cartoon: wolverine and the x-men

We watched the first three episodes, what would be a movie if they put it on DVD, and I must say I'm kind of impressed. I've watched all the many variations of the X-Men cartoons, even the bad ones (I'm looking at you, early nineties), and this is not a bad one. So far, something inexplicable happened to the Professor and Jean, which seems to have wiped them out and destroyed the mansion, and in the wake of this, Wolvie went walkabout, Beast moved into the basement, Angel and Iceman went back to their parents, and Scott went all scruffy and reclusive. Senator Kelly is all up in the whitehouse, and the Sentinels have just been unveiled. Mutants are having to be registered, and the dangerous ones are being locked away. Genosha is open to the public and Magneto wants all the mutants to join him there, and Kitty Pryde is on the way to do just that.

A year after it all falls apart, Wolvie tries to get the team back together to do something about the missing team mates and the messed up world that needs them, and then it's a rollicking game of Name That X-Man while mutants are being attacked and jailed, and then break out and help or run off. Meanwhile, Rogue, who was all emo in the highschool version of the show, is still all emo, and has gone over to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (which has Domino instead of the more expected Mystique, which is fun), and Emma Frost has closed down her own school (which should have been the soon-to-die Hellions) because her students keep getting kidnapped and locked away, and she wants to help them. In her frosty, bitchy, can't quite trust her way.

Like I said, I'm pretty impressed. There's an interracial couple right at the beginning, and their kid is not a stereotype, which is great. The characters are complex and seem to actually have emotions without being overly melodramatic (I'm looking at you again, early nineties). And best of all, the plot line is complex and variable, even when you know the storylines they're basing all this on, and it's pretty fresh-seeming without feeling like it's too updated, which is almost my biggest problem with the highschool version.

I like. Let's see if it holds up to weekly storylines after the three-part first ep.