Saturday Night Showcase> Pryde Of The X-Men

While everyone’s talking about the revival of the 1997 Fox Kids X-Men cartoon, which isn’t doing well in the ratings after Disney+ and Marvel Studios chased off so many Marvel comic fans from the platform there aren’t enough left of the nostalgic to watch, it was not the first attempt at an X-Men cartoon. In the 1980s, Marvel Productions wanted to build off their success with Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk by bringing the mutant heroes to television. The X-Men even appeared in a few episodes of Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, which had Spidey teaming up with former founder Iceman and new character Firestar, both depicted as former X-Men. This led to a few visits to the mansion and the first time we saw Canadian Wolverine with an Australian accent.

Thankfully, more fitting actors were chosen for the pilot, “Pryde Of The X-Men”, which sadly never got picked up by NBC or any other network at the time. Fans of the X-Men show would get to see the first attempt when it replaced RoboCop for a week in the original Marvel Action Universe syndicated programming block that included truncated episodes of Amazing Friends and toy adaptation Dino-Riders. (Marvel was making a RoboCop comic at the time but how did Dino-Riders fit in there? Good show, though.) It was also released on home video and I think I have the coffee table sized screencap comic adaptation around here someplace.

The story shared a few ideas from the more successful 1990s pilot in that they used an existing teen girl to introduce us to the team and Magneto was an early opponent as he tried to destroy the world. This time it was Kitty Pryde, who Spidey fans would already have seen as Sprite in the Amazing Friends appearances, but this would be how she joined the team. Magneto has plans to throw a comet at the Earth and hope somehow enough mutants survived so he could take over. I don’t think he thought this plan out very well. Mutant hatred is still a plot device and obstacle for the heroes rather alleged racist allegory, as we discussed earlier this week, and Stan Lee serves as narrator as he did for Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends and The Incredible Hulk for NBC. Too bad all we got out of it was a video game because I would have watched this along with the 80s Spidey and Hulk shows. Enjoy.