Jonathan Dobres

I’m working on a project that involves some LLM prompt engineering. Showing my progress to one of our main stakeholders:

Stakeholder: …and if we provide feedback on the LLM’s output, that will help train the LLM?

Me: Ah, no. It will train me, and I will then write a better prompt.

Season two is a disappointing downgrade from season one. The baffling decision to include the Savage Land in almost every episode is most of the problem. Those interludes steal precious minutes from every story, all so that Xavier and Magneto can inch through repetitive encounters with dinosaurs and Mutates. To make matters worse, the interludes culminate in a season finale that continues to showcase the Savage Land at the expense of character, plot, and anything fun.

Isolating Xavier and Magneto in a jungle for the whole season is consistent with season two’s habit of splitting up characters rather than letting them play off each other. We get several overcomplicated solo adventures that are bogged down in exposition, leaving little time for an actual story or fun character moments.

The season isn’t without its bright spots, of course, but there are a lot of missed opportunities here. I’m hopeful that the tone will change in season three, which tackles both Phoenix Sagas. If they’re doing it right, those stories should be heavy on the interpersonal drama and high stakes that were missing so often in season two. I guess we’ll see!

Worst Episode

“Whatever It Takes”. Why tell one good story when you can tell three bad ones? The Wolverine/Morph story is the best of them, but then the writers drop that ball until the season finale.

Dishonorable Mentions: “Mojovision”, though you’ve got to applaud Peter Wildman as Mojo. And of course “Reunion” has got to be on the Worst list, as it fails to pay off the season as a whole and instead just heaps on more Savage Land garbage.

Best Episode

“Beauty and the Beast”. Finally, Beast gets some attention, and it’s a season highlight. It’s also one of the best Wolverine stories in the entire series.

Honorable Mentions: “Till Death Do Us Part: Part 1”, “Time Fugitives: Part 1” (the show loads all the good stuff into the first half of its two-parters), and “A Rogue’s Tale”.

Worst Hero

Ka-Zar. You’d think that eight episodes of Savage Land interludes would have at least teased his existence. Imagine a version of the interludes where Magneto and Xavier keep surviving because of some shadowy guardian angel. But no, there’s not a hint of Ka-Zar until the season finale, where he finally shows up and starts sucking all the air out of the story. This Kirkland brand Tarzan contributes nothing.

Dishonorable Mention: Cable. His feature episode is a literal repeat of “Time Fugitives: Part 1”. He’s callous, mean, and feels like he’s from a different show. Let me just quote from my review of the episode:

He’s the kind of basic, brutish power fantasy that only young boys can or should find cool. Liefeld wanted to insert Arnold Schwarzenegger into X-Men and it shows. He’s just a big dude with an even bigger gun and a lot of far future tech that conveniently gets him out of every problem. He’s supposed to be a tactical genius but we never see much evidence of it. He has the emotional range of the sounds one makes on the toilet. And he’s got way too much in common with Bishop, making it easy to confuse the two. The X-Men universe has an infinite variety of mutants, and it just doesn’t need “big man with rifle”.

Best Hero

Wolverine. Marvel loves him so much that he’s the only character to appear in all 26 episodes so far. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in every episode of the series, but I’ll let you know if he misses even one. The outsized attention the show gives him would be grating were it not for Cal Dodd’s reliably great performances. Despite the overexposure, Wolverine is fun, cool, and even charming. His undercover operation in “Beauty and the Beast” puts him over the edge this season, finally pushing him beyond “angry little guy with claws” and into “frequent berserker who is also plausibly a former government agent.”

Worst Villain

The Shadow King. There’s not much to say. In the comics he’s the most malevolent force on the Astral Plane, but in “Whatever It Takes” he’s just a cackling ghost with the vaguest sketch of a plan.

Best Villain

The Friends of Humanity. The militant anti-mutant hate group picks up the torch from Henry Gyrich. They’re one of two recurring antagonists this season, appearing in at least six episodes by my count. The FoH’s bigotry is broad and cartoony, and yet it is chilling to sit through, a real gut punch even thirty years later. Why? It is indistinguishable from actual bigotry, because bigotry is its own parody. The ridiculousness is also the bigot’s first defense. It’s always oh, we’re just kidding, why can’t you take a joke, until things are suddenly very serious. The writers tried to portray bigotry for a kids’ show, but landed on a shockingly plausible version of it, because there just is no Kidz Bop version of racism.

Honorable Mention: Mister Sinister. He’s the season’s other recurring baddie, appearing in just barely five episodes. Of all the scheming masterminds the show has introduced, Sinister is the only one who sounds like he’s enjoying himself. Chris Britton revels in Sinister’s evil machinations and delivers every line like he’s on the verge of a little laugh. Just delicious. The FoH make me angry; Sinister makes me smile.

Most Improved

Cyclops and Jean. Cyclops is still uptight, but at least he’s yelling at people who deserve it (mostly Bishop, who thought he was going to fix his timeline with a rifle). He also finally gets some cool moments, learns how to banter with the bad guys, and starts showing us why he’s in charge. Likewise, Jean finally graduates from holding her hands to her temples and then passing out (though she still does that a little). She saves the day in several episodes (“X-Ternally Yours” and “Mojovision”, for example) and offers Beast some astute advice on his love life. These character upgrades are important. Cyclops and Jean will feature heavily in the upcoming Phoenix Sagas.

Welcome to the Savage Land, finally. The Savage Land’s publication history goes as far back as 1941, but it wouldn’t become a regular location in Marvel comics until X-Men #10 in 1965. Like all longstanding franchise settings, it’s accumulated an impossibly long fictional history and an expansive subculture—its Wikipedia article lists nearly 50 native clans, factions, and races. It’s where Marvel goes when they want to do a jungle comic. I’m pretty sure that the Savage Land was introduced in early issues of X-Men because Jack Kirby really wanted to draw dinosaurs.¹ I am baffled as to why Marvel decided to waste a huge chunk of season two on it. X-Men #10 and this season finale also introduce Ka-Zar, Lord of the Jungle. He’s Tarzan, but blonde. He’s a non-mutant with peak physical abilities and a pet sabertooth tiger. We will be spending far too much time with him.

Part 1

Air date: February 12, 1994

We pick up with Xavier and Magneto free climbing a sheer cliff to get back to Xavier’s jet. Because you can’t go ten feet in the Savage Land without something trying to kill you, they’re accosted by “sky riders” on the way up. Xavier throws a rock at one of them, to which Magneto says, “Nicely played, Charles!” God, this story is lame.

Atop the cliff, the various Mutates we’ve met in the season’s interludes finally catch up to the duo, and apprehend them to take them back to “the master.” As we’ve seen, something in the Savage Land neutralizes mutant abilities, but the Mutates all have belts that protect against this. That previously unnamed woman with vertigo-inducing powers is named Vertigo, by the way.

Enter Ka-Zar, who communes with a nearby herd of Triceratopses and arranges a stampede to set Xavier and Magneto free. Ka-Zar despises Magneto for creating the Mutates,² and also blames him for every bad thing that ever happened in the Savage Land (he’s only helping them because the Mutates captured his wife, and the new master is worse than Magneto). Ka-Zar can’t let Magneto so much as sigh without remarking on his evil nature. At one point, Xavier comments on the cold wind and Ka-Zar says it’s Magneto’s fault. Give it a rest, dude.

The three of them sneak into Magneto’s citadel via a secret passage, only to be greeted by the Mutates they had escaped from earlier. In other words, they walked to exactly where the bad guys wanted them anyway. We’re also introduced to the last of the comics-accurate Mutates, Brainchild. He is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. An incredibly 1960s character design, giant head topped with a weird crown and a catastrophically receding hairline. He speaks in a shrill, lilting cadence filled with lisps and rolled ‘R’s. His voice is what you’d get if you asked Paul Bearer to do a Paul Lynde impression. Brainchild is also pointless. All he does is tell Xavier and Magneto that there’s a new master in the Savage Land, a fact we’ve heard from every other Mutate this season, even in this episode. Two seconds later, the new master finally shows up. It’s Mister Sinister, with several captured X-Men in tow.

Backing up a few scenes, the B-plot is that the X-Men have found a desperate message from Morph, leading them to a traveling fair where Morph is performing in Jekyll and Hyde (live transformation effects for a stage play is a pretty clever use of Morph’s powers). This is a trap, of course. I guess the writers didn’t watch “Whatever It Takes,” because it’s like it never happened. Morph is colluding with Sinister, albeit still grappling with their split personality. The ensuing fight at first seems like it’s going to be a reprise of the lazy stuff from the season premiere. The good guys are too easily subdued and the Nasty Boys (Nasty Boys) get their hands on Cyclops and Jean. But then Jean uses her telekinesis to pluck Cyclops’s glasses off his face, and we’re all reminded why Cyclops is in charge. Overall it’s a good fight, with characters showing off their powers amid some decent trash talk. It looks like the good guys are going to eke out a win, but Morph knocks Wolverine unconscious in the nick of time, helping Sinister. I also have to note that Chris Britton is doing God’s work as Sinister. His voice slides around every syllable with a delicious irony, like he just loves being evil. This pair of scenes, straightforward as it is, is far more entertaining than everything happening in the Savage Land.

Fast forwarding to where I left off at the citadel, Sinister has the psychic pterodactyl Sauron put the whammy on Xavier (Morph briefly tries to intervene but Sinister neutralizes them). Xavier tries to resist, thinking specifically of the people who depend on him, which is a nice character note. But in the end Sauron wins out, and Xavier contacts the remaining X-Men to lure them to the Savage Land. They know it’s trap, but they’re heading to Antarctica anyway.

Part 2

Air date: February 19, 1994

Part 2, like Part 1, is (almost) all action. The X-Men who aren’t already at the citadel arrive in the Savage Land and fight the Nasty Boys, even without the benefit of their powers. It’s brave, but it doesn’t go super great, and everyone gets captured except for Wolverine, of course. He goes on a speedrun of the Savage Land interludes, eventually encountering Ka-Zar, who ditched Xavier and Magneto the second he realized the citadel was the new Mutate base. I can’t really fault him, since everyone else just got chained up immediately.

Back at the citadel, Sinister reminds the audience about his goal of creating a race of genetically superior mutants. To demonstrate, he uses the citadel’s machinery to combine Vertigo’s and Magneto’s DNA, which makes Vertigo much stronger (cue the powerless X-Men acting very nauseous and passing out).

The only notable scene in the entire episode comes when Rogue confesses to Gambit that she’s scared to live without her powers. From everything we know about her, this is poor treatment of the character. We know she’s strong-willed even without her abilities, and we especially know that she’d love to live a day without hurting everyone she touches. But this does prompt Gambit to confess his love for her. I just wish the season had given this more of a buildup. Season one was peppered with little Gambit/Rogue flirtations, but season two had none. Gambit’s been absent (or at least silent) for a lot of the season, even in stories like “A Rogue’s Tale” where he could have had a bigger role. So we’re mainly going off of season one’s vibes.

Wolverine and Ka-Zar break into the citadel and join the fight. Ka-Zar frees his wife, along with a bunch of other imprisoned humans, who amp up the chaos and give the good guys a fighting chance. This leads to what is probably the lamest moment in any fight to date, in which Professor Charles Xavier destroys a bank of highly advanced computer mainframes by lightly bashing them with an office chair. Everyone gets their powers back and things get fun again. Everyone shows off, and Gambit even has time to say, “The name is Gambit, remember it!”

The final showdown has Cyclops and Sinister holding each other at an impasse with their respective laser blasts. The other X-Men join in, but it’s not until Xavier uses his powers to remind Morph that they’re an X-Man, damnit, that they contribute a few blasts of their own. This finally overwhelms Sinister and he explodes into little pieces. Jean scatters what’s left of him to the wind, hoping it’ll take him a long time to melt back together (don’t worry, his remnants form a Sinister-shaped outline in the beach sand and he closes out the season with a cackle).

It’s a pretty bad finale, especially in comparison to season one. I suppose if you’re twelve and you just want to see superheroes doing cool moves, there’s a lot of that. But there are no emotional stakes here, no attempt to make an even slightly bigger point; just a lot of action sequences set in the wild of the jungle. Every minute spent with Ka-Zar—and we spent a lot of them—is a minute the writers could have spent with characters we actually like. Instead, the finale is stuffed to the gills with characters who aren’t interesting and don’t do much (Brainchild is incredibly off-putting and redundant; and Sauron’s mind control only lasts long enough for Xavier to send the message to the X-Men). This finale doesn’t really pay off the season in any meaningful way. It’s just an extra-large adventure to close things out.

Stray observations:

• “If we do not return, avenge us,” Ka-Zar says to a big cat.

Air date: February 5, 1994

When I first got into X-Men as a kid, I didn’t realize that they were supposed to exist in the same world as Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers. It doesn’t even really make sense that they do. Who needs Tony Stark when you have Forge? Who needs Thor when you have Storm? Reed Richards? Beast is just as smart, and much cooler. The X-Men canon has more than enough room for every kind of story. Sometimes you get touching tales of love in the face of bigotry, and sometimes you get “Mojovision”, an episode in which the inter-dimensional love child of Jabba the Hutt and the guy from the Micro Machines commercials abducts the X-Men to perform in his TV shows.

The barely-there plot is that Mojo, an all-powerful TV producer from another dimension, is facing a ratings crisis as his star actor, Longshot, is losing popularity. Mojo decides to abduct the X-Men and force them to perform for his audience, and that is pretty much all that happens here. It’s an insane premise with a shallow execution. Peter Wildman’s absolutely gonzo vocal performance as Mojo is the only highlight, and thank goodness, because the episode spends fully ten minutes introducing him and letting him harass Cyclops, until they’re all teleported to the arena/studio.

The X-Men get paired up into three very brief action scenes, none of which are interesting. I will, however, point out that the title card for the Beast/Rogue vignette is “Space Star: starring Hank McCoy as The Beast and Rogue as Rogue” (a segment that forgets that Rogue has super powers). Jean saves the day this time around, using her telekinesis to disrupt Mojo’s broadcast equipment and free her teammates. Two seconds later, Mojo is crushed beneath a bunch of his malfunctioning equipment. His assistant, Spiral, teleports everyone back home.

There’s supposed to be a B-plot in here about Longshot getting back at Mojo, but it never really materializes. It’s a shame, really. Longshot is a genetically engineered alien whose primary power is supernatural luck (similar to, say, Domino). He could’ve been incredibly fun, if the episode had actually done anything with him!

The episode at least manages to be funny in a few places, a lot of which is Wildman’s stupendous turn as Mojo. Jean disrupts the broadcast, Mojo complains that he’s losing the audience, and then we smash cut to a panoply of aliens in the stands, every single one of whom is reading a book. And later there’s this offhand exchange, delivered like office chat:

Longshot: Did I tell you I used to go out with an actress who had two heads?

Spiral: Was she nice?

Longshot: Yes and no.

In the end, Mojo is fine. He bursts out from beneath the debris and immediately starts badgering Longshot and Spiral into doing a new series. He then turns to one of his TV monitors, where Xavier and Magneto can be seen in the Savage Land. There, they take in the view of Magneto’s citadel (???) and encounter Sauron, a psychic pterodactyl. Up next: the season finale that will end these stupid interludes.

Air date: January 15, 1994

Beast is one of the original X-Men, debuting all the way back in issue #1. Back then, Dr. Hank McCoy’s mutations granted him enhanced strength, agility, and intelligence, but left him looking like a mostly normal guy. It wasn’t until 1972’s Amazing Adventures #11 that he underwent the transformation that turned him into the blue (initially, gray) creature we know and love. Wikipedia informs me that this was done to capitalize on the popularity of Werewolf by Night, but of course, it gives Hank McCoy a whole new set of interesting problems. He can no longer pass for human, tends to scare the ignorant on sight, and sometimes contends with atavistic impulses at odds with his genius-level intellect and gentle heart.

The contradictions are, of course, the whole appeal. Here’s a guy who can bend steel bars with his bare hands but chooses to stay in prison for all of season one because he believes in justice. He’ll climb a lamp post and effortlessly wrest an assault rifle from some goon’s hands while sarcastically remarking that perhaps the man does not know what a dangerous weapon this is. He’ll acrobatically tumble through a laser grid while quoting Lord Tennyson. Beast is a great character, and George Buza’s vocal performance—a mix of the gee-whiz optimist and the erudite uncle with more hobbies than sense—has made Beast a reliably delightful presence.

All this is to say, it’s about damn time he got a spotlight, and it’s a good one! It turns out the show has an explanation for all those times they forgot to write him into an episode: when not engaged with superpowered dramatics, he works as a medical researcher at a local hospital. This makes him one of the few (only?) X-Men with a day job.

This episode, like all the good ones, manages to do a lot with twenty minutes. Beast is about to perfect a sight-restoring treatment for a young woman named Carly, and the vibes between them are distinctly romantic.¹ Graydon Creed and the Friends of Humanity show up to shriek about the mutant working at the hospital, threatening everyone’s lives in the process. Unlike the last time we saw Creed, there’s no sci-fi virus, no time travel, no immortal supervillain lurking in the shadows. The bad guys are just bigots, as believable as the KKK or the Westboro Baptist Church.

Wolverine is furious that the FoH would endanger people at a hospital, and while he tends to get furious at a lot of things, I’m 100% with him on this one. In fact I think he should be angrier. But the B-plot goes in an interesting direction, having Wolverine pose as a sympathizer to infiltrate the FoH and strike at their heart. Over the course of the episode, Wolverine cozies up to Creed, follows a hunch, and eventually reveals him as Graydon Creed Jr., son of Sabretooth.² The leader of the anti-mutant hate group is the son of a mutant. Wolverine already gets a ton of attention on this show, but this is a genuinely great side story for him. Rather than just charging into FoH headquarters and knocking a few heads, he puts on his tightest black t-shirt, does some espionage, and forever ruins Graydon Creed’s life.

In the climax, it’ll be Beast who’s busting heads at FoH headquarters as Wolverine engineers the shocking reveal. It’s a character reversal that deepens both of them. Wolverine is playing the subtle game for once, while Beast is getting angrier and angrier. He’s angry at the FoH for endangering Carly and others. He’s angry because those hateful morons successfully spooked the hospital, preventing him from seeing Carly on her big day (he’ll be there anyway, just not in the position of honor he should be). Flipping through old photos of himself, he’s angry that his mutation makes him so visibly different, and thus forever an outsider despite his many talents and good nature. When the FoH abducts Carly, Beast is furious, and he singlehandedly takes out at least a dozen henchmen. This man is the definition of the phrase, “do not mistake kindness for weakness.”

With the FoH dealt some serious blows (Beast hospitalized a lot of them, and their soon-to-be former leader has had a public nervous breakdown), the day is won. Even Carly’s father, initially anti-mutant, has come around on Hank McCoy. Carly isn’t the least bit put off by Beast’s appearance, and you get the sense she’d be perfectly happy as his significant other. But Beast pulls a Spider-Man and tells her that they can’t be together, for her own safety. It’s a bittersweet ending, but given everything packed into these twenty-two minutes, an earned one.

Oh, and a Savage Land interlude! A frogman called Amphibious captures Magneto and Xavier! But some kind of river beast attacks and the duo make their escape. God, just reveal that Sinister is running the place already.

Stray observations:

• “I’m sorry, gentlemen. Your anger at the inexorable alienation of late twentieth century life is sadly misdirected,” Beast says as he tosses two goons to the ground in the initial confrontation.

• A black t-shirt, baseball cap, and sunglasses is a great look for Wolverine. He probably “borrowed” those red shades from Cyclops.

• As Beast is agonizing over whether to cut Carly off for her own safety, Jean urges him to maybe ask Carly her opinion on the matter.

Air date: January 8, 1994

Happy 1994, everyone! X-Men rings in the new year with a Rogue spotlight. Rogue has been experiencing terrifying hallucinations of a sensibly dressed blonde woman who sometimes becomes a hideous lizard monster. The hallucinations are coming back, we’re told, because Professor Xavier isn’t around to give Rogue regular treatment. That’s one reason, anyway. The other is that Rogue’s adoptive mother, Mystique, has been surreptitiously planting herself in Rogue’s way, masquerading as the blonde woman to trigger her.

Things come to a head when the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants attack a carnival (real Saturday Morning Cartoon stuff here), the goal of which is to put Mystique-as-blonde woman right in front of Rogue and drive her insane. We don’t even see how the pointless carnival fight ends, as the story follows Rogue’s perspective and we wake up with her in the infirmary (an economical bit of plotting). But the damage is done, and Rogue keeps spiraling. Literally! In the episode’s sickest sequence, she flies in an arc around the room, then smashes upwards through four floors of the mansion, the camera moving with her for all of it.

Rogue’s hallucinations eventually lead her to the blonde woman’s hospital room, where Mystique has been waiting for her. We finally get Rogue’s backstory: Mystique taking her in after she ran away from her bigoted father, training her as a terrorist, and ultimately encouraging her—very strongly—to absorb Ms. Marvel’s powers. If you’re reading a blog about a thirty year-old Marvel cartoon, I assume you’ve heard of Ms. Marvel (aka Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers). Along with Ms. Marvel’s powers came a big chunk of Carol Danvers’s psyche, and she is understandably very mad about being imprisoned inside Rogue. Charles Xavier was the only person who could quiet Rogue’s mind and give her peace, which is how she came to be one of the X-Men.

Rogue gained Mystique’s unstable shapeshifting powers during the memory transfer, so there’s a real risk that Ms. Marvel is going to assert herself permanently and erase Rogue. With a clearer idea of who Carol is and an assist from Jean, Rogue is able to retake control of her own psyche by sealing Carol into a cement box in her mindscape. It’s a cruel ending, I’m sorry to say. Carol is as much a victim of Mystique’s scheming as Rogue is, but cartoon logic demands that she be treated like one of the bad guys so that Rogue can have her big self-affirming battle. Rogue at least begins paying the comatose Carol visits in the hospital, which seems to do both of them some good. Never mind the show’s greatest animation error to date, in which Rogue lovingly touches Carol’s forehead barehanded.

This episode is all about Rogue, and Lenore Zann makes a meal out of it, of course. Meanwhile, the two fights with the Brotherhood, such as they are, just fulfill the Saturday Morning Action Quota and distract you from the fact that you’re watching a story about trauma and abuse. Mystique’s scheme—a twisted attempt to coerce Rogue into obedience—only makes sense from the perspective of the abuser.

The story also focuses pretty much exclusively on women. Rogue, Jean, Storm, Mystique, and Ms. Marvel are the stars here. Had the episode followed the comics a little more closely, we probably would’ve also met Mystique’s wife, Destiny.¹ But the Saturday mornings of 1994 weren’t ready for that (the comics were still just hinting at it). It’ll probably have to wait for a future season of X-Men ‘97.

Stray observations:

• Jubilee and Beast are on the toilet for this one.

• Never try to mug Mystique. She’ll transform into a hideous bug monster and mentally scar you for life, if you’re lucky.

• Mister Sinister appears briefly to tell Mystique that Xavier isn’t with the X-Men, and that the time is nigh to reclaim her daughter. How, oh how, could he know that? Incidentally, no Savage Land interlude this week. Hmm!

• Mystique easily subdues Storm while masquerading as Rogue. I love little interactions like this. No one can take on Storm head-to-head, but subterfuge is another matter. That’s Mystique’s whole deal, and she gains the upper hand in seconds.

• Wolverine barely does anything in this episode but Cal Dodd still gets a few lines, maintaining his streak of appearances in every episode this season.