor/showrunner/producer to look at and say, "yes, this is fit for public consumption.

Unfinished art that accidentally made it to broadcast

Somehow, despite being provided any visual aids or any reason to associate her story with reality, one of the kids identifies Wolverine as "Logan the Troll." I'm assuming Wolverine just let it roll off his back, but what the hell is that kid's problem? You just don't go around calling people you've just met trolls... I mean, unless you're dealing with an asshat on an internet forum.

With the kids waiting for their bus at the steps of the X-Mansion, Jean Grey seems surprised (disappointed?) that the kids don't seem to have mental states that reflect intense trauma. Jean Grey is a glass half empty kind of person. Wouldn't you be if you were stuck with Scott when you could be out consuming the cosmos?

The kids ask Jubilee to finish her story. Note that she completely skips over the actual end of the climax she was working on earlier. We just skip to the afterparty at the castle. Apparently a very shrill-voiced Jean is all a'twitter at the prospect of making Jubilee a princess and playing Julie Andrews to Jubilee's Anne Hathaway. As shrill as Queen Jean is, King Scott is so droningly bland that I'm fairly certain this is meta-commentary. Ye gods, what the hell is wrong with Scott's face? Where is his upper lip?! Is it hiding in his big ugly turban?

Is there no low point in the Uncanny Valley?

Jubilee slips out, stepping out of the gown she had been wearing with her elfin costume underneath it and runs off to have adventures with her buddies as we transition back to reality to see the vermin children driving off in their bus, eager to come again to hear another story. Really, kids? It didn't even qualify as "okay." Maybe they're all life model decoys of real kids who've been programmed to be impressed  by anything. Jean and the Professor, meanwhile are pleased with Jubilee's ability to manage a crisis singlehandedly, but probably nowhere near as much as Jubilee is pleased with herself.

Guys, this has been a lot of fun, but this article is massive and we still have five more incredibly badly animated episodes to go. I'm afraid we'll have to finish up this journey into facepalms another time.

Come back in two weeks for the next issue of "Batman : Under the Red Hood."

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed

So, now that Crisis on Infinite Earths is out of the way, I suppose I'm probably morally obligated to finish up this arc of Uncanny Avengers, right? Sigh. I guess I brought this upon myself.

Well, the cover is a pretty fun switch up of a classic X-Men attack. I appreciate that it's on prominent display here. Despite Uncanny Avengers being the "Avengers/X-Men mashup" series, it has gradually reduced the presence of X-Members so that Rogue is only on this team to justify it. Despite long ties to the X-Books, Deadpool isn't an X-Man, let alone a mutant, and Cable is better known for being a solo hero or leading very fringe X-teams than he's known for being an X-Man proper, so seeing Rogue and Deadpool take on Colossus and Wolverine's respective roles for a Fastball special is a pleasure to see. Also, kudos to Stegman for playing to his strengths-- not a close-up of an unmasked face in sight.

A brief sidenote: Apparently, Marvel packages this arc into a trade under the name "Future Lost." Quite honestly, I think it was a grievous error on their part and I will continue referring to it as "Plant Apocalypse" and will accept no substitute.

If you'll remember the latter half of last issue, just after Quicksilver ran off to get an antidote to Human Torch, who is slumming with an MIT think tank, the Shredded Man used his toxins to KO most of the team except for Synapse, who is immune, and Cable, who took his vitamins. Cable sticks around to inoculate the rest of the team and sent Synapse out to confront the villain solo only to discover that he is in fact her own grandfather.

This issue starts off reminding us of last issue's newly revealed familial relationship between our rookie and our villain by cutting back to the prologue from the first issue of the arc. This is unnecessary. Marvel has been employing a recap page across the line for years. It's just the latter half of the scene where Shredded Man wakes up, but this time we see that it was Synapse in the other terrigen chrysalis. It really is a little pointless to the narrative. We learn absolutely nothing new about the characters in this scene nor does it help progress the narrative already in progress. They do cut to yet another chrysalis in the household and establish that there is yet another Inhuman in the family. Perhaps you could argue that this scene sets up story elements for a later arc, maybe, but I'd be quick to shoot that defense down. There is no drive, no dramatic question to this scene that the plot hook, which ought to be handled with a bit of subtlety feels more like a Hidden Pictures game in Highlights for Kids after someone already has circled the fish in the tree.

I am going to be so surprised when that brick the writers threw at us finally lands.

Duggan, do you mind if I call you Duggan? Good. Duggan, I know you're far more used to writing for Deadpool, and perhaps that explains why you've embraced this "sledgehammer to the head" approach to long game storytelling, but might I advise you remember that as a storyteller in a serialized format, as a dramatist, you need a far more deft hand in the writing stage. Make a scene that is utterly essential to the narrative before trying to be clever.

Okay, for a story that is just so "meh," I've already had a rant and we're only on page one. That doesn't bode well...

We transition to the present, where Synapse tries to hearken to her grandfather's better nature, but he doesn't see eye to eye. Apparently, that's enough to get Synapse from being very blubbery to being action girl because she's tired of people yelling at her today. She takes a swing at Shredded Man, but we cut away before we see if she manages to land the punch.

Yelling is all it takes to break the ties that bond.

Elsewhere, Cable has the rest of the team up and running again. Rogue and Deadpool perform a fastball special. Say whatever else you want about this comic, but you cannot say they failed to deliver what the cover promised us. Of course, this should be a big finisher attack, but it's being used to kill one of the many, many plant monsters that it feels more ostentatious than effective. Points for the nostalgia factor.

Oddball Special: Patent pending.

Deadpool calls out to Quicksilver, presumably they're on an intercom or Quicksilver is omniscient, and asks if the speedster can swing by his armory for some ammo. Instead, Quicksilver materializes with a guns as well as a local shop owner in tow. Apparently, in that nanosecond Quicksilver had time for a conversation with a gun-owner who is not a speedster, in which he insisted on coming along, then ferry the gun shop owner over to the battlefield. Ignoring the fact that this puts a civilian at gross risk when clearly there was the far more viable option of going to Deadpool's armory like he asked, it is also is an example of the writers not telling a story in which the mechanics of their heroes make any sense. Granted, this is a superhero comic in a shared universe with 60+ years of history. Inconsistencies are bound to happen. But there is a difference between inconsistencies in power levels and baseline humans being able to able to apparently mimic their abilities for no reason.

A Plant Apocalypse is not enough to deter fanboys.

Oh, wait. There is a reason. The guy is a Deadpool fan. I'm a little annoyed that Duggan felt the need to break the physical laws of its characters in order to support a... you know, I'm not even entirely certain that I'd call it a joke, but Duggan sure seems to think so. It's probably fair to point out that Duggan is one of the two current regular writers on Deadpool's eponymous book, so perhaps he got a little confused about which book he was working on.

Back at MIT, Quicksilver has returned to see about the cure that Johnny Storm's think tank has been cooking up and again I find myself asking why is Johnny Storm there? I'll give him props for having the idea to outsource the science portion of Marvel superheroism, but what purpose does he serve staying there? He has fire powers! Anybody who has played the starter battle of any Pokemon game can tell you that grass types are weak to fire. Either he is A. a world class slacker, B. an idiot, or C. the writers need a reason for this story to last the length of an average trade paperback.

Stand aside Emma. Pietro is the
OG Jerk Hero.

I will give Johnny Storm this, however: as Quicksilver speeds away, he gives a quick little monologue that gives me all the feels about our resident speedypants. Quicksilver is one of my favorites because he falls into one of my favorite paradigms: the jerk hero. He's smug, he doesn't play well with others, he's had a few turns as a reluctant and/or conflicted villain, but he has a lot of heart, is fiercely protective of his loved ones and tries to do what he thinks is right... even if that means convincing his sister into overwriting reality. Okay, nobody's perfect.


I am only now noticing how Stegman draws Pietro's super speed and honestly, it doesn't look quite right. I think he was aiming for a creative new approach to motion lines, but the actual result creates the impression that he has sprung tentacles from his back. It's not a dealbreaker, but it is certainly a bird that wasn't meant to fly.

Back in Boston, Cable suddenly gets a psychic vision of Synapse snapping her grandfather's neck. Oh, yeah. Two volumes of X-Force ago, Cable mysteriously gained a new ability in the form of precognition. About four years of publication later, I still don't know what is causing these insights, so I'll continue to assume it was the plot convenience fairy. Anyway, Cable's time traveler insight into the future lets him know that his precognitive insight in the future is bad, so he rushes off to stop Synapse from committing grand-patricide.

Before Synapse can snap her grandfather's plant neck (which I'm fairly certain wouldn't have killed him with his far more arboreal physiology), Cable leaps forth and knocks her away, warning that killing Shredded Man will ensure that the crisis doesn't end. As he breaks up them up, he overhears the part of the conversation that they are in fact related.

A strategically calculated dick move?
Why you are Scott Summers kid, after all!

Cable confronts our villain himself. Apparently, Shredded Man has read the villain's handbook because he expects Cable to announce that his plan will fail. However, since Cable is here specifically because his plan succeeded, he instead describes his process for developing a cure. In the process, he formed a sister strain of the original virus that removes the immunity to Inhumans. Shredded Man says he's prepared to die, but instead Cable shoots Synapse.

Um, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Cable by any stretch of the imagination, but that is coldblooded. He hears them mention they're related, asks for clarification to make sure he hadn't misheard (which actually detracts from the badassitude of this scene), then two minutes later, he shoots one of his comrades-in-arms point blank. You're a sick bastard, Dayspring!

Synapse twitches about on the floor as her grandfather's pestilence courses through her body. Still she manages to sputter out a patented guilt trip. And this is what causes her grandfather to realize he in fact still has the milk of (in)human kindness coursing through his planty veins. It's like the ending of Care Bears movie. He relents and all his plant apocalypse vanishes away. Yes, our crisis is wrapped up that neatly. It's about on par with breaking a spell with true love's kiss. The terrain completely returns to normal and Synapse (and presumably all his other victims) are cured.

Funny. Guerrero doesn't sound like a Jewish family name.

Synapse reaches out to her grandfather, offering to help him find a cure for what he has become, but he declares that when he "wiped the slate clean," he undid all that he had done, including his own body, which dissembles itself in front of her, saying he can make more. So, what that tells me is that it probably wasn't even the genuine article they were facing. He was just some plant golem. That feels so less impressive when it isn't a Doombot.

"You captured their stunt doubles!"

So that was our big climax, everybody. Such as it is. Oh, yeah. I know you hardly noticed it as this story didn't peak so much as it consistently fizzled from about the halfway point onwards. It's hard to tell when the tension is rising when all you have to decipher is a steady stream of "mehhhhhhhhhh."

Now, I'm all for an emotional climax as opposed to a big, punchy kick-kick battle, but this is not earned. Our creative team waits until the final page of the penultimate installation of the story to reveal a familial relationship between our antagonist and our team rookie, neither of whom, I might have had enough characterization done in order to make us feel invested in this revelation. All we really know is the former is a genocidal maniac and the latter feels very cagey about being on a team of superheroes. That's all we know going into this revelation.

I can't even care what this means for them as people, let alone what this means for the story. And yet Duggan hinges the end of the narrative on this.

Mind you, this could have worked. There were three issues leading up to this revelation. Three issues in which we could have taken a few minutes here or there in which to get into Synapse's head or even have another character ask her something personal. She was even on a date with one of her teammates, for crying out loud. But no. The creative team concluded that any time spent setting their characters up so that this wouldn't have felt like a forced plot twist was better served by killing Quicksilver only to bring him back immediately at the start of the next issue and giving Cable not one but two painfully drawn out introductions. This issue could have have a strong emotional impact on its own, but the creative team sabotaged itself by making the two middle chapters of their narrative extremely unfocused, with the third issue being mostly a waste. It takes the wind out the sails of  what honestly could have been a decent conclusion.

Well, let's wrap up this narrative.

As the team gathers around what was once the Shredded Man (or his plant golem), Synapse asks Cable to keep her secret, but doesn't know if he can. But he tries. Keep in mind, Cable isn't terrible by nature. He's just occupationally terrible.

Good guy Cable: he shoots you in the face but keeps your secrets.

Later, we cut to the rooftop where Captain Rogers has landed the helicopter on their base of operations. A helicopter? Yeah, it's kind of weird that the Avengers are flying around in anything besides a quinjet, but I think Iron Man lost his vast wealth over the eight month gap, so I guess that means a helicopter is their way of downsizing.

Rogers is once again refusing to accept Deadpool's letter of resignation, presumably because he's running out of team members with ongoing solo titles and he needs some way of keeping circulation of this book up with the the other three (minimum) Avengers titles.

Cable and Captain Rogers have a grizzled staring contest
and the rest of the world shudders in terror.

Synapse approaches him, looking pretty sheepish, asking to talk to him about something. Rogers kind of charmingly shoots her down, saying he doesn't have time to coddle her and Deadpool. Yeah, old Cap doesn't have the time for handholding that he'd normally have. Oh, well.

Rogers recruits Cable by telling him that the Unity Squad's secret mission is to find Red Skull and retrieve Xavier's brain. They stare at each other in a panel in which Stegman perfects his talent for making grizzled elderly men look horrifying.

The final splash of their story gives you the impression that this was a "getting the band together" story. You see the whole lineup together albeit, for some reason most of the team seems to be headed towards the rooftop door, but Johnny and Pietro have assumed lifeless stock poses. Again, Stegman should be drawing action figures for a living. Also, this wasn't a "getting the band together" story. This was a "getting Cable to front our shitty band" story. On top of that, two of the team members were markedly absentee throughout the entire story. Rogers and Johnny have not been through this adventure. They weren't part of this supposed story about them coming together as a team. They just fill up the ranks. You could argue that at least Johnny was contributing, even if it was a misuse of his talents, but all Steve Rogers, Mister huge shredded octogenarian, did in this story was drive the freaking chopper.

Is it just me or do they all look embarrassed to be here...
...except Deadpool?

So did he just melt off Ultron's face to
prove a point?

Epilogue. Yes, this monumental epic warranted an epilogue. In the far reaches of space, a crew of a space vessel that all look like they are dressed like locomotive engineers have just been rescued... from something. By whom is revealed as their airlock opens and we see the telltale lights of Ultron's faceplate. As their savior steps inside the headpiece melts away to reveal Hank Pym. Yeah, I thought he was dead. Guess not. I'm a little surprised though. Usually A-Listers have the self-respect to wait at least two years to come back from the great beyond. And I'm guessing he's made a version of Ultron (or retrofitted a previous version of Ultron) to be be a space suit.
I am just shaking my head. Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of fusing these disparate parts of the Marvel Universe that don't exactly work together. As much as I hated the Remender run for making everyone overly dark and uncharacteristically confrontational with one another, at least I felt like the characters were in the hands of someone who had a grasp on what he wanted to do with them. I feel like Duggan and Stegman were handed this assignment a week before the deadline and were told to do whatever. And that's the only word I use to describe how I feel about this arc: whatever. It isn't incredible, nor is it utterly loathsome. It's filler. Make me love you or make me hate you, but make me feel nothing and that's how you fail as a form of art/storytelling.

Next week, I'm taking a trip on the cinematic way-back machine as I watch one of the most important superhero-inspired films of this or any other generation, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.