TV Talk - X-Men Evolution

This installment of TV Talk is once again brought to you by Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Defender of the Faith:

"Man is evil! Capable of nothing but destruction!"

....... Okay. Moving on...

In this final week of X-Men month, I've looked at two things that are similar but different. They're also a different look at the X-Men. While the last post covered a more mature version of the X-Men (Ultimate X-Men), this post is going to look at a show that had a lighter tone: X-Men Evolution (aka Fast Times at Mutant High, Xavier's School of the Gifted, 90210, and my favorite..."The show that had the X-Men in high school").

Background
I don't know when I ran across this show. I think I saw a preview for it in a magzine or something. The show came out the same year the movie came out. I remember watching the show every Saturday moring on the WB. Hmm...I think Men in Black was still on, Pokemon was still on (I never did the cards but I did watch the show from time to time), and of course there were the Power Rangers. I unfortunately missed most of the third and fourth season thanks to marching band and the fact that the WB aired the show irregularly. After that, I really never saw reruns of the show for a while. I did see a couple of random episodes on Cartoon Network. I've wanted to look at it all for a long while. Thanks to Netflix, I have finally done that.

Graphic Novels - Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1: The Tomorrow People

Today's installment of Graphic Novels is brought to you by the creators of the Phantom Zone Arrow...yeah, that thing.

Wow, I actually forgot about this trade last year. I was knee deep in homework and it just slipped through. Ihad thought about doing sometime during the previous year, but I didn't. I think that's kinda the message of today's post.

I remember getting this book at McKay's when I was on my "Ultimate Spider-Man" fix. It was cheap and I was interested in seeing how it all began for the Ultimate X-Men. You can pretty much look at my last post about the Ultimate Universe here. A lot of this universe really reminds me of another thing I've talked this week: X-Men Evolution. The characters (well most of them) are younger, but they still have attitudes of  their original counterparts...well, most of them anyway.

First off, here is the creative team for Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1. The writer is Mark Millar and you might have heard of him. While he his known for a lot of things, he's mostly known for Civil War, Kick-A$$, Wanted, and The Ultimates 1 and 2. The artists on these six issues are Andy and Adam Kubert. These brothers have worked on a lot of books from the 90's till today. Examples include X-Men, Batman, Action Comics, and other books.Their artwork varies with me and you'll see why later. For this post, I'll be using the other format.

Tales from the 50 Cent Bin! - X-Men #2-3

This installment of Tales from the 50 Cent Bin! is to you by the awesome people of Genosha. Come on down mutants! We’ll treat you good...you'll get two water breaks every 15 hours!

Well, it’s time to finish off the story I didn’t finish last year. Last year, I looked X-Men #1 by Claremont and Lee. I was going to do a review of the next two issues, but school got in the way and I just got too busy. Now that this month is around again, I think it’s time to finish off this story. As I said before, this story and art are done by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. These two issues were Claremont’s last X-Men story for a long time. I heard he left the book because of creative differences.  There’s not much left for me to say, so let’s end this!

Random Pics of the Month - January

Well, it's a new year, so it's time for some random pictures from the interwebs.

Hmm...Logan, you got issues.

Graphic Novels - Wolverine

This week, we've looked at two things that involve Wolverine: the best he is at what he does...and what he does isn't really nice blah blah blah. The first thing was the "atrocity" known as X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This second thing is a four-issue miniseries that involves Wolverine in Japan. It's called....Wolverine. I came across this story in the library a while ago. I eventually found an older reprint of the miniseries at McKay's. How is it? Well, I'll save that for later.

The story is done by Chris Claremont. Claremont, of course, was "the writer" of X-Men for about two decades. I've covered a lot of his stuff here before. The artist is some dude named Frank Miller...yes, the Frank Miller. This was during his hey-day of Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns and before he apparently lost it all (see The Dark Knight Strikes Again, All-Star Batman and Robin, The Spirit, and other things for examples). On second thought, don't see the Spirit! Anyway, let's see if Claremont and Miller do it good.

Wolverine
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Frank Miller

Movie Talk - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Well, here it is. It's the only mutant-related movie that I didn't go over last year. The obvious reason is because it's a Wolverine movie, but there was another reason: I never saw it. The closest I ever saw this movie prior to last Saturday was a review by Film Brain on That Guy With The Glasses. Now that I have finally seen this film, I think it's time to really judge it. This film is about Wolverine's origins. It showed how he got the adamantium, his relationship with Stryker and Sabertooth, and a crapload of crap as well.

TV Talk - Wolverine and the X-Men

Well, it's been a while since I have done one of these! I meant to do this show last year, but too much stuff got in the way. Plus, I really had no good way of watching it. Well, it's finally time to talk about the show about Wolverine and his merry team of mutants.

Background

I didn't know what to think when I first heard about this show. I think my reaction was "Oh, another X-Men show? Cool!" I think my excitement for the show went up when someone posted a video of the show's trailer on the Internet. Unfortunately, I really didn't get to watch the show while it was on. The show came on Nicktoons, and that was a station we didn't get through basic cable. I did watch  a few episodes online at Nicks's site, but I lost track of it after a while.  When I heard it was cancelled, I was a little sad since it only lasted a season. Just recently, I watched a majority of the series. I did skip a couple of episodes because I had watched them before.

Tales from the 50 Cent Bin! - X-Men: Legacy #208-210

Well, it’s a new year. Welcome to Random Thoughts: the place where anything (..okay, not “anything”) will talked about. For this month, I have decided once again to jump into my bins and open the drawers to find some X-Men comics to talk about. This week’s pick is a pretty recent storyline that literally spun out of the major X-Men crossover Messiah Complex. It’s X-Men Legacy #208-210. I do have to admit that I never got this crossover. I thought about getting it when it hit the trades, but I never did. I did keep up with it through the message boards and I may read it one day. Well, let’s start this month off good!

X-Men: Legacy #208-210

Writer: Mike Carey

Artists: Scott Eaton, John Romita Jr., Billy Tan, and Greg Land