PRYDE OF THE X-MEN
(Syndicated,
September 16, 1989)
Marvel Productions, New World Television, Toei Animation,
Baker and Taylor Entertainment, Metrolight Studios
For the history of the X-Men, check out the post here.
The Marvel Action Universe was a
programming block that ran from 1988-91 with programs by Marvel Productions, a subsidiary of Marvel Comics,
intended to be a weekly block of five shows. Unfortunately, animation delays
and picky markets rendered the block to being only 60 or 90 minutes, depending.
Amongst the featured programs were Dino-Riders and RoboCop:
the Animated Series, as well as reruns of Defenders of the Earth, Dungeons & Dragons, Spider-Man (1981), Spider-Man
and his Amazing Friends, The
New Fantastic Four, The
Incredible Hulk (1982) and Spider-Woman. The most notable thing to emerge from the block was the
half-hour X-Men
pilot: Pryde of the X-Men.
 |
| The X-Men's first animated appearance in 1966. |
The
original X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast and Angel)
first appeared as part of the limited-animation series The
Marvel Super Heroes in 1966, and also briefly appeared in the Iceman origin
episode of Amazing Friends. The new
X-Men, first seen in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1, made two appearances on Amazing Friends. The
second appearance, “The X-Men Adventure,” was intended to be a backdoor pilot
for an X-Men spin-off series featuring not only the established X-Men of the
episode, but also Amazing Friends original character Videoman and a Ms.
Marvel (the Carol Danvers version) copycat
called Lady Lightning. That series was never produced.
 |
| Character model sheets for Pryde. |
The second
attempt came in 1989 as Marvel Productions wanted to try and push the distribution of content
they owned outright as the majority of their past programming consisted of
licensed properties. They took the funding for the 13th episode
of RoboCop and
redirected it into the making of the X-Men pilot by Toei Animation. Written by Larry Parr with direction from Ray Lee and
voice direction by Stu
Rosen, the pilot focused on the master of
magnetism Magneto (Earl Boen) being freed from capture by his Brotherhood
of Evil Mutants: the high-bouncing Toad (Frank
Welker); the telepathic White Queen (Susan Silo); the massively large immovable
object called the Blob (Alan Oppenheimer); the unstoppable force called the
Juggernaut (whose powers are actually mystical in nature in the comics, played
by Patrick Pinney); and the fire-controlling Pyro (Pat Fraley).
 |
| Magneto escapes! |
Magneto planned to have mutants dominate the
world by causing a comet to collide with the Earth. The resulting dust cloud
would block out the sun, creating the next Ice Age that only mutants could
survive and allowing them to conquer humans effortlessly. To accomplish this,
Magneto stole a piece of Professor X’s (John Stephenson) mutant-detecting
device Cerebro and kidnapped his newest student, Kitty Pryde (Kath
Soucie), in the process.
 |
| Kitty Pryde and Lockheed making their animation debut. |
As the
production crew had worked on the previous Spider-Man and his Amazing
Friends series, the X-Men chosen for the team were largely comprised
of those who had appeared before: original X-Man Scott Summers, aka Cyclops
(Michael Bell), who could fire optic blasts of concussive force from his eyes;
Kurt Wagner, aka Nightcrawler (Neil Ross), who has the appearance of a demon
and the ability to teleport; Ororo Munroe, aka Storm (Andi Chapman), who could
manipulate weather; Logan, aka Wolverine (Pinney), who possessed animal-keen
senses, rapid healing powers, and an adamantium skeleton and claws; and Piotr
Rasputin, aka Colossus (Dan Gilvezan), who could transform his skin into
organic steel. Professor X himself was in possession of great telepathic powers.
Kitty, better known as Shadowcat, possessed the ability to phase her body
through almost any solid surface. She served as the gateway to the audience to
allow the producers to introduce and explain the characters and situations
without needing to tell an origin story if at all avoidable. Also present
was her pet dragon, Lockheed.
 |
| The X-Men: Dazzler, Wolverine, Colossus, Cyclops, Storm and Nightcrawler. |
Along with Kitty, marking her animated debut
was Alison Blaire, aka Dazzler (Alexandra Stoddart): the singer-turned-hero who
could turn sound waves into various forms of light energy. New
World Entertainment, then parent company of
Marvel, wanted to explore the potential for a Dazzler movie or recording
contract. Her creation in the late 70s was devised between Casablanca Records, Marvel and Filmworks,
but the plans for her eventually fizzled out. The character was
kept and placed in her own monthly comic and graphic novel. Similarly, New World was looking into the possibility of
a Wolverine movie. Wolverine, as he was in Amazing Friends, was
given an Australian accent because of the growing popularity of all things
Australian at the time, thanks initially to the Mad Max movies
starring Mel Gibson and Crocodile Dundee starring Paul Hogan. According to voice director Rick Hoberg, there were also plans to make Wolverine an expatriated Australian in the
comics rather than Canadian. Those plans never saw fruition and the entire
notion was dropped by the time Wolverine made his next televised appearance.
 |
| Some mutant shenanigans. |
The pilot sought to ambitiously cover a lot of
ground in its meager 22-minute runtime with its heavily involved plot and dense
cast. Originally it was intended for the mutant-hunting Sentinels to be the villains, but with a desire to base a toy
line around the show Marvel wanted as many characters as possible represented.
It was praised for its high-quality animation, but the low regard of comics at
the time in other media ultimately proved its undoing in finding a network to
pick it up. Network executives felt that not only could comics not translate
well to animation, but they would not attract the 6-to-11-year-old demographic
they coveted for their Saturday morning programming.
 |
| VHS box art. |
Although
the series never happened, Pryde found life in occasional
syndicated reruns and a video release prefaced with commercials about upcoming Spider-Man video games (which used footage from 1981’s Spider-Man and Pryde)
and a live-action message of Spider-Man encouraging people to register to
vote. In 1989, Paragon Software released a video game called X-Men: Madness in
Murderworld for Amiga, DOS and Commodore 64. The game came with a limited edition comic and featured the same character line-up as the
pilot (although Wolverine was given his classic blue
and yellow costume in the actual gameplay
rather than his brown one). LJN also
released The
Uncanny X-Men video game for the Nintendo
Entertainment System, swapping out Dazzler with
Iceman and featuring Storm in her 1980s
look. In 1990, Marvel Comics produced
an adaptation of the pilot in their over-sized graphic novel format
utilizing screen captures instead of original art.
Konami’s
1992 arcade game X-Men was a loose adaptation of the pilot.
The game added the boss characters of the mythical forest creature Wendigo, the futuristic Sentinel Nimrod,
and the shape-shifting Mystique to Magneto’s Brotherhood, and also gave Magneto an
army of present-day Sentinels under his control as the primary minions players
fought through. Also, the designers chose to give Storm a cane-like weapon
that she never had in either the comics or the pilot. The most unique
aspect of the game was that three different cabinets were produced, allowing 2, 4 or 6 players to play at
one time. The game was later made into a digital download for Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade by Backbone
Entertainment with Kyle Hebert and Mela Lee re-recording
all the male and female roles respectively from the original script. The
following year, it was made available for portable devices until the licenses
were cancelled in 2014.
 |
| X-Men arcade game opening titles image. |
After the
pilot was produced, Marvel entered into financial issues when parent company
New World sold Marvel Entertainment Group to the Andrews Group in 1989, retaining Marvel Productions until Andrews
bought up the rest of New World the following year. Every production being made
by the company except Muppet
Babies was scrapped, ending the Marvel
animated universe that began in 1978. The company would be renamed New World
Animation in 1993 and produced three new Marvel projects—Fantastic Four, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk—before being sold to News Corporation/FOX in
1996. Margaret
Loesch, President and Chief Executive Officer of
Marvel Productions, left the company in 1990 to become the head of FOX Kids. Loesch, who had tremendous faith in the project, used her
new home and position to finally bring the X-Men to the air in X-Men:
The Animated Series.
Originally posted in 2015. Updated in 2021.
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