X-Men: Evolution - Continued

Statement of Purpose

I loved this show.

To be more general, I loved the X-Men. Still do. The Chris Claremont/Paul Smith era was my entry into superhero comics back in the mid-80s after starting out on licensed books for Star Wars, Transformers and GI Joe. I was hooked from the first issue (a story about Kitty Pryde breaking into the Baxter Building to steal a device to save Colossus with while Storm and Wolverine take on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants); it was the gateway drug into Spider-Man and the rest of the Marvel Universe for me. But it always came back to the X-Men.

And though it may sound like heresy to some, X-Men: Evolution is my favorite incarnation of the franchise.

On the surface it sounded extremely cynical – take the well-known characters and turn them into teenagers in order to make a naked play for that demographic under the assumption that teenage viewers can only relate to characters their age.

And yet in many ways it allowed the series to make what was great about the franchise great again, distilling elements of the by-then sprawling X-Men mythos into a coherent whole and focus on the characters core attributes without the minutiae of years of soap opera like personality transformations. It realized what the talents by the X-Men films and future animated series would as well: that it was possible, even desirable, to remain true to the spirit of the X-Men without slavishly repeating every plot point which had ever been printed in a medium where 22 pages of story have to go out the door every month, warts and all. Cyclops' parents do not have to leave Earth and become space pirates for Cyclops to remain Cyclops. Apocalypse does not have to be locked in a never ending battle with Cable for his appearance to still have weight and menace. Rogues could be a potential spoiler in the Scott/Jean romance and heighten the drama surrounding it rather than letting things play out as they always had. The realization that the ways things have been don't necessarily have anything to do with the way things will be. What could be more fundamental to the X-Men than that?

Like a lot of things, particularly in animation where longevity is not the rule, it was too good to last. The team behind the show – writers Greg Johnson, Craig Kyle and Chris Yost, producer Boyd Kirkland and character designer and director Steven E Gordon – wrapped up as much of the series as possible with little notice but for a series with as many strands as X-Men: Evolution liked to weave it was inevitable that not everything could be put to rest. Was Apocalypse gone for good? Would Magneto and the Brotherhood turn over a new leaf? Would Rogue and Nightcrawler ever forgive Mystique? Would Professor's Xavier's insane son ever return?

All that is left are the fragmentary images the writers and producers included at the end of the final episode along with whatever information can be gleaned from the handful of character designs and interviews which have appeared since the show went off the air. The events immediately following the final season are the easiest to make a guess about as season 5 was in planning when word came down that the fourth season would be the last – it was to have focused on the Dark Phoenix storyline with the Hellfire Club making its first appearance (based on released character designs for the XM:E version of Emma Frost) along with an Evolution-ized Psylocke. The ending montage of the final episode gives some hint as to how that story was destined to end.

After that it gets a bit hairier – Magneto does indeed turn his back on his old life and comes to the institute as a teacher, which means there must be a need for him there for old animosities to be put aside. The Sentinel's also return worse than before, including feared future Sentinel supreme Nimrod who is attached directly to the classic 'Days of Future Past' dark future which means some version of the events of that story must lie in wait as well.

Every so often over the years those ideas of what was and what could have been appeared and reappeared until they became a little maddening. Eventually there was no choice.

My aim is to create a continuation of X-Men: Evolution using the ideas I believe were going to go into it, tied together as logically as possible and filled in with a greater degree of characterization and character development than can be placed in 22-minute animated episodes, but always in line with what they were like on the show. It will use the characters as they were used in the show, irrespective of how they may have been used in other media, with regard to the original producers and writer's ideas for how they would develop. X-Men: Evolution is about the X-Men, there are no favorites here and everyone has a role to play in the story to come, albeit some more so than others.

Some of the stuff in here you will definitely recognize. Some of it will be very much a surprise. Hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Disclaimer: X-Men: Evolution, X-Men and all associated characters and ideas are the property of Marvel Entertainment. I claim no ownership through this story.