X-Men: The Animated Series - When Came the Apocalypse

 

This week, I'm looking at two episodes from X-Men: The Animated Series' debut season that eclipse two big-budget Fox films with similar plots.

And, hey, looks like two sections didn't survive someone's final edit in the actual article...

HEY, I KNOW THAT VOICE 

Apocalypse is voiced by John Colicos, the actor who played the first ever Klingon on Star Trek, Commander Kor. He's the perfect actor to deliver baroque lines like, "I am the rocks of the eternal shore. Crash against me and be broken!"

APPROVED BY BROADCAST STANDARDS & PRACTICES

Comics fans know that Angel became Death Angel after his encounter with Apocalypse, only adopting the name Archangel after yet another X-event, "Inferno." Archangel was undoubtedly a friendlier name for the censors, though.

And since comments on articles have disappeared in the past, here's showrunner Eric Lewald's kind response to the article...

'Thanks to Mr. Kendall for his insightful article. He is right about that these episodes were conceived as a two-parter and that we were guilty as charged about a few bits of "dodgy continuity." When Mark Edens and I laid out the first season of X-MEN:TAS, we were working very fast and were told simply to "try to keep as close to the spirit of the books" as we could. At the same time, X-Men superfan producer-director Larry Houston was starting to populate the backgrounds and corners of episodes with cameos/easter-eggs of X-Men-world characters. During the "Slave Island" episode, we writers had asked simply to have "a dozen enslaved mutants in the background" and, to the fans delight, Larry loaded this and other episodes with recognizable X-characters -- not necessarily checking how we might be using some of them (like Mystique) in later episodes, like these two, where she was a principal guest character. None of us caught this at the time. The same holds true with Angle/Archangel. Since we had the fun of having him "meet" the X-Men in season one, years later we should have left him out of the early-team-photo-like memories. And yes, our focus here was simple: tell the most compelling Rogue story we could while introducing two new major characters (Angel and Apocalypse). Character first. ERIC LEWALD"