Review: X-Men '97 #1

Finally I got to reading Marvel’s X-Men ‘97 comic run. Currently there are 3 issues out with the 4th issue releasing on June 26th. Since the animated show having ended, I’ve been putting off reading these issues as a way to expand the relevancy of X-Men ‘97. The first season was so good I didn’t want it to end. The comic certainly isn’t a 1:1 exact match to the show but it does share some similarities. 

Now initially I was unable to get issue 1 when it first came out and was pretty bummed. Instead I opted to just get issue 2 with hopes of finding the first issue somewhere else. A week or so passed and I decided I wanted to get another copy of issue 2. I went back to the shop and they had the reprints of the first issue available! I was stoked, picked it up along with the extra copy that I’m going to use to create some custom bookmarks.

Reminder of how these blog posts go:

• Cover Art

• Story

• Overall Rating 5 star rating system from Comic Geeks App

Cover

Unfortunately as I mentioned previously, I was unable to get the first issue, but I did manage the second printing of it. Overall I like the cover, the colors, the sunset mood, it’s all great. The only thing that makes it seem a little out of place is Jubilee drinking a beverage and eating popcorn. Had the setting been within the mansion, then I think that would make a lot more sense. But it just makes her seem a bit out of place cause the rest of the X-Men are all striking a pose. The little bits of detail like Gambit’s card aura and Bishop’s purple veins were sweet little additions.

Pretty fun action packed intro that made me question if this was actually going on…

Story

So the main question that a lot of people had with this is does the animated show have any tie in with the comic run? As of right now, I can’t really tell. From what I’ve seen on social media is that this is all leading up to where the show starts. So it kind of makes sense, since the little overview message at the beginning states that we know Henry Peter Gyrich has attacked Professor X. 

Then we jump right into it. I was really surprised because I thought the comic was going to be like a retelling of the animated show. But not quite. There is some good action that starts off with Wolverine breaking formation and trying to take on Magneto by himself. He is tossed aside like a ragdoll. The entire mission is a failure as Cyclops also struggles to keep control of his team and take down Magneto. Jean ends the Danger Room session because she is worried someone will get hurt. 

Right away we get an understanding that the X-Men are having a tough time trying to keep it together and clearly lack the leadership of Professor X. Cyclops and Wolverine are fighting, while everyone else doesn’t know who to follow. At this point the main plot of the story takes place, Dazzler has been kidnapped and it was caught live on TV. The X-Men meet up with Rogue and Gambit to take on a terrorist group of Friends of Humanity. They end up rescuing Dazzler just in time for her to perform the memorial concert for Professor X. We get our first introduction of Valerie Cooper as she shows up to arrest the Friends of Humanity punks. Wolverine though is suspicious about an agent named Denti, I wonder what that’s all about. 

Wish we got more of Wolverine and Cyclops fighting…

The rest of the issue pertains to more struggles of leadership as well as Jean unable to get some time alone with Cyclops to let him know she’s pregnant. Storm can obviously sense there is something wrong with Jean and opts to stay behind instead of going to see Dazzler perform. Jubilee ends up taking Bishop while Storm goes to comfort Jean. 

Absolutely loved the fact that Wolverine and Cyclops go head to head and fight. They clearly have a bone to pick with each other, I just wish we got to see more of it. Cut to the performance of Dazzler and we encounter another group trying to take her down or kidnap her. Luckily the X-Men are there, Bishop, Jubilee, Rogue and Gambit all spring into action to help out Dazzler. They end up getting away and we find out they were working for Mister Sinister. Who then punishes them for trying to apprehend Dazzler in such a public space. 

Mister Sinister ends with saying he needs to enlist some new help. Who will it be?...

Overall 4 / 5

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Why Free Downloads?

A couple months ago I started sharing my work on Threads. Surprisingly it’s been getting a lot of engagement compared to its forefather, Instagram. At the moment there are countless creators  voicing their concerns about engagement being really low. Not to mention Instagram saying that they’re going to support their smaller content creators has really irked some of those who have spent time building their large followings.

Though honestly for me, my accounts have sucked for the past year since I was posting heavily about cannabis, whether it would be educational or not. It was always to talk about our app Chronicle in some way. However a lot of my posts were against their policy. I kept getting notifications from Instagram to take down content or risk being in violation and having my account no longer be shown to non-followers. Countless times I would be wondering why my engagement falls off only to see there are recommendations from Instagram on taking down content that has cannabis in it.

If you want to view the full branding profile check it out here

So with all of that happening and getting burnt out from trying new ways to create canna and Chronicle content and failing. I made the conscious decision of removing cannabis from my content strategy. With that came Coffee and Comics. Coffee and comics is an evolution of the original logo I created over a year ago; coffee, cannabis, and comics. Funny thing is, as I worked on this I realized I liked it so much more. A lot of things were fixed that I didn’t like in the original; for instance like the negative spacing in between the words. Then I was able to keep it to two “brand” marks within the whole logo, which is the coffee cup in the C and then the superhero in the O.

Which leads me to the free downloads on my website. While on Threads I started to engage with the comic community while at the same time X-Men ‘97 was premiering on Disney+. Over the course of a couple weeks I noticed that a lot of people were getting upset because other accounts were posting spoilers and they hadn’t watched the episode yet. So I thought I could jump in on this and help out with providing a variety of spoiler images that people could use in their posts as alerts to their audience.

The community responded positively by engaging with it, thus making it the post with the highest engagement on my account. People were thankful, others were joining in on the discussion if you should be posting spoilers in the first place. I wanted to point out though that there are accounts that are monetizing and trying to be the first one out there; so I get it and you’re not gonna be able to stop those people but maybe we can educate them with some best practices so those who don’t want to be spoiled can scroll right past.

You can download this Cable inspired wallpaper here

Analyzing all the engagement on my Threads posts, I started to think OK how can I start converting all of these engagements into leads on my website. What I decided on was wallpapers for mobile phones customized with an X-Men theme. The response to this was the same as the spoiler images: people loved them, shared them over and over. Once again, it became one of my highest engaged posts. 

What I would do is post an image of a mock up of one of the wallpapers. Let that kind of make its way around with people liking it and sharing it, then I would follow up by posting a link to my website. The other point of this was from and SEO perspective. Now I’m not an expert in SEO,  I’m just a designer, but I wanted to see how I can start getting more leads to my website. So by making things free, anyone that is searching for free X-Men related items will hopefully see my posts and I can begging to capture that audience.

Now you might say, “OK so what’s the point? Why? What are you doing with all this traffic?”

Well there’s a couple reasons for that one. I eventually want to start a coffee & comic shop here in my town outside of Denver. So by tackling and taking over all the coffee and comic content in my area, I can start gathering traffic to the website for when we do open.

Hopefully coming to fruition in the next year or so.

By directing people to the free downloads, I’m hoping to encourage them to make purchase. I want to provide just a few items that people can purchase like stickers, a tote bag, maybe even some coffee mugs. These are all things that I’m experimenting with as I am creating them by hand to save on costs.

Then the third reason is just to try to get subscribers to my blog. The blog is going to be another way to capture an audience and try to bring them along on the journey for starting up this coffee and comic shop. Sharing my experience of what’s going on, how I’m doing it all and honestly just being a sort of journal in which I can hold myself accountable on certain things. Plus serve as a place to air out some ideas or frustrations that I’m having and try to brainstorm with my community solutions.

Storm is my current background, which one is your favorite?

At the moment, my free downloads is the highest viewed page on my website and traffic has grown over 3000% in the past month alone. So now you’re probably thinking, “How can you keep this going?” Well it’s pretty simple, make more wallpapers, share more free downloads and just keep the momentum going, it’s not about getting burnt out. It’s about fun and not some immediate deadline. A part of that has to be the comic community I have encountered on Threads, being engaged with such a passionate group really helps keep me going.

X-Men '97 | Tolerance Is Extinction - Part 3

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Wow. Wow. Wow.

I honestly didn’t think we’d get something this awesome for a season finale. It was so damn good. I figured I would write a blog post and get my thoughts out without spoiling it for people on Threads that are just checking their feed in the morning. So if you’re here and haven’t watched the final episode of Tolerance is Extinction, turn around now! If you have, let’s discuss.

I really liked how in the last post I did a “burst” of first thoughts that came to mind of the episode, so let’s do that!

• Seeing Professor X and Magneto as their younger selves?! 

• Portrayal of Magneto’s mind was creative

• Prof X Mind Hijack was sickkkk

• Love the cameos, done very tastefully and not just thrown in

• “How’s your mommy Sebastion?” LOL!

• Phoenix! Hell yeah!

• Bastion character design and evolution looked badass

• Cyclops & Jean farewell, so heartfelt

• Cyclops tearing up after saying bye

• The X-Men are dead?!

• Bishop! Where you been man?!

Phew lots to take in and quite frankly I’m sure I’ll be rewatching this episode over and over. 

Loved seeing them discover being mutants

I felt like all of the cameos we saw were in great taste and nothing like, “oh that was stupid” type of cameos we are so used to getting in some MCU movies. The creative ways they go about portraying mind, emotions and conflict have been so cool to see and experience. For instance the way they make Magneto’s mind an enclosed area taking on water. That was dope. 

I was not sure what was going to happen here.

The entire evolution and the reasoning for Sebastion was very well done. The actual character design when he evolves after taking on Cable’s arm was clean and not some ridiculous looking design.

Great variety of awesome cameos like this one of Pyslocke.

Here are my favorite parts of the show. Feel free to use these screenshots for your posts just be sure to also include spoilers if you are posting early. You can get those here and here.

Iron Man and Captain America show up briefly!

Daredevil looks sick!

Black Panther!!!!!!

Doctor Stranger, why aren’t you fighting??

All really great cameos that I was extremely pumped about seeing. I want more hahaha.

The goodbye from Scott to Cable was another good emotional scene that offered closure and really spoke to me.

Emotionssss

Cyclops fighting after saying goodbye to his son, feelings

How’s your mommy Sebastion?” LOL

This was pretty epic

Once we cut to the board showing the missing X-Men I had no clue what was going to happen.

The X-Men are gone..

Bishop!

Hell yeah! Bishop is back, but what is going on? The X-Men are lost in time??

Apocalypse is coming

One cameo I did not expect at all. Apocalypse is coming.

Can’t wait for the next season.

Overall 5 / 5

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X-Men '97 | Tolerance Is Extinction - Part 2

This is my first time writing a blog post about a show because holy fuck that was amazing. It’s currently 2:18 am and I’m in bed still processing what I just watched. I figured I would write a blog post and get my thoughts out without spoiling it for people on Threads that are just checking their feed in the morning. This way, if anyone wants to read ahead they can!

Ok, so gun to my head these are the first thoughts that come to mind of the episode!

• HULK! Fuck yeah that was so awesome to see him!

• Did NOT expect Roberto/Sunspot to join Magneto and Rogue

• The old suits fucking SLAP!

• Saw Wolverine in yellow & brown in WWIII yesterday, now in animation, wow

• HOLY FUCK MAGNETO DID THAT!

Ok, Ok let’s take a deep breath. That was AMAZING! Like many other millenials I grew up watching all the X-Men movies produced by Fox and the reign that Hugh Jackman has over Wolverine. Though I did not watch the animated show growing up nor was I into comics or superheros as a kid. I was a Dragon Ball Z kid growing up, so what am I getting at?

Well all of this is extremely new to me. The show runner Beau De Mayo, recommended reading a certain comic issue called Fatal Attractions in which Magneto removes the adamantium from Wolverine’s skeleton. I sure am glad I didn’t do that because watching it without knowing that was absolutely epic. “This feud is over.” CHILLS.

First off, absolutely loveeee the new outfit for Storm and finally see a good still of it since it seems like Storm has been flying around for what seems like a whole episode.

Storm is serving up looks this episode.

The episode starts off with the human sentinels continuing to threat the mutant population. Storm and Forge arrive to help out Jubilee and Roberto/Sunspot. Professor X surveys the destruction and chaos at the mansion, including his hoverchair that leaves him to use a wheelchair to move around.

Magneto looks so badass confronting the X-Men

During the time that the X-Men are figuring out what to do, Magneto is lifting a giant ass asteroid out of the ground and seems to want to use it as a weapon. The Master of Magnetism confronts Professor X and the X-Men at the mansion and pretty much says enough is enough, join him.

I did not see this coming!

To my surprise, Roberto/Sunspot joins. I totally saw Rogue joining not Roberto, but after the treatment he received from his own mother, I can see why.

Jubilee going back to her original black jumpsuit just fits

The X-Men retreat to a new base and gear up to go take on Bastion. We get a glimpse at some of the original X-Men suits, like Wolverine’s yellow and brown getup. While one team confronts Bastion, another team heads to fend off Magneto and talk some sense into him.

Hulk Smash! Morph Smash*

When the team takes on Bastion and his army of sentinels, Morph turns into Hulk and Morph Smashes! Haha that was awesome to see.

HULK BABY! Great “cameo”

Both teams are struggling to get their objectives complete. Storm and Forge are blasted out of the air by Sentinels. Magneto is holding off Professor X but not for long as Wolverine gets his helmet off for Professor X to take control.

I felt like this was the climax of the show.

We get some awesome sequences of Wolverine fighting Magneto, removing the helmet, stabbing Magneto, then Professor X using his mutant powers to over power Magneto.

This was such a sick sequence!

But at that moment Cyclops blasts Professor X because Gold team still needs time to complete their objective. However this was a horrible decision because Magneto goes super saiyan and puts his helmet on Xavier’s head and proceeds to crush it.

Oh man, I was at the edge of my seat here.

I got some major “Krillin’ is about to be exploded by Freiza” vibes when I saw this still of Wolverine. It was a look of helplessness. Brutal.

Fun fact, this scene of Krillin is tattooed right by armpit, ouch

But as Magneto is torturing Xavier, Wolverine comes up behind him and SLICE, the sextuple puncture wound, as Deadpool would call it. Magneto is stabbed by Wolverine but just as we thought things would settle down, Magneto turns around and RIPS the adamantium from Wolverine’s skeleton! FUCKKKK.

Can’t wait for the next episode.

Overall 5 / 5

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