The Greatest Cartoon Ever: The Beginning Of My Comic Addiction

Now a lot of people will disagree with me very strongly. That's okay. I know the truth, and that is the only opinion on this subject that really matters to me. The Simpsons is the original favorite. Family Guy is funny as all hell. Batman The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited are going to be called the best superhero cartoons ever. My favorite may not be on many people's lists. Well, that should change. What is it you ask? Well this is the part I love: X-Men: The Animated Series.

I watched the first episode after having only heard of them through my neighbor. He was a casual reader, and his small collection had me interested enough to watch this TV show he told me about. The first show premiered and I was stunned. I can still remember watching Rogue fly for the first time, Wolverine popping his claws, Morph dead, Beast taken out of the equation entirely for a long while, and the Sentinels chasing Jubilee. It was some of the coolest shit I have ever seen on television. Every week I could not miss this show. Comic books became a regular of mine, but I was pretty young, so my money and collection were limited. I started with the first five issues of X-Men and a few issues of Uncanny from the local comic book store. I still have the original copies of them all, and have read each of the issues dozens of times. The stories were better than the show. I have heard people say the show ruined a lot of what the X-Men stood for and ruined a lot of old stories by trying to retell them. Sure the retold animated shows were corny and didn't quite fit the mold of the originals, mainly because the characters were different, but I saw it as retelling them for the new audience to get involved. My first time hearing about Phoenix, Shi'ar, the Morlocks, Sabretooth, X-Factor, Cable, etc were all from the show. This got me interested to go and pick up the comic books, something that has come and gone many times. But I got back into for good with Grant's New X-Men. And boy did it ever start something.

Now my collection is probably not as impressive as you may think, but in some form or another, I own or have read all of the big stories, and am still learning things that I didn't really know much about, if only small plotlines. I am not completely on the jocks of these superheroes, as I recognize the low points very much so (Maggott? Jubilee? X-Babies? Bringing back dead characters... All for example...). Stan Lee is a genius for what he has done with Marvel. He created them. Chris owned them. Grant, Joss, and company are perfecting them. And the art has had some of the most impressive in the business: Alan Davis, Adam Kubert, Joe Madureira, Chris Bachelo, John Cassaday, Jim Lee, Frank Quitley, Salvodor Larocca, and many, many others have come along the long ride to lend their talents and visions of these mutants. And the X-Men was just a stepping stone to all else in the comic world to me: Batman (which was the first exposure I got thanks to the movies), Justice League, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Superman, Avengers, the Ulimate Marvel line, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Watchmen, Hulk, among others. What an inventive culture we have here.

In, conclusion, I hope that you have a story like this to tell or something like this in the back of your mind to look back and remember how great it was to discover and read your favorite comics. And I will forever stand by X-Men: The Animated Series as the greatest cartoon to ever grace a television, for it started a love for the greatest superheroes the world has ever seen.