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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Reviewcaps: X-Men Evolution: Strategy X

I take my first look at X-Men Evolution the second and less famous, but no less loved, cartoon about everyones faviorite mutant outcasts. In our first episode Scott blows up a gas station, Nightcrawler finds what it feels like to have a home, Toad tries to join the x-men and both of the latter two end up nearly dying because Chuck forgot to teleport proof the one room in the house with deadly lasers. All this and football under the cut.

A few days ago I realized something weird: I hadn’t reviewed any superhero cartoons on here. What makes that weird to me, is that I realized when writing this that Superhero cartoons are what MADE me a superhero fan in the first place. I grew up as a little kid watching the spider-man and x-men animated series, and watched most marvel shows that came about as I grew, and became a lifelong fan of Green Lantern and the Flash thanks to Justice League , the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thanks to the 2003 cartoon (another franchise I absolutley adore I haven’t covered on here for some reason) and the Teen Titans thanks to well.. Teen Titans, not to mention all the great original superhero shows at the time like the legendary Danny Phantom (even if butch heartman can take a short walk into a cave full of bears lately), My Life as a Teenage Robot, El Tigre.. the list of good shit goes on. So being on an X-Men kick again lately, I decided to revisit what turned out to be one of the first of this wave, and a show I’d had the opporoutnity to binge for a while , first on hulu and then on D+, and wanted to revisit to see how it holds up, while, if not as fast as I watch them, reviewing them here to combine my two intrests. And it probably wont’ be the last marvel animated series I binge or cover here, nor the last superhero show I cover so if you have any, Marvel, DC, from other companies or completely original, shoot me an ask or reply to this and i’ll see if I can get to it. For now we’re starting the evolution. Evolution was the first X-Men cartoon, and somehow one of 5 overall not counting the hulk vs wolverine movie, pryde of the x-men pilot and various crossover apperances in other cartoons, to follow the 90′s one, which as you probably know was a huge hit that defined the x-men for a generation of young fans, was a huge sucess and launched the mostly great sorta shared cartoon universe with classics like Spider-Man the Animated Series (Which not concidentally is what made me a lifelong fan of the webslinger), The Incredible Hulk, and the second season of Iron Man and Fantastic Four.. and yes only the second as the first seasons were both by entirely diffrent creative teams and gave us things like this.

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Yes that is Johnny Storm doing an objetivley terrible hip hop song, no it dind’t cause that building to sink into the earth, and yes it is so bad it’s delcioius. Sadly the rest of hte series is more flat and boring than “bwahahahaha” but my point is made. The point is Evolution had a steep hill to climb, and with the previous cartoon compressing most of the decades long Chris Claremont era and some of what came after into 5 seasons of good if cheesy stuff, the creators clearly, if only because Ic an’t find a making of, decided to go in a diffrent route, making their own unique take on the characters and world of the x-men instead. For starters rather than being vetrans with years of experince, either from being an x-man or just from general life experince like the comics were since the 70′s aside from the ocasinal exception like Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, they’d be teens, grappling with hormones alongside blue fur, head lasers and not being able to touch anyone. This wasn’t something x-men had shied away from, New Mutants and Generation X existed, but it was the first time in decades the X-Men themselves were kids. Sure Storm and Wolverine weren’t aged down, but there were just as many missions that were just these teenagers hoping to surivive the experince and keep mutants a secret till the world was ready.. and then dealing with the fallout when an unready and hateful world found out anyway. And I honeslty like the direction: The previous series had done the mostly straight adaptation bit, there wasn’t anywhere to go and aging scott and jean back to teens, and having nightcrawler and rouge get to be ones for the first time though, was an intresting idea, as was having Kitty Pryde be a teen alongside them instead of their plucky teenage member Another intresting direction was, while Xavier’s still existed and was where the cast lived and learned to use their powers, the X-Men also went to regular high school. While it’d take till season 3 for them to actually have to deal with being out mutants in the setting, it was still an intresting tactic: The X-school in the comics, while no less studious is still an isoalted boarding school and when the New Mutants met some friends in town, most had only heard whispers about the old Xavier Mansion and were delighted to visit for a slumber party.. granted this being an x-men schindig our heroes ended up having to deal with an alien who eventually became one of their closest friends that night but still, for the x-men having the robot, or technoorganic in this case, NOT try to murder them on purpose and be a loveable 80′s sidekick instead is an easy night. While i’ts not done perfectly here from what I can remember, the main human characters we see are nightcrawlers love intrest amanda (who is thankfully NOT his adopted sister this time around thank christ), local stock blond football bully and flash thompson impersonator Duncan, and Scott’s nondiscript friend paul, who I can’t think of without thinking two things; one , what do you WANT paul:

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I mean a man so vauge just can’t be trusted. The second is that paul looks a lot like Doug Ramsey and i’m suprised they didn’t just.. make him Doug and have him go through a similar arc from the comics:A crush on kitty and the rest of the team finding out he’s a mutant and eventually bringing him into their world. For those unaware Doug Ramsey is a mutant with the ablility to translate any languge, including computer code from the get go and body laungage when he came back, an easy fix to him being the non-combatant of the group no one thought of, who died tragically in story sacrifcing himself to save his girlfriend’s life and out of story because the artist tricked the writer into killing him off. Thankfully he did come back about two decades later, took a level in badass thanks to a combination of the body language thing above meaning he could anticipate moves and dodge and computers having advanced to the point that part of his powers was now 80 times more useful, and has recently become a key part of the dawn of x relaunch. He’s also a faviorite of mine as you can probably tell and given how much the early 2000′s loved their computers, it’s weird to me they didn’t think of this and it’s even weirder he didn’t show up with the lions share of the other new mutants next season, along with Karma and Warlock which somehow has become a recurring theme thanks to the movie saving them for sequels that ended up not happening because fox stupidly put the movie in Limbo where it remains until maybe next month. But yeah even if muted a bit the idea of the x-men going to a public school alongside their training is a decent one.. sure a hero going through high school is again a cliche, but it’s a thing the x-men hadn’t done in this way before or sense, and was intresting to see in action. Most high school scnees in x-comics are usually some poor mutant having their powers manifest and either hurting someone by accident, being treated like crap for it by their class or hunted down for accidently hurting someone before the x-men show up to kick their asses and welcome this youngster. Or getting rejected by family and friends then coming to the x-men.. there’s a lot of angst directions to go in. My point is we’d never seen the x-men try to blend in and have a more standard school experince, and combining that with them hiding their powers instead of being out in the open at first made for a unique dynamic for the x-men that makes well tread ground nice nad fresh even 20 years later.

So that’s our basic setup going in: The X-men wake up, go to school, then save the world or train to save the world while harnesing wonderful and dangerous powers and protecting the helpless agaist less charitable mutants. The basic x-setup with a 2000′s era superhero high school show flavor. Good stuff. But we’ll see what it does with this premise, how good it holds up and what’s still delightfuly cheesy about it as I take a nice look at the first episode Strategy X

We open at night and

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Yup Scott and Jean are at the football team where the aforementioned Duncan, guy voted most likely to peak in high school in last year’s yearbook poll, is playing some foot ball and trying to flit with Jean Grey whose the first X-Man we meet and is somehow receptive to this despite his radaiating douche and is lucky this Jean’ , unlike say the time transfered one from the comics who thought the best approach to helping Bobby Drake come out of the closet so he could help his older self do the same and be his best self, was to just blunty say he’s gay and refuse to let him explore thtt for himself or get someone more quliafied to help her. And yes that did indeed happen and yes the original x-men were brought into the present for a while and yes it was weird Moving on. Still i’m pretty sure duncan’s thoughts would read like “Man she looks good.. I want to bang her so hard she uh.. wakes up sideways.. yeah that’s it. Your a legend duncan, a total legend. “. As you can probably tell I don’t have fond memories of this character or this sorta but not really love triangle, and question why they couldn’t of just had spyke be the other man in the triangle if they wanted to do this. Granted Spyke himself is kinda annoying, but it still makes more sense to have him fill in for angel or wolverine in a jean-scott love triangle than this walking burnt end. The warren, scott one worked, as much as a 60′s love triangle could because warren was conventionally handsome and had angel wings while scott has to keep glasses on just to not murder anyone he looks at, so there’s a bit of contrast there, while with WOlverine it’s straight laced dependeble scott versus unhinged manly man Logan. You know before recently where they just decided to all bone in a pile and wolverine even goes on vacation with them. And that’s not a joke I made up, that’s actual canon. Both make logical sense while Jean would be intrested in both in the former case, as Scott was still a kind and dependable leader, and tempted in the latter case if never acting on it before recently and with her husband’s full consent and either watching from the closet or taking one up the ass for jean to watch. Duncan in contrast is just wholly unlikeable and it makes me question why use him as the third in this love triangle, ESPECIALLY since the show would later introduce another scott and jean based love triangle with Rogue wanting scott that’s way more intresting, and even people wanting those two to hook up don’t want Jean with Duncan! Instead of creating a vitable alternative to make a later love triangle more intresting or create some shipping wars or anything of value any hint jean may be intrested just wastes screentime and tests my patience and is thankfully breif here. As for why Jean’s here sh’es taking pictures for the school paper since the Daily Bugle wasn’t intrested in photos that weren’t of spider-man and they already had a teen photographer for that. Porker or something. Anyways this episode ofa low rent friday night lights knockoff is interuptted when one of duncan’s buddies on the team spots local trouble maker and ,judging by context, bully punching bag Todd Tolansky, aka Toad which is a cruel nickname turned slightly lesss cruel code name here, pick pocketing the people in the stands, and sensing a flimsy context to punch a nerd, Duncan goes to tell the coah he’ll be busy for a moment totally not carving someone’s face in again. Coach says as long as he leaves him breathing, and through a straw still counts and since their so far ahead as long as he’s back for the celebratory rampage anything goes. Also spotting Toad’s stan pines approved sticky fingers is Scott Summers, leader of x-men and all around cool guy. Scott here is a bit more emotive than he was int he comics at a time, a trait he’d have later on in the late 2000′s and even currently and a version I prefer to the “has something shoved so far up his ass you can see it when he opens his mouth” boring straightman of the 90′s cartoon. He’s a bit more impulsive, a bit more emotivie but still a good and well thought out leader and the tactical genius, at least as far as I can remember, that he’s known for being. IT’s a good portayal so far, it reminds me of 2k12 leonardo: he’s still growing into being a leader in some way but clearly has the talent and drive for it and a deep sense of heroism> That deep sense is shown here as Scott leaves to go confront toad.. and then confronts Duncan and buds when he finds them about to squish Toad. Unlike Duncan, whose “heroism” consits of a filmy excuse to beat a third hole into todd’s head, Scott wanted to stop Toad because it’s the right thing to do, and wants to stop Duncan because his actions are just as wrong: Sure Toad is stealing stuff, but it’s clear from the way he and his buddies grin widlly at seieng toad pick pocket that they just want an excuse to pummel the kid and not get in trouble for it. It’s confirmed when Scott makes a resonable offer: Since Toad still has the money and most of the lifted wallets, he can return what he stole, which Toad not wanting to die today agrees to, but Duncan refuses. Scott however gets the three thrown to the ground and while Toad escapes, with the two other idiots in persuit, an enraged duncan attacks. But since Scott Summers, even teen scott summers has batman level judo, it’s an even fight despite Duncan being bigger and more muscular.. until Jean runs in shouts scott no.. despite you know Duncan starting this and Scott merley defending himself, distracts Scott long enough for him to get shoved to the ground.. and loose his googles, sending an optic blast out before he can clamp his eyes shut, knocking duncan over and igniting a nearbye propane tank. Toasty! Also yikes. Cue the opening theme and credits. While the opening Creidts are very 2000′s, they aren’t half bad but the main draw is the theme song which.. honestly I feel is great and very close to the 90′s x-men theme in quality, only not being AS good because that one’s one of the best theme songs period. but this one’s no slouch as it’s fun, energetic and will get stuck in your head. Good stuff. After the theme we cut back to the credits where Scott is closing his eyes despeartly holding his powers in. It was a good opening and a great way to show off the premise of the show and just how dangerous mutant powers can be even accidnetally, with this followup showing it’s not inetentional. it was even shown before as while scott’s eyes flash, he notably never uses his powers in the fight and they only came about accidnetally. We also get some JeanScott ship tease as she finds his glasses ,and with Duncan having a concusion and not remembering anything, a bit that hasn’t aged well, things seem well.. except the cop seems to notice something supscious.. before help arrives in a rolls royce. Charles Xavier, voiced by the icomprable David Kaye who I feel is one of the best daviers and does a great job here and quickly makes the guy see nothing supscious, a classic use of his powers and an understdanable one: while yea going into someone’s mind isn’t a great tihng to do.. scott being possibly outed as a mutant this way would only land the poor boy in a jail cell, as it did for Bobby Drake in the comics when his own powers activated and hurt someone. We also meet storm who unlike the others isn’ aged downa nd is one of two senior staffers for the school, a touch I like as she was a great mentor figure to kitty pryde and the comics and the roll suits her, while evolution also tones down the ham 80 degrees so she’s even more like the comics; reserved but utterly confident and badass and a good #2 to xavier. Xavier also likely wiped Duncan’s memory of scott’s power triggering I figure.. I mean he could’ve got concussed but I wouldn’t be suprised if chuck manipualted that too. Jean comforts Duncan for.. again some reason. Like he was just in a fight with her best friend and she’s a telepath.. I get she’s being respectful but time and place. Scott is naturally Jelly, but Toad.. genuinely thanks Scott for the help while Scott brushes it off. It was the right thing to do and Toad is still a creep, but it’s still a nice gesture. Also toad eats a fly to show that yep he too is a mutant. Xavier and Storm go to the train station and pick up a mysterious teen clad all in robes. Ohohoo hominus. Meanwhile somewhere in the westchester area, Wolverine comes in! Snkity sknikty snoik. He’s voiced by, and dresses exactly like, Scott McNeil, a vetran and awesome voice actor who I honestly think does a better job than his prdecessor. Not that 90′s wolverine is bad, it’s just McNeil has more of a range even while keeping the gutteral growl of hte former and can tur it off at times while his previous acto rwas pretty much on snarl mode constantly. He wasn’t bad, all the 90′s voice actors were at 100 most of the time and undersndably given the hamm nature of that cartoon, but its’ still a ncie change of pace and one we’d see again with steve blum in the next cartoon. More on that obviously when i inevitably cover Wolverine and the X-Men He picks up a paper about the explosion, and sensing he must go his people need him, cuts the top off the water he ordered, because you can’t get beer on a childrens cartoon, and thanks the clerk who wonders what the fuck just happened. And it’s a weird ass scene especially because in this series the x-men are trying to keep a lid on mutants and Logan’s just .. causally cutting off a water bottle because fuck it. It fits the character a LITTLE but it’s still just weird and out of place. Speaking of weird and out of place sabertooth is stalking logan on a mountaintop because..

Thank you wrestlecrap. He dosen’t show up again and is apparently introduced several episodes from now, and sports a design similar to the 2000 movie which isn’t a terrible look apart from the long lead singer from Creed haircut. The next morning at Xavier’s scott’s annoyed at jean taking her time in the bathroom because “women amirite?”.. yeah...

On that gag. Before the two dart off for school Xavier calls them in to meet the new kid: Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler, whose blue and fuzzy as ever, though without the fully yellow eyes he usually sports, though I figure it’s less because they wanted to make him more humanoid, though his Kelso from that 70′s show hair certainly helps with that too, and more because that way his human disguise he’ll get in a bit can just be an easily just recolor and redres his civlilan design. Though why he couldn’t just have the yellow eyes in elf form and give him regular ones in transducer form, epsecially since they had to make a whole new outfit and ears for his non elf form anyway is beyond me, but whatever. At least he’s a full part of the team here and oh so adorkable. As you can probably wager by the fact there’s only 3 x-men and one asshole here, Evolution takes it’s time introducing everybody, the first few episodes using the debut queue style of storytelling and introducing the main cast about one or two per episode.. which I like a lot as it gives each of the x-men room to breathe and get a proper introduction, while usually doing the same for the latest addition to the brotherhood. IT’s a godo way to ease us into a decently sized main cast and let each get their own origin story of sorts. Good stuff.

Jean and Scott are shocked by the poor boys three fingers, but Charles helps asuage kurt.. by pointing out scott’s fuckup then berating him. Both don’t come off great: Scot whines about having two cannonballs under his eyes, which while fair is something he knew going into a situation where they might get knocked off and didn’t prepare for, while Charles lambasts him for “not having more control”.. and his tone implies it’s more about his POWERS. If it was about self control fine, that’d be godo character stuff but if it’s of his powers.. Scott didn’t use his powers at all during the breif scuffle and was only let loose by pure shock, and something you easily covered for minus the explosion part. It could just be both having a point but I dunno. But with that Xavier does show kurt that even human passing mutants like Scott have huge struggles and he no longer is alone. Jean is curious what his power is and Kurt demonstrates his teleporting, impressing both and bonding the three a bit. Xavier sends them off to school, and they’ll talk more about kurt tonight. At school Toad is getting dressed down by principle darkholme, aka mistque whose apparently also his boss.. yes while the founding x-men are two upstanding well trained, if one a bit hot headed youths, Mystque got.. a guy who pick pockets because as we later see the house she got for them looks like the ghosts of the frat who used to live there did a number on the place. Yeah easy to see why your guys later become the comic relief villians Raven. Anyways she plans to have Toad use his newfound leverage with scott to try and sneak in with the x-men before shapeshifting into a knockoff brood to scare him because she’s a dick. Also how the hell would she explain that if someone walked in and DIDN’T comically walk right back out and just explose her posing as a monster for the student body to see. Not a bad show of her powers but a really goofy and nonsenical one. Also yeah unlike the comics raven can change her shape further than just humanoid.

Back at the school Kurt is excited to see his spacious and luxrious room, his parents, whoever they were, having sent him here, and is even more excited when Xavier gives him a gift; an image inducer. This is something that actually comes from the comic: it’s a device disgused as a watch that holographically makes Kurt look like your standard human. Kurt in the comics of course used it to look like errol flynn. Naturally Chris Claremont eventually realized the implications of a person of a minority who looks diffrent masquerading as someone else to blend in and Kurt later decided to go without it, as he shoudln’t have to hide himself. Evolution does use it better though: For starters when Kurt says he’s finally normal, Ororo assures him he always was, this is just to help a bit and the idea of him needing to blend in makes sense since the x-kids are going to public high school and mutantkind is more hidden to avoid prosecution. It’s sitll a BIT shaky, but it’s at least trying to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of the concept and modernizie it a bit and I can give them credit for that.

Back at School scott’s preparing to lunch, telling paul to save him a seat. Good old Paul, when Toad comes up to him thanking him again and revealing his own mutant powers and stealing Scott’s glasses because that’s how you charm someone. Toad offers to hang but Scott wisely refuses and moves on though he does use the cafeteria pay phone to call Charles, who already found out about todd via Cerebro and despite Scott’s understandable reservations about letting a literally slimy pick pocket who talks like goddamn j-roc , know what i’m sayin, into the team, Charles in a very charles xavier move says they can’t turn their back on ANY mutant, even the assholes. Now read that in a patrick stewart voice. Your welcome. Scott wonders if he should ask Todd over to play fooseball and ask about joining his teen militia but Chalres said no need, he’ll take care of the audition himself. He then explains Cerebro to a curious kurt, global telepathic mutant tracker basically, and prepares for the audition.

That night Toad goes to the mansion.. with a costume already. And rather than evaluate all the costumes up front i’m going to do so as they show up in series. As such.. toad’s is REALLY good, a nice armor look with a small part peaking up resembling a collar of some sort , a nice update of his silver age costume’s collar. It really feels frog like and really is neat. Storm, who is watering her garden a detail I like, heads out and rains on his parade. Her costume is fine, a standard storm outfit, nothing really outstanding but still not bad. Storm then sends lighting at him to see what happens when a Toad is struck by lighting.. probably the same as everything else before he runs inside and runs into kurt.

Kurt then shows up, and while I’d forgottten this, he was already in costume from earlier having gotten his at the same time as the inducer. His costume.. is about the same as the comics except hte gloves and boots are yellow, i’m somehwat eh on it but I get doing so to have him fit with the black and yellow color scheme of most of the other x-men in some way. Though i’d love to see a black and yellow redesign of his classic oufit someday that’d look spiffy. But yeah it’s pretty good and one of the standouts of the evolution costumes. The two trade barbs thanks to toad being kind of a dick about nightcrawler and end up having a petty squabble and tussle for a bit around the mansion. Xavier still considers Toad x-men material while Storm considers not missing with lightning this time. In all seriousnes this is more good character stuff for Charles, as it shows that no matter how troublesome, he’ll welcome any mutant child in with open arms. Though I question why neither questions the fact that a mutant they just met somehow brought his own top of the line uniform, but I chalk it up to that probably not having been written into the episode and either being an error or execs wnating to show off his battle suit to have a proper superhero tussle to close out the episode. However said tussle, which is really more a hilarious fight between an asshole and a dork, is interupted when Kurt accidnetly ports them into the danger room, an x-men staple.. no really “new mutant accidently enters or finds the danger room” is old hat at this point, most iconically with Kitty in the comics shortly after she joined.

Naturally not wanting to have to clean up another set of teen corpses, he just got the Vulcan smell out of there, Xavier dispatches Cyclops and Jean to go deal with it.. since Jean dosen’t have a code name here since marvel forgets to try and get her a non phonenix one better than marvel girl and it annoys me. Anyways fashion show time again, and yes i’m aware these aren’t from strategy x, but I didn’t want to just use hte model sheet shots from the wiki so I combed for decent action shots. Scotty’s costume is decent, a bit bulky with the very 90′s shoulder pads and boots, but otherwise looks pretty good, a nice combination of his 90′s uniform and his second x-factor uniform. Even with the bulk it looks really good. On the oppsite end.. we have Jean, who easily has the worst outfit of the main x-men by a mile, with a weird lime green stripe for some reason. Maybe they were going for phonenix colors I dunno, but it just looks half assed in comparison to the rest of the gangs outfit. The gold rings and fingerless gloves are a nice touch, but this one’s still just bland in comparison. Like they couldn’t figure out how to update jeans 90′s outfit so they put her in a jassercise outfit instead.

Scott and Jean arrive with Jean saving nightcrawler, Kurt asking if sh’es an angel, she asking if he’s a demon and me asking if I can get a trashcan to vomit in. It didn’t work for George Lucas a year before this why did you think it’d work here? Anyways Kurt realizes their not in xavier’s snuff dungeon, as far as he knows and it’s simply a trianing room and tries to disarm it, but it instead nearly blasts toad who nopes outta htere, scott too injured to follow. And while when watching the episode yesterday It hought it was a bit abrubt.. it really fits. Toad is a bit of a coward from memory, bosatful and cocky.. till reality reminds him he’s freaking toad as seen with the bullies earlier and mystique after that. So of course he’d run the minute things looked dicey and it looked like xavier reguarlly put his students through the hunger games to thint he herd. Xavier bemoans that Toad simply isn’t ready.. sure he’s a mutant and xavier likely senses mistque’s involement.. but he genuilly WANTED to help todd and give him a real home and support.. its just Toad/Todd dosen’t WANT it or to put in any real work to be better, and you have to WANT help to get it. Kurt blames himself and ports out feeling he dosen’t deserve to be there and Scott goes after him while out front Toad runs into a returning Logan, whose ready to add another dead teen to the pile out back when Xavier insists he let him go... he’s not an actual threat, and as we find out later Xavier removed the schools location from his mind and probably gave it to toad in the first place, so while Logan says he’ll be back.. he has no way of coming back and there’s no sense roughing up a teenager, when that’d just draw more attention to them and give Toad an angle to work. That being said Charlie still gladly welcomes Logan back though both smell trouble on the horizon.. and also toad. He tends to leave a scent that one.

We then get what I feel is the best scene in the episode: Cyclops finds Kurt in the room with the blackbird, which this show remembers is an actual type of plane and that the x-mens is simply a souped up version of , though I can’t tell you what version he’s saying it’s superior to because I don’t know planes THAT well. But Scott comforts Kurt, saying it’s OKAY to fuck up: the entire point of this place is so they can afford to make the mistakes they can’t make out there and learn and grow as people. Everyone screws up, as Scott himself did rushing in without a plan at the start, but the point is you learn from it and do better next time and Kurt decides to stay. Welcome to the X-Men Kurt, hope you surivive the experince. Also Scott decides to show him where they hide the sodas.. which either Chuck is a dick about their pop or that’s code for booze.. or possibly both. I could see Logan really liking root beer alongisde his nightly 6 pack.

We close out with Mystque berating toad for running the hell away and for you know, getting mindwiped.. the latter is far from his fault, but the first part.. yeah Toad kinda sucks at this and Raven screams for him to get out, with her turning back into her natural form for the first time.. and then being confronted with HER boss with Magneto, from.. somewhere.. he appearas as a spooky projection but I don’t know if he’s using a device to amplfy himself or he just hides in the closet of her office all day for when he needs to consult her on their evil schemes. Probably the latter. Anyways Erik wisely consults her to be a bit easier..while toad is a bit of a dipweasel.. they can’t afford their ranks being thinned.. and really he’s not wrong. The x-men currently have them 6 to 3. Even if he’s the weakest of the three of them, they can’t afford to spare him. He then ominously says htis is only... THE BEGINING.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Strategy X is a decent start for the series but not without it’s problems, with one or two questionsable moments like the whole angel and devil exhcange or the entire “Storm stalks toad as he goes to the mansion” scene as a way of testing him, which makes both her and charles come off bad and makes me wonder how the hell that was an actual test of anything. But it’s held up by good character: While Jeans kind of a bit of wallpaper here, the rest of the x-men and our three villians are all given great character moments that show them off to the audience well and really show the writers get the characters while taking their own spins on the younger ones: Nightcrawler, who could be a bit of a dork in the comics, see here his seduction tequnique.

I mean damn if that shit isn’t still Sexy but still. They just ramped it up a bit since this version is younger and more naive, while Scott is likewise a bit more rambunctious and likely to question Xavier, while still being a good hearted guy who knows how to lead. It’s good stuff. While the quality isn’t PERFECT, it’s a good start and I look forward to watching more and EVENTUALLY reviewing more on here. If you liked this be sure to let me know and like I said above if there’s any other marvel show or any dc ones you want me to cover, and any specific episodes at that, lemme know. Comics too. And until we meet again, courage. PS.. what the hell is up with the title of this episode? No really it has nothing to do with anything. Is it Mystuues’ inflitration plan?

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