Hogan Reviews

Managed to get a lot more X-Men watched over the “festive period” so let’s get started with the first half of Season 3, which sees the most enjoyable adaptation of the Phoenix Saga in any medium (with the Dark Phoenix stuff following in the second half of the season for the record!) plus some fun stand-alone stories as well, including the return of Apocalypse (hooray!) and Mojo (ugh…) The season has a general greater focus on sci-fi than the Earth-based issues they’ve tackled in the previous two seasons (Magneto doesn’t appear at all this season!) which certainly gives it a different feel, so let’s take a look!

The season begins with a two-part story that really is a prologue to the big five-part Phoenix Saga. It has Wolverine get contacted by his old flame Yuriko (got to love it when the classic “Wolverine in Japan” storyline gets brought up) and he is lured into a trap as Yuriko has used her father’s Adamantium-infusing technology (that was used on Wolverine, naturally) to turn herself in Lady Deathstryke and is trying to get revenge on her old love for “taking out” her father. Gambit and Jubilee follow Wolverine and get dragged into the fight with her and her minions and together they all discover Deathstryke’s alternate reason for luring him down to the sewers: a mysterious spaceship she found that Wolverine’s claws might be the only thing able to cut through its hull. At the end of part one this happens, causing an energy creature with powerful psychic abilities to break free (and make Professor X do one of his classic weirdly-toned screams!) leading to Part 2, where all of the X-Men work together with Deathstryke’s people, and eventually the women herself, to take the creature down. We see afterwards that the ship was a prison ship belonging to the Shi’ar and that somehow Prof. X could read their alien language…

“Look I get it, you hate me, can we all run from the glowing alien creature now?”

This all leads to the big five-part Phoenix Saga, which kicks off with X getting visions of a Shi’ar woman and being compelled to tell his X-Men team to knock out a bunch of Astronauts and take their places on a mission to a space station. The station has been taken over by a Shi’ar called Erik the Red, who is mind-controlling the astronauts, so the X-Men get into a bit of a fight and end up plunging towards Earth on a spaceship only to be saved when Jean Grey’s pleas are heard by the all-powerful Phoenix Force, which helps safely take the ship back down to Earth, but also knocks Jean out (after a mysterious costume change…) The second part not only deals with an unconscious Jean but Prof. X’s attempts to help her ending up causing a weird floaty ghostly evil version of the Professor to manifest and start tormenting the X-Men, so that was a weird side-step I didn’t remember. What I did remember was Part 3, where Jean is taken off to see Prof. X’s old flame in Ireland as she and her husband, the Mutant known as Banshee, run a clinic there and they end up running into both Banshee’s brother Black Tom and the Juggernaut. I mostly remember this due to the way-OTT Irish accents, but it is nice to see some UK Marvel stuff, which makes sense as through the Excalibur comics the two are quite closely related.

Love the fact that with the Phoenix Force comes a costume change with a cool logo. Handy!

Black Tom and Juggernaut are stopped while at the same time Professor X’s mental connection to the Shi’ar is revealed to be because of a Shi’ar royal called Lilandra, as the two somehow have become linked over the vastness of space due to some sort of love-based destiny or something. She wants Xavier’s help as her brother D’Ken is after the powerful “M’Kraan Crystal” that she protects and is heading to Earth, but after the two Earth-based threats are dealt with Gladiator, D’Ken’s right hand man, appears and takes out the X-Men with ease, it’s only Jean Grey surrendering to the Phoenix power completely that gives them the necessary firepower to beat him. Phoenix and the X-Men teleport to Lilandra’s ship and begin to plan for how to bring down D’Ken but things are thrown into disarray when a group of Space Pirates known as the Starjammers attack and board the ship, ironically in a bid to stop D’Ken and not knowing the two aren’t allied. The Starjammer’s leader Corsair (who has a few odd moments with Cyclops…) basically buggers everything up and soon D’Ken gets his hands on the Crystal and begins to suck the actual universe into a realm within the Crystal, which is certainly something. The X-Men, Lilandra and her men and the Starjammers are all sucked in first and doom seems like the only fate that awaits them… I’ll get to the finale of the Phoenix Saga in the spoilers!

As for the stand-alone episodes afterwards, we have first up Cyclops dealing the events of the Phoenix Saga by heading back to the orphanage he grew up in and helping his old friend who now runs it save a bunch of children from Killgrave, who is a Mutant in the X-cartoon universe and explains why I was confused when he appeared in Jessica Jones years ago and I thought “they didn’t have the license”. Episode 9 has Archangel reappear thinking he has finally found a way to destroy Apocalypse and enlisting help from Rogue to do so, but it turns out the weakness he found in old texts was no issue at all anymore. That being said Beast communicates with Apocalypse’s ship AI and actually successfully traps Apocalypse forever inside a force field but Archangel wants him dead not trapped and frees him like an idiot. The ship ends up self-destructing and stopping the mad villain for a while, but he’ll be back! That was a fun episode, if only for more Apocalypse booming villain dialogue.

“So… do you create ice trousers, or is that just ice covering your clothes?”

We then we have Episode 10, which sees Longshot escape from Mojo’s world and make friends with Jubilee, and despite the protests of Wolverine he eventually gains the X-Men’s trust and they help when Mojo and his army invade Earth to make a new program from there rather than their own world. They’re stopped and zapped back, with Longshot in charge. Again, I enjoyed these episodes as a kid but now I find Mojo just that little bit too obnoxious and the TV-based puns and jokes a little too frequent… Lastly Episode 11 sees the revelation that Iceman was an original X-Man much like the comics but left when he disagreed with Prof. X and his methods. He is looking for his Mutant girlfriend Lorna Dane and with reluctant help Cyclops (who still dislikes him from when he left the team) and the current X-Men they find her and find out she is part of an officially sanctioned team of Mutants called X-Factor, who among their members is a man called Havok, whose powers seem to cancel out Cyclops and visa versa “mysteriously” (unless you’re in any way familiar with the comics…) Lorna is happy with X-Factor and Iceman refuses to rejoin the X-Men, so things go back to normal as we head into the second half of the season.

Overall Thoughts:

Corsair gloats after having captured an X-Man, not knowing that …. *GASP!* Spoilers! (For the second half of the season, not the spoiler section here…)

Season 3’s first half is strongly focused on the sci-fi side of Marvel and that does freshen things up, with the sheer amount of neon “space person costumes” making for a deliciously 90s time in front of the screen. The adaptation of the Phoenix Saga is certainly varied and fun, and some of the stand-alone episodes afterwards cover some of the more obscure sides of the X-Men world and are generally high quality as well. This is where the X-Men animated series really hit its peak, and not-that-great Mojo episode aside I loved this set of 11 episodes. Let’s hope they continued that momentum, my memory of the Dark Phoenix story at least says yes!

D’Ken is all powerful in the Crystal realm and nothing anyone can do seems to work, at least until Phoenix arrives and begins to turn the tide; meanwhile on Earth multiple disasters are rocking the planet and we get some fun cameos from the likes of Captain Britain, Doctor Strange and even the Spider-Man from the Animated Series that was airing at the same time. Good fun! With aid from the rest of the X-Men Phoenix concocts a plan to defeat D’Ken but it would involve flying the Crystal into the centre of the Sun, or in other words involve Jean’s death. Cyclops is of course opposed to the plan but the Phoenix Force’s will is too strong, as is Jean’s wish to help, you know, save the universe (true love really is blind I guess!)

D’Ken and his horrendous neon pink and green outfit…. Nice work late 80s/early 90s, you really were something…

Despite his protests Jean saves everyone by returning them to normal space and the flies the Crystal into the sun, seemingly killing her. I briefly mentioned it in the Cyclops / orphanage episode but the “events” he was dealing with was Jean’s death and how he felt Prof. X could’ve done more to help. It’s great stuff, plus Wolverine is naturally devastated as well but that love triangle was never pushed as hard as it has been in other media, he just quietly stews in a few scenes. Sadly by Episode 9 word gets out that Prof. X has found traces of Jean’s consciousness in the Sun and soon Jean is back on Earth, just in some sort of coma. They could’ve dragged the drama out a bit more in my opinion…