Jonathan Dobres

Air date: January 23, 1993

They seriously made us wait two months for a new episode? They made children wait two months for a new episode? The ’90s were barbaric.

This episode is a pretty direct continuation of the previous one. We’re picking up the Sabretooth drama from last time and dealing with Magneto in the B-plot. The episode opens with Xavier psychically probing Sabretooth’s mind, but there’s something the growling lunatic wants to keep hidden. Wolverine doesn’t see why the Professor should extend him any kindness. Or as the show puts it:

Xavier: There are some recesses of his mind I’ve not yet been able to penetrate.

Wolverine: I’ll penetrate his recesses…

I thought this was funny when I was ten, and I still think it’s funny now. Wolverine is one of the few characters with much of a personality at this point, and it’s very clear even at this early stage that the show intends to spend lots of time with him. This will set a trend that continues through several other shows (most notably, the titular Wolverine and the X-Men) and at least six feature films.

Wolverine storms off in a huff (in a cool way, people!), and the rest of the team is called away to again face Magneto, who is raiding a chemical plant. Big Shredder vibes from him here, as this is the second consecutive episode where he just floats in and starts causing problems. Cyclops is quickly taken out by noxious gas (pathetic), Storm has her first claustrophobia-induced panic attack due to some falling debris (relatable), and this all keeps Rogue busy making sure no one dies. Which is made harder when she gives Cyclops some Southern-style mouth-to-mouth (or CPR, as it is known), and she absorbs his powers. She has to keep her eyes shut to avoid lasering the plant in half, effectively taking her out of the fight.

This sets up the first real sparring match between Magneto and Professor Xavier (that levitating wheelchair is clutch). As usual, Xavier tries to get his old friend to see reason, but he’s having none of it. “My people used reason while others used tanks, and they were destroyed for their trouble. I won’t watch it happen again.” Since words failed, Xavier resorts to images, showing Magneto his own war-torn memories. Whether mentally traumatizing someone is really an ethical way to win a fight is a debate for another blog series, but in any case, it works and Magneto crawls away.

Back at the mansion, Jubilee is watching Senator Kelly declare a run for President, with mutant internment as the primary plank in his platform. She turns off the TV in disgust, and starts chatting with Sabretooth. If you think leaving a hardened war criminal in the care of a naive teenager is a smart idea, you are Professor Charles Xavier.

This goes about as well as you’d expect, and Sabretooth quickly gets himself set free, revealing that he’s been working for Magneto the whole time. Luckily Wolverine didn’t go far. He opens the brawl against Sabretooth with the words, “You egg-sucking piece of gutter trash! You always liked pushing around people smaller than you. Well I’m smaller! Try pushin’ me!” I know we all love Hugh Jackman now, but it really is a shame they went with a 6’3” Australian and lost this aspect of the character. Is it any wonder Wolverine becomes the star of the franchise? With Wolverine, you get this exquisite antihero trash talk. With just about any other member of the team, you get another bracing lecture about the dream of mutant-human peace.

Anyway, Sabretooth uses Slashing Claw and it’s super effective. Please note that he’s able to do this because Xavier starts lecturing Wolverine in the middle of the fight. This was before Wolverine’s mutant healing abilities were reinterpreted to mean he could instantly shrug off anything but the most grievous injury, so he’s down for the count. But before Sabretooth can finish the job, Jubilee blasts him through a wall. Kid’s got potential!

The really interesting thing about this episode—and again, I cannot stress enough how unusual this was for early ’90s cartoons—is that everybody loses. It’s an episode about failure. The fight at the chemical plant is a disaster. Xavier drags home a blinded Rogue (herself carrying her two unconscious teammates), while Magneto runs away terrified. Sabretooth puts Wolverine in the hospital, and then he barely manages to scamper into the forests of upstate New York. Xavier has to reckon with the fact that he used his X-Men as pawns against his old frenemy, and failed. Or as Storm puts a button on the idea: “We failed, Professor. Together.”

But you know who doesn’t deal well with failure? Shredder Magneto, who vows to gather likeminded mutants to his cause and destroy Charles Xavier.

Stray observations:

• Where the hell is Gambit? Morph is presumed dead and Beast is reading Tolstoy in prison, but Gambit just hasn’t been around for two whole episodes. For that matter, where’s Jean? They’re both on the toilet for this one, I guess.

• Commenting on their CPR “kiss”, Rogue says, “We’ll have to do it again sometime.” To which Cyclops responds, “Yeah well uhh…ummm…” Smooth, Scott. I can’t believe this dweeb manages to get married next season.

Air date: November 27, 1992

Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. The X-Men’s original nemesis, all the way back to issue #1 in 1963.¹ For eighteen years, he was your bog standard arch-villain, trying to take over the world, scheming against the forces of good, etc. And then in 1981, Chris Claremont retconned Magneto into a Holocaust survivor, making him a tragic villain/antihero. That improved backstory, plus the magnetic (I’m sorry) interpretations of Magneto from Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender (both the best performances in their respective films), have given the character an outsized presence in nerd culture ever since.

You get none of that in “Enter Magneto”. Xavier simply says that Magneto is “the survivor of a war.” The Holocaust was too heavy a subject to drop on the show’s intended audience, so we get Magneto the Mustache Twirler instead. Even weirder, none of the X-Men, save Xavier, even know who he is.

This version of Magneto is heavy on dramatic entrances and grand pronouncements, but pretty light on action. He easily breaches Beast’s holding cell at the Mutant Control Agency, but Beast insists on waiting for his day in court. “What chance does a mutant have,” Magneto says as he bats away the MCA’s laser fire, “Are these the people whose laws you trust?”

At the bail hearing, Beast quotes The Merchant of Venice and tells the court that the X-Men’s raid was in response to the MCA abducting innocent mutants.² The judge is unmoved and bail is denied. The show portrays this as bigotry, but neither of Beast’s points is a sound legal argument (regardless of whether they were just), so what was he expecting? Either way, it looks like Magneto was right…about the trial, I mean.

Because this is a Saturday morning cartoon and the show needs more to do, Sabretooth appears out of nowhere as court is letting out and starts wrecking the joint. Conveniently, Cyclops and Wolverine were already there, and quickly subdue the raging man-animal, who I must point out is wearing a costume that makes Jean Grey’s look Amish.

Wolverine has history with this half-naked berserker, it turns out, and hates him. When the X-Men take him back to the mansion to help him recuperate (apparently the cops were not interested in detaining a man who destroyed a courtroom), Wolverine tries to kill him a second time. Once again, Wolverine nearly comes to blows with the team, but just then, Xavier becomes aware that Magneto is attempting to invade a military base. Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine rush off, but not before Wolverine gets in a nice dig at Xavier: “How come we’re supposed to trash your old enemy, but we gotta go easy on mine?”

The episode’s third act is pretty perfunctory. Magneto singlehandedly takes over the base, forces its staff to flee, and arms the missiles, all without ever even stepping inside. “Better that we die on our feet than live on our knees,” he tells the X-Men before flying away. Storm diverts the missiles into the conveniently nearby ocean (very conveniently aided by psychic knowledge from Cerebro), and we’re out. The episode ends with Magneto on a hillside, melodramatically lamenting that the X-Men, though well trained and capable, are betraying their own kind.

Compared to the jam-packed premiere, this episode feels like a stumble. It’s very talky, and the action is uninspired, mainly because Magneto is unstoppably powerful. Nothing even slows him down, let alone presents a credible challenge. Had he stuck around at the base, he’d have had no trouble dispatching our heroes. It’s almost as if he set up a problem and then left on purpose, to test dear old Xavier’s students…

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Unbelievably, Cyclops’s “NOT!” joke from the previous episode makes it into the “Previously On…”

Marvel’s revival series X-Men ‘97 is their best work since Endgame, giving us the deft blend of social commentary, soap opera, and beautiful mutants in skintight clothing that made the X-Men a marquee cape team in the first place. Marvel has pulled off quite a difficult trick. X-Men ‘97 not only continues its predecessor as if no time has passed, but it gives us the show we remember, not the show as it actually was. X-Men ‘97 is vivid, fast paced, thought provoking, melodramatic, and frequently sexy. It makes a decade of blockbuster Avengers movies look intolerably boring.

It’s so good that it’s made me want to revisit the original, and if I’m going to sit here watching all 76 episodes, I might as well write about it. I’ll try to keep these short, but since this is the first entry (and a two-parter!), this one is going to be a little longer.

A little table setting. X-Men debuted on Fox in 1992 (on Halloween, in fact). I was ten years old, squarely in the show’s demographic. It immediately became the centerpiece of me and my friends’ Saturday mornings, the definition of appointment television. There was nothing else like it. Here was a show that had a hero (and a villain) for every taste. The good guys were as likely to fight each other as they were their archenemies. It was the first serialized kids’ cartoon. Its big ideas couldn’t be contained in a mere 22 minutes, and you couldn’t miss an episode (but don’t worry, the “Previously On…” would catch you up). Batman: The Animated Series, which debuted two months earlier, had a bigger budget and a full orchestra, but it didn’t have season-long epics and it never left you hanging, wanting more.

X-Men was a groundbreaking piece of kids’ entertainment, and stayed popular enough to run past the 65 episode hurdle that ended many other shows.¹ Without X-Men, I don’t think we’d have gotten Disney’s Gargoyles or Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, both favorites of mine (and all other people of good taste). The success of the series, one of the few bright spots in Marvel’s business at the time, made it an appealing property to turn into a movie a few years later, which kept capes in theaters after the Schumacher Batman movies imploded.

It can be a dangerous thing to revisit one’s childhood. But, as Wolverine growls repeatedly in this debut two-parter: “I go where I wanna go.”

Part 1

Air date: October 31, 1992

The opening theme is, of course, iconic, but this will be the only time I mention it. Here, enjoy the Powerglove cover.

The debut story follows Jubilee, a young mutant just discovering her powers. Her foster parents register her with the Mutant Control Agency, and a Sentinel quickly arrives to apprehend her. When I was ten, I thought Sentinels—50 foot killer robots designed to hunt and “subdue” mutants—were pure comic book craziness. But in a post-DHS, post-Patriot Act, post-Blackwater world, it doesn’t seem so crazy that the government would allow a private company to create absurd weapons in the name of fighting a nebulous threat. I’m not saying Magneto was right, but the people who liked to say “Magneto was right,” turned out to be pretty right.

But Jubilee has already run away to the mall (natch), where she bumps into Storm (the regal and dramatic Mistress of the Elements) and Rogue (if a young Blanche Devereaux were Superman). Here the episode makes a rare departure from Jubilee’s perspective to introduce Gambit, who is elsewhere in the mall buying a fresh deck of cards.

We must—simply must—talk about Gambit. If Jubilee’s visor sunglasses and bubblegum addiction scream late 1980s, Gambit’s design screams 1990s. The brown trench coat over a neon tunic, the “we’d like this character to be easier to draw” cowl that frames his face, the inexplicable mastery of a bo staff he hardly uses. He is the most ’90s thing in this episode. Despite all that, Gambit actually debuted at the start of the decade, in August 1990. He doesn’t reflect ’90s character design, he defines it. And on this show, he is very obviously the writers’ favorite character. He never gets saddled with clunky exposition and spends most of his time being interesting and hot. Weird habit of referring to himself in the third person aside, he’s the one you’d want to hang out with. Or have sex with. This is his first scene:

Gambit is admiring a deck of playing cards.

Shop Girl, extremely into him: You must like to play cards.

Gambit: I like solitaire okay. Unless I got someone…to play with.

Full credit to Chris Potter here, who delivers this line with so much sex appeal that they must have blackmailed someone at Standards & Practices to keep it in.

Unfortunately, the Sentinel has arrived to ruin everybody’s fun. It bulldozes its way into the mall and immediately starts causing havoc. The amount of damage Sentinels do is hilarious. Just stomping around nice neighborhoods indiscriminately ripping apart houses and demolishing whole malls, while telling everyone to REMAIN CALM at 100 decibels.

Or what should feel like 100 decibels, if the sound design wasn’t so bad. I never noticed it as a kid, but it’s awful, the element that ages the show the most. The fights on this show feature an array of dazzling abilities, but they often sound like nothing. Rogue flies through the air, punches the two and a half ton Sentinel hard enough to knock it over, and yet it sounds like a foley artist gently slapping a tin sheet.

Rogue, Storm, and Gambit are unable to stop the Sentinel, but luckily Cyclops shows up (people just sort of arrive places on this show) and easily blasts its head off. This is, unfortunately, about as cool as Cyclops gets for the foreseeable future.

The X-Men then abduct Jubilee (but for good reasons, as heroes do) and she wakes up at the X-Mansion. She meets the rest of the team: Beast (that CS major you knew who spent tons of time in the gym), Morph (a shapeshifter with an off-putting giggle), Jean Grey (telepath dressed like a stripper, welcome to 1992), Wolverine (pre-Hugh Jackman, still short, hairy, and talking like Popeye) and Professor Xavier (surprisingly inert).

Jubilee realizes that she’s put her foster parents in danger and tries to return home, but she just falls into Henry Gyrich’s trap, and is re-abducted to an undisclosed location. The team decides to raid MCA headquarters and destroy its files to protect other mutants. The show spends a surprising amount of time giving us little character insights while they infiltrate. Cyclops is a true believer and boy scout, Wolverine wants to do what’s right but can’t stand all these rules (“I go where I wanna go!”), Gambit prefers to work alone, Morph is a capering jackass, Rogue tragically can’t touch anyone without killing them, Beast is loquacious, Storm lives her life theatrically, you know how it goes. Like I said, this show offered something for everyone, often simultaneously!

The episode ends on the cliffhanger of the team opening a security door, armed guards waiting on the other side. The outro credits are worth a mention, as they feature some mind blowing early ’90s CGI.

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: “Look what she did to the VCR just by touching it!”

Favorite Rogue-ism: “You look nervous as a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”

Part 2

Air date: November 7, 1992

The team makes quick work of destroying the MCA’s files, but Sentinels foil what should have been an easy retreat, with Morph apparently killed (“confirmed” by Xavier and Jean’s telepathy). The team returns home in shambles, with Wolverine threatening to kill Cyclops over what happened. We’ll learn via flashback that Cyclops botched their exit from the MCA, resulting in Beast’s capture and Morph’s death (sure). Leading with the aftermath, focusing on the team’s interpersonal conflicts, and only revealing the actual events a little later was unheard of for a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s the kind of narrative choice we remember thirty years later.

Less remembered is Gyrich’s meeting with President Stairmaster. Sorry, she’s on a Stairmaster while talking to him, and the show hasn’t actually mentioned her name yet, so she’s President Stairmaster, okay? It would be the most ’90s moment in this episode, but Stairmasters go back to the ’80s. She says that while she finds the Sentinels highly effective, the idea of a mutant registry is appalling, making her more of a Bush Sr. than a Bush Jr.

Cyclops hatches a plan to damage a Sentinel and follow it back to its factory. When it asks Cyclops to surrender, he replies, “Of course…NOT!” So if you were to ask me, “How ’90s is the ’90s X-Men show, really?” I would just play you a clip of that.

The damaged but mostly still functional Sentinel returns to its factory in Detroit by crashing straight through the ceiling, which again, begs the question of whether a Sentinel’s secondary imperative is “Cause at least $5 million in property damage per hour.” This factory is also where Jubilee is being held. That was revealed much earlier (along with the introduction of mad scientist Bolivar Trask), but it has almost no bearing on the plot. In fact Jubilee doesn’t get much to do here, which is strange given how central she was in the last episode. The fight out of the facility is pretty fun, and everyone has a chance to show off.

Jubilee decides to go live with her fellow mutants at the X-Mansion. Saying goodbye to her foster parents, she tells them, “You guys are the best foster parents I ever had.” Bear in mind that these parents feared her burgeoning abilities, put her name in a national surveillance database, and briefly colluded with a powerful anti-mutant bigot. If these are the best foster parents Jubilation Lee ever had, I shudder to think what the worst were like.

Loose threads. Could there be a reason why that Sentinel’s sensors lingered on one “human” guard at the MCA after Morph “died”? What’s going to happen to Beast? And how long will Cyclops be second guessing himself?

Now That’s What I Call ’90s: Cyclops firing a “NOT” joke at a Sentinel, very possibly the most ’90s thing in the entire series, but I hope we haven’t peaked too early.

Suppose you’re like me, and you find Jupyter notebooks unwieldy and sluggish. Maybe, like me, you’re coming to Python from R, and what you really want is an equivalent of R’s source function. You just want a way to execute a plain .py file in a live Python session (preferably without printing every individual line to the terminal), and then keep that session open.

Well, good news! If you’re using Visual Studio Code, you can just add the following to your keybindings.json file (change shift+cmd+enter to whatever you’d like, of course). This executes the current file in the active terminal. Think of it as a Jupyter-style “Run All Cells” command, but for plaintext Python.

[{
    "key": "shift+cmd+enter", 
    "command": "workbench.action.terminal.sendSequence",
    "args": {
        "text": "exec(open('${file}').read())\n"
    }
}]