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100 Things, Day 4
May. 2nd, 2012 04:44 pmDay 4: X-Men: The Animated Series.
Like just about anything awesome but not musically inclined that I've adopted, this is courtesy of Mums. I... don't remember watching it prior to Mums being upset about Morph's death. But she was and I somehow got hooked and the rest is history.
I could not get enough of my X-Men fix, although I was ticked beyond all reasonable measure because my favorites (hey, Rogue. Gambit.) took a backseat to the incredibly boring tales of Jean Grey and Cyclops. To this day, aside from movie!Cyclops, I still find them both to be painfully dull 99.9% of the time. But!
There were comic books, y'all. Comic. Books. I don't think I can stress how much this changed my world view of things. I'd known there were comics in the universe before, because my favorite bookstore (Book Bag, I believe) had racks of them, and who didn't love Betty & Veronica? But now! Now I could see all these stories that didn't involve waiting for Saturday morning!
And, and, and (please say this in your best little kid voice) the Book Exchange had back issues that were usually priced really reasonably, so I'd save up my money and buy as many X-Men related comics as I could afford. Sometimes I'd buy them based on the fact that obviously the storyline had been adapted for the cartoon. Sometimes I'd buy them because the story looked interesting, or the art was pretty (usually more interesting than 'pretty' because we're talking the early to mid 90's here for recent comics, so late 80's/early 90's for back issues) or there was a character I couldn't identify and I had to know more. When I stayed home sick from school (legitimately sick), Mums would bring me home a pile of back issues because when I was sick, I tended to be sick for days on end.
When I fall for something, I must know EVERYTHING. We've discussed this. And the very nature of comic books means that there is always something new to learn. The turnover rate is freakishly high so you had to love the character and not so much a certain writer's or artist's take on said character. You had to roll with the inevitable out of nowhere re-write of something because your writer hated a character and wanted to screw things up just because they could. With comic books, there was always something else to learn. Always.
Like many a geek before me, I bristled at change for the sake of change, but I also couldn't complain too much because I was sucked in during the cartoon phase of the books. So seriously? No leg to stand on, kidlets.
My favorite memory was the Dark Phoenix saga playing out on the show. Somehow it managed to capture the attention of most of the kids on my bus (in your face, Power Rangers!) and we'd shriek out things like, "Did you see the newest episode?!?!" and discussions were had (loudly) and kids whose siblings/aunts/uncles/parents read comics said that these people were a little vexed by changes but who cared because OMG. AWESOME. That's right. Jean Grey does one awesome thing and gets to coast for the rest of forever on it.
Essentially this show was my gateway drug to the world of comic books. I'd later branch out to other comics, some with happier results than others, but my heart has always belonged to the X-Men characters. In my head Storm does not use contractions (nor will she ever resemble the abomination that is Halle Berry's performance in the first X-Men movie), Rogue and Gambit are forever 'shippable, Jean and Cyclops are boring as hell, and Beast is adorable.
We'll discuss comics as a whole later, because that had some unexpected outcomes (and some completely expected ones as well) but at the end of the day, I'd have never ventured into a comic book store without having seen this first. And that, my dears, would have completely changed the course of my history.
Like just about anything awesome but not musically inclined that I've adopted, this is courtesy of Mums. I... don't remember watching it prior to Mums being upset about Morph's death. But she was and I somehow got hooked and the rest is history.
I could not get enough of my X-Men fix, although I was ticked beyond all reasonable measure because my favorites (hey, Rogue. Gambit.) took a backseat to the incredibly boring tales of Jean Grey and Cyclops. To this day, aside from movie!Cyclops, I still find them both to be painfully dull 99.9% of the time. But!
There were comic books, y'all. Comic. Books. I don't think I can stress how much this changed my world view of things. I'd known there were comics in the universe before, because my favorite bookstore (Book Bag, I believe) had racks of them, and who didn't love Betty & Veronica? But now! Now I could see all these stories that didn't involve waiting for Saturday morning!
And, and, and (please say this in your best little kid voice) the Book Exchange had back issues that were usually priced really reasonably, so I'd save up my money and buy as many X-Men related comics as I could afford. Sometimes I'd buy them based on the fact that obviously the storyline had been adapted for the cartoon. Sometimes I'd buy them because the story looked interesting, or the art was pretty (usually more interesting than 'pretty' because we're talking the early to mid 90's here for recent comics, so late 80's/early 90's for back issues) or there was a character I couldn't identify and I had to know more. When I stayed home sick from school (legitimately sick), Mums would bring me home a pile of back issues because when I was sick, I tended to be sick for days on end.
When I fall for something, I must know EVERYTHING. We've discussed this. And the very nature of comic books means that there is always something new to learn. The turnover rate is freakishly high so you had to love the character and not so much a certain writer's or artist's take on said character. You had to roll with the inevitable out of nowhere re-write of something because your writer hated a character and wanted to screw things up just because they could. With comic books, there was always something else to learn. Always.
Like many a geek before me, I bristled at change for the sake of change, but I also couldn't complain too much because I was sucked in during the cartoon phase of the books. So seriously? No leg to stand on, kidlets.
My favorite memory was the Dark Phoenix saga playing out on the show. Somehow it managed to capture the attention of most of the kids on my bus (in your face, Power Rangers!) and we'd shriek out things like, "Did you see the newest episode?!?!" and discussions were had (loudly) and kids whose siblings/aunts/uncles/parents read comics said that these people were a little vexed by changes but who cared because OMG. AWESOME. That's right. Jean Grey does one awesome thing and gets to coast for the rest of forever on it.
Essentially this show was my gateway drug to the world of comic books. I'd later branch out to other comics, some with happier results than others, but my heart has always belonged to the X-Men characters. In my head Storm does not use contractions (nor will she ever resemble the abomination that is Halle Berry's performance in the first X-Men movie), Rogue and Gambit are forever 'shippable, Jean and Cyclops are boring as hell, and Beast is adorable.
We'll discuss comics as a whole later, because that had some unexpected outcomes (and some completely expected ones as well) but at the end of the day, I'd have never ventured into a comic book store without having seen this first. And that, my dears, would have completely changed the course of my history.