Before 1992’s X-Men there was an attempt to bring mutants into an animated series, and here’s the pilot of the original proposal.
Did you know that before the 1992 animated series the X-Men had an original proposal with a different lineup?
Even before the pilot that we are going to present to you, the mutants had appeared in The Marvel Super Heroes (1966), in the episode “Dr. Doom’s Day”, presented under the name The Allies for Peace. On that occasion it was the original lineup commanded by Chales Xavier.
They then became recurring on the show Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981-1983), in which Iceman co-starred as well as Firestar. In addition to Professor X, we saw Sunfire, Storm, Angel, Cyclops, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde (as Sprite), Nightcrawler, and Colossus, among others.
By this time, in the late 1980s, the X-Men were well known enough to try to have their own animation according to producer Margaret Loesch. Although it seemed like a difficult task
The X-Men Original Series Pilot You Didn’t Know About
As Nerdist recalls, in 1989, Marvel commissioned a pilot episode for X-Men, titled “Pryde of the X-Men.” This story featured Kitty Pryde on her first adventure with Marvel’s mutants, hence the title. It aired sporadically in syndication and on the Marvel Action Universe block, but was eventually released on VHS. “Featuring a very weird live-action intro of Spider-Man talking about the importance of voting. To a presumably childish audience”.
In Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Wolverine was Australian and not Canadian. In “Pryde of the X-Men”, a kind of spin-off of it, he continued with this decision. In addition to Kitty Pride, the lineup featured Xavier, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Wolverine, and oddly enough, Rogue was replaced with Dazzler.
In its retelling of the history of the X-Men on TV, we read at IGN: “If you look just at the animation, the series is technically superior to the ’90s cartoon series that would follow, but many of the characters they are misrepresented. The most notable aspect of this pilot was its use as the basis for Konami’s fun and popular 1992 X-Men arcade game, which used all the same characters and designs, and explains how Dazzler was somehow deemed worthy of a videogame”.
Without further ado, here is the pilot of the original series of X-Men that you did not know that the user Earworm_James uploaded to his YouTube channel:
Conclusions
Despite the prominence that the X-Men had achieved in comics, producer Margaret Loesch had to struggle to convince Fox Kids of the concept until a second attempt, which crystallized in the 1992 animation. “She cited the huge sales figures from X-Men #1 as an example of the popularity of intellectual property. Neither executive believed in the X-Men, but Loesch staked her reputation on Marvel’s mutants becoming something big. He was right, and the rest is history.”
Finally, it should be noted that, although the 1989 and 1992 program proposals are different, in their spirit they kept the idea of presenting the mutants through a pivotal character: a young woman discovering her powers. In the first case it was Kitty Pride, in the second Jubilee.
Sources: Nerdist and IGN
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