Week of Review - Generation X

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In 1991 ­X-Men volume 2 #1 came out and became the highest selling single issue of all time.  It was a huge milestone for Marvel comics as well as the entire decade, cementing the ‘90s as a time for comic book opulence and speculator driven sales.  More pertinently, it was the comic that launched the X-Men from a popular franchise into a moneymaking juggernaut that would dominate the next half of the decade.  Within a year Marvel had partnered with Fox to produce X-Men the animated series and its toy line, one of the most successful brand exercises in the entire superhero genre. 

Of course, this kind of success can’t last forever and by 1996 the X-Men were a lot less stable a franchise.  They were still producing hits, like that year’s Age of Apocalypse story, but the writing was very much on the wall for them and for Marvel, with bankruptcy right around the corner.  Still, they managed to produce one last hurrah for the X-Men franchise in 1996 with a live-action pilot film for a proposed X-Men TV show: Generation X. 

Week of Review - Batman, The Animated Series

Edited by Robert Beach

In talking about Batman on TV there are essentially 2 shows you have to bring up. 2 shows that everyone, even none Batman fans, know about. The first one was the Adam West Batman show I talked about on Monday, and the other is today’s topic: Batman the animated series, even the very name of this series bares the weight of its importance. This isn’t just any Batman animated show; it’s THE animated series, and that’s forever how it will be known.

Name changes be damned, but we’ll get to that. In case you’ve somehow lived your life in blissful ignorance of this show, well, chances are you've probably been touched by it and didn’t even know it.  If you liked the Arkham video games, you have Batman the animated series to thank; if you liked Harley Quinn or Mr. Freeze, you have Batman the animated series to thank. Hell, if you’ve enjoyed any DC Comics animated adaptation or any of Mark Hammil’s post Star Wars work, you’ve got Batman the animated series to thank.  So, let’s discuss all its worst elements.