The perfect X-Men animated show (in 7 seasons)

So, it's snowing, I'm bored, I figured I would type this up.

See, I have a problem with all the preexisting X-Men cartoons, except maybe the X-Men anime, which I felt was tonally accurate, but I could still pick nits. So, here is what I imagine a perfect X-Men show as...

*Every season of the show should be different, almost like a different series in some aspects, but, it should keep some of the same characters and plotlines continuing throughout.

Season 1: Regenesis

-This season will focus on the "All new, all different" team coming together and developing relationships, they will clash with some classic X-Men villains and encounter some new threats
-The Hellfire Club will be the seasons "big bads"
-The season finale will feature Jean going Dark Phoenix and killing herself.

Season 2: Pryde

-This season will be through the eyes of the new student, Kitty Pryde who joins at the end of the prior season. Some episodes will be told through her perspective and will mainly focus on her relationships with the other X-Men and her adjusting to the absurd life of an X-Man.
-The X-Men spend a portion of the season in space battling the alongside the Starjammers and facing the Brood
-Cyclops is featured in a couple of solo episodes attempting to find a new life
-The New Mutants are recruited while the X-Men are is space, though they spend most of the series as background characters
-The season finale features Mystiques Brotherhood, who are picking off the X-Men due to Rogues desertion of Mystique to join the X-Men

Season 3: Survival

-The third season takes a much darker turn in tone, where the first season felt like an action adventure show, and the second season was more kid friendly, this season is more violent and mature
-During the first act of the season, Magneto takes Charles place as the X-Mens leader, Psylocke is found by the New Mutants and Longshot joins the team
-The Mutant Massacre occurs
-The Marauders are the constant threat of the season
-The finale features the events of "Fall of the Mutants" where the X-Men sacrifice themselves to save the world from the Adversary.

Season 4: Outback

-A mish mash line up of X-Men find themselves in the Australian Outback, where they continue to live to give themselves the advantage over their foes who think they are deceased
-The season finale finds the characters battling demons and their allies when Inferno engulfs New York
-The X-Men go up against the apartheid country of Genosha in one story.
-Siege Perilous serves as more than just a plot device for the X-Men and helps them see where they are needed, and to what ends they are needed for. It also allows them to see events and people elsewhere in the world
-At this point, Magneto works with the Hellfire Club and leads the New Mutants at the school, Cyclops, Beast and Iceman start their new team of X-Men and refuse to work with Magneto.

Season 5: Disassembled

-Through Siege Perilous, the X-Men that were in the Outback get scattered across the world, this season of the show becomes more like an anthology series of one off adventures that are overall linked. Very similar to "Justice League Unlimited"
-With the X-Men scattered, Cyclops along with his new X-Men start working with the government and recruiting new mutants. The New Mutants are forced to live with the Hellions due to their school being destroyed in the wake of Inferno as Magneto is still allied with the Hellfire Club in hopes that mutants will be allied in the upcoming war.
-The Genoshan government returns seeking vengeance on the X-Men for their past encounter, prompting the X-Men to reunite
-The season finale sees the X-Men battling each other and the Muir Island mutants that are controlled by Shadow King which results in Xavier sacrificing himself to save everyone

Season 6: Schism

-None of the X-Men teams trust each other as the New Mutants and the Hellions under Magneto and Emma Frosts wing disband from the Hellfire Club as it appeared that Shaw and Selene had dealings with the Shadow King and some shadow operatives with in the US Government. Cyclops' X-Men continue to work with the government as he believes he is doing the right thing to secure the future of the mutant race, and finally, Storms X-Men take residence in San Francisco. The there are some other X-Men with no allegiance
-The focus of the series is still on the X-Men..Storms X-Men
-Bishop arrives this season telling the X-Men that there is a traitor in their ranks that will lead to the end the enslavement of the mutant race
-Wolverine is killed in battle with Lady Deathstrike.
-Gambit betrays the X-Men to Mr Sinister, who seeks their combined DNA to create a race of powerful mutants
-Wolverine returns as a villain in the season finale, resurrected as an assassin.

Season 7: Age of X

-The first half of the season deals with Apoalypse and his cult like followers. The X-Men have to come together to defeat him, his Horsemen and his followers.
-The second half of the season delas with a war between all factions: Selene and Shaws New Hellfire Club, the renegade faction of The Hellfire Club comprised of some recurring villains, the X-Men, A group of out of control mutants who call themselves the Neo, The U-Men and the US Governments shadow cabinet led by the enigmatic Bastion.
-Sentinels attempt to take over the world in a "Days of the Future Past" type scenario.
-The series ends with some casualties, Magneto taking his place as the leader of the X-Men along with Storm and some of the New Mutants are promoted to X-Men. Cyclops falls in love with Emma Frost during the season and decides he is no longer needed and retires, the school is rebuilt and reopened and is filled with a large student body. Some X-Men like Beast find themselves working at the Pentagon to ensure human and mutant relations benefit the world.

There is obviously way more going on in the series then what I wrote, but I am not about to write a 1200 page manifesto. This is basically just framework.

So, let me know what you think. Like it?? Hate it?? Have input??

Classic, but I'd watch =)

I would also like a new/fresh take on the franchise, something we haven't seen yet.

i think it is to all over the place, making it look like seven different shows in one series makes it messy and confusing .so if it was a real show i would give it a miss.

I thought "Wolverine and the X-men" was incredibly good and great at integrating all these different plots and subplots. I can't believe they never found a way to keep it going, it's absurd, especially when it was so much better than the Avengers shows. Cartoon Network only holds on to those shows for 2 seasons as well which is also absurd. Batman, X-men, and Spider-Man were where it was AT in the 90's and they all went on for quite a while.

I think Jean's death so early ruin the moment. it need to be at least the third or fourth season so the character is relevant and her death is epic and powerfull.

Just remember Wolverine and the X-men and the Anime X-men. She dies in the beginning of those series, it is something that affects the story completly yet while you watching you couldn't care less about the character.

See, you don't feel their loss.

@ultra_beleco: for that reason I think they'd be better off trying to do a show that didn't have Jean in it at all, rather than having every X-men series build to or from yet another bastardization of the Dark Phoenix Saga.

I mean, Jean's not even in most of the best X-men stories; why does her tragedy from DPS have to become a central theme of every series?

@emequious_swerve: I like your ideas for seasons 2, 3, and 4; those are some classic X-men stories there hasn't been as much reference to in the cartoons, so it would be cool just to see those as a story.

I kind of like the idea of a series starting with where your 2nd season starts, and then going totally in it's own direction if it gets to a 4th season.

Well, it more or less follows pretty much what happens in the comics up until about the 6th season. It may seem all over the place due to the vagueness as well, as I didn't write out every single detail.

I honestly hated Wolverine and the X-Men. It was riddled with plotholes, a lot of important X-characters were relegated to one dimensional background characters, the character designs, the continuity was kind of messed up as well. It seems like, overall, they rushed that show out to cash in on the Wolverine movie that was being released, there wasn't a whole lot of planning and thought put into it. Conversely, look at a show like Young Justice, that show was in production for a little over 2 years before debuting, because they took a lot of time to and creativity into its development

Jeans death has a huge impact on the X-Men. Its just that there are so many other important X-Men characters that some of them just have to go. Not to mention Jeans actual death makes the Dark Phoenix 10x better, if you go with the whole "cosmic possession/ fake Jean" concept, it really cheapens that story overall. It was also Claremont idea to keep her dead from very early on, and my series heavily, heavily follows Claemonts ideas.

Thank you.

One thing that ALWAYS annoys me about every single X-Men cartoon is that they are already together, and they usually have an introductory young character in the start. I hate that. I want to see Wolverine not like anyone at first, then grow to become good friends with others through trial and tribulation, I want to see them all stare in the face of death with each other, I want to see Storms naivete diminish as she grows within the ranks of the X-Men, I basically want to see the "Giant Size" team learn to work with one another and grow together before Kitty is introduced.

Also, I am a huge fan of the Dark Phoenix Saga, Its such a great story, the buildup, the characterizations, the payoff. The only series to come even close to the actual story was the 90s X-Men series, and it's very abridged and rushed and basically just displays the more action based developments and just doesn't deliver in my opinion.

I've always thought so as well. I don't even have a problem with her coming back so much as how they wrote her out of her own story.

when you put it like that, I am inclined to agree that I'd also be interested in seeing a season of that.

I guess it's just that I feel like so much of that period has already been mined for stories for other series, that some begin to feel redundant even if they haven't been reiterated very faithfully. Then again, if you could make the first season a little more like Claremont's back-up stories from Classic X-Men (where the themes you mention are examined in more depth) and a little less like the actual 70's comics, I could see it being very interesting.

While I do think DPS has been a little overplayed in other media, I do think that what most of them miss is the slow build up to it.

To do it as a season finale, as you suggest, it still seems like threads should be dropping fairly early on. Like, a third or less into the season, so that Jean's increase in power and subsequent seduction are built up in the background for much of the season way before we're introduced to the Hellfire club.

At least before they fight Proteus, which they should, since it's both a great revealing of the characters and the penultimate foreshadowing for DPS.

I like Jean Grey, I do. I have always felt she is the heart of the X-Men, and of she were to come back, it would have to be through some easy, contained explanation, like perhaps the Shiar revived her or something along those lines. Though, there would have to be some draw back from her Dark Phoenix episode, or else the whole story was moot. But, you have to figure in this fictional series, there is only a certain amount of episodes to tell stories, and you have to focus on other characters. So, just leaving her deceased I feel is best.

I disagree. The only series that mined the classic X-men era for stories was X-Men 90s series, and they did a lot of it poorly I thought. There was important progression in characters like Storm and Colossus that occurs in the comics that wasn't really acknowledged in that series. Mainly because they focused more on action

The first season would focus on the Giant Size team, the Dark Phoenix saga was very much a culmination of everything on of that time, there is not that many plot threads that would have continued on anyways. Its pretty much an introductory season, not to different from what a lot of television shows tend to do. I have always felt that when you read the X-Men comics in succession that the Kitty Pryde era was a new beginning. Also, as I mentioned in my original post, I think every season should be different, not insanely different or anything, but each season should focus on different characters and there should be progression among the older ones too.

I've never felt like Jean Grey was the heart of the X-men, but otherwise I agree.

I meant story lines more than specific character relations. X-men TAS was definitely the one that did it most but Wolverine and the X-men and the X-men Anime also both did their own takes on DPS at least.

I definitely think of when Kitty joined in the comics as a new beginning, as she was established as very much the main point of view character right away in Days of Future Past and largely remained so until she left the team at the end of the Mutant Massacre. I guess that's why I'm more inclined to think of her as the heart of the X-men, since, for me, that's much more the classic age of X-men than anything before or after it.

That said, I do like how she starts out as the newcomer who revitalizes the team, so I kind of like the idea of the first season establishing Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, etc first, because that team did develop a cool dynamic to drop her in to. And I like your idea that every season should have it's own distinct elements, so I think making her one of those key elements for a season or two really works.

I guess it's just that when I think about what I like about the X-men in the late 70's, there's really only a few stories that stand out as being all that memorable to me. Proteus was cool, I guess you'd want to establish Magneto as a villain at least once before getting into how cool he becomes in the second and third season, and there's DPS, which just seems so played at this point.

Then again, if you could do it and then actually move on from it, by leaving Jean dead, the story might finally be told in a way that makes the impact it was intended to, so I guess it could still work.

Nice

I don't really think they did. The X-Men anime just has the X-Men fighting Jean in the beginning, and she just looms as Cyclops' character arc through the rest of the season, and the Hellfire Club they use is very different, and Emma is redeemable almost immediately. Wolverine and The X-Men just had their own thing, with the Phoenix possessing telepaths or something, and Emma was again, redeemable since the beginning and the Hellfire Club was just a bunch of mustache twirlers instead of being intriguing villains.

I just think it would be nice to see Sebastian Shaw established as a major villain, the Hellfire Club grow apart and change, Emma go from a real villain to good guy organically etc. The Hellfire Club from the actual comic storyline of the Dark Phoenix Saga had a pretty major impact. Not to mention they were a really big part of Claremonts era.

Yeah, I think of Kitty as the heart of her era of X-Men, filling the gap I felt was left by Jean Grey. The stories that happen before the Proteus saga is mainly the world tour storyline, which I always liked. Some real good character stuff there. Cyclops getting respect from and shaping the new team of X-Men, Storm evolving from her "goddess" persona to more of a hero, Banshee losing his power, Wolverine getting a bit more humanized when meeting Mariko, all in all, nice little details. I also always really liked Alpha Flight who have a story in there.

'Emequious Swerve', I like your ideas. As you know I would prefer a darker more mature version..I think there should be an expansion of your idea but instead of starting the first season at Xavier mansion, we can say there is a recess and so the first season introduces each character in their own life, going about their own buisness.So that we have an episode for each character and then in season 2 has them going back to school and maybe season two builds the team dynamic. I wouldn't mind going the way First class went and actually making the timeline of season 1 say 1980's so that we have the cold war concluding ,with the real story being the mutants in the western world were free and those in Communist countries were confined but with the fall of the Berlin wall, a few acts were passed between Reagan and Gorachev to free mutants worldwide, but as a bargaining chip because both leaders feared mutant use as weapons by either side part of their arms treaty was an agreement by both governments to have them under surveillance and registered.

I would make the 3rd season for example a Magneto centric season where he wants to take all mutants into a utopian style colony of Genosha.With governments worldwide turning against this plot and trying to snuff the mutant threat out with sentinels by means of all out war,very much like Wolverine and the X-men.

The 4th season would be Exodus centric..with Exodus tired of the crusade against mutants and he turns it into a crusade against humans with mutants attempting to make humans mutant by force. Perhaps a play on the Legacy virus in reverse ... Exodus and his followers are the first to stumble upon this phenomenon when Darwin a mutant who frequented a clinic ran by Fabian Cortes(an ally of Exodus) suddenly surprises Cortes by seeking help for his friends or classmates who received his blood as a transfusion saving their lives after a school bus accident and thereafter they are exhibiting unusual powers.So anyway those who refuse to join Exodus' crusade are to be killed and so X-men become humanity's defense.

The 5th season ends with Apocalypse and the main plot would be as follows in a thread I posted a few days ago here..

http://www.comicvine.com/x-men/4060-3173/forums/what-details-would-you-want-in-an-xmen-apocalypse--1554237/

in brief Apocalypse is awakened by Sinister and his as well as his master's goal is to fast track all mutation where it exists so that all mutants reach the peak of their mutation and as such humanity is to be eradicated again a very dystopian story. We may have even some of the X-men like Rogue opt to join Sinister , a kind of play on the cure of Last Stand but instead of zero powers mutants who join Apocalypse have their power enhanced.

I liked wolverine and the x-men too but online it shows some of the second season and its gets more complicated and aweful. I likes the 90's tv show the best. No cable??? also i would want to see rachel and maybe rachel fighting emma frost like in the comic.

The only thing that brought WXM down was that the villains were largely underdeveloped/not given screen time. Evo developed their characters more than WXM outside of the New Mutants.

I'd watch that.