Confession: I Still Haven’t Watched X-Men ‘97

You’d think with my love of the X-Men, and given all the recent coverage here, that I would have watched everything X-Men-related as originally released. That is the case, normally. With X-Men ’97, I let the pressure of expectations get the best of me, kept putting it off, and now, I’m in the minority of X fans who haven’t seen even one episode of the show.

I’m finally working on correcting that mistake now.

How Did We Get Here?

Even though I’ve been a comics and X-Men fan my whole life, the original X-Men animated series came out at a time when I wasn’t able to watch. I was newly married and we were traveling a lot, trying to make a life for ourselves as musicians. I caught an episode here and there—and loved what I saw!—but being up early on a Saturday morning, even for X-Men cartoons, wasn’t realistic for me then.

Also, this was all before streaming. Without watching regularly, there wasn’t a good way to catch up on missed episodes. When the new X-Men ’97 series came out a couple years ago, I thought it was a good time to go back and watch the original show first.

Best laid plans and all. That never happened, and here we are.

I’ve Got a Plan Now

I still want to watch the original series first. It just makes sense. Missing out on the original animated X-Men is a wrong I need to correct! To do this, I’m binging the original series on the weekends, giving the show the old Saturday-morning cartoon series feel that it deserves.

I’m a few episodes into season 3 now. I think that puts me a little over halfway through the series. That's progress, finally! Once that’s done, I’ll switch over to the new series and spend more time with each episode.

It’s a shame I missed out in the first place, but hey, with everything X-Men related lately, it’s a good time to go deep on all things mutants.