Talkin’ Toons: Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The X-Men Adventure
One of the best things about having a kid is getting to share with him all the stuff that you loved as a kid.
It is the privilege of the age in which we live that we are able to seek out and find any and every thing that was ever on television, and as such, I’ve been watching “Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends” with Archer for the last week or so. And we’re coming up on “The X-Men Adventure” soon.
You should watch it now, because we’re gonna get all spoiler-y below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX23QBCl7Cc
This is the second time the X-Men guest on the show, but the lineup is a bit different this time around. Professor X, Kitty Pryde, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Storm and Thunderbird team up with the Spider-Friends to take on Cyberiad.
First off, Cyberiad is a creepy stalker murder-ex, half-machine, half-terrible human being. His outfit is a collar tied to some beige undies, and he gives me the creeps.
Next up are the X-men themselves. This is one of the oddest choices they could have made, starting with Thunderbird. At this point in time in the Marvel comics, he’s dead. Why would they put him back in here? I don’t think we’ll ever know. Then at one point where he’s trapped with Iceman and Storm, he turns into a grizzly bear, just because. That’s not one of his powers, and in the most meta-moment of the series, Iceman exclaims “I didn’t know you could do that!?”
Cyclops is his usual square self, until the writers decide that he now has a paralyzing terror of going blind, and so when he’s trapped in an adamantium room, he full on panics. I don’t know what that means, or why they even mentioned he doesn’t want to go blind. I mean, no one wants to go blind.
Kitty is called “Sprite”, a name she used for an issue or two in the books. The voice is just right for a 13 year old, but the outfit is all sorts of insane. A pale gold swinsuit with a high collar, matching gloves, knee-high black boots and a Racer-X cowl. It’s just wrong.
The rest of the team is on point; Xavier is a know-it all jerk, like he should be, Storm is pretty regal, Colossus is noble, and Nightcrawler is playful.
Then the show introduces the most insane change to the x-verse; The Maze of Madness.
For no reason at all, the X-Mansion’s top floor is an inter-dimensional nightmare with no up and no down. MC Escher meets Salvador Dali. And no one explains why Xavier would have this maze in his house. It’s insane, and oddly serves no purpose other than to capture the X-Men, which Cyberiad had been doing fine with on his own.
The end of the episode comes super-suddenly. Spidey and the X-Men free themselves just in time for … Firestar to murder Cyberiad with a burst of her nuclear flame. She fuses all his circuits, and he professes her love for her before dying. A small-afterwards and roll credits.
What the fuck?
I think Archer will skip this one. It’s messed up.
