angelophile | Wolverine and the X-men Episode 7

This icon comes Paul Cornell approved. Huzzah!

And now onto the weekly Wolverine and the X-men review. It's pretty much the only show I'm bothering with regularly, at the moment, so I think I'll keep these up. A little late this week as the download didn't show up until I got busy with RL. More on that later.

For now, on with the review. Spoilers lurk beneath the cut.

For a second I thought I'd stumbled across a cartoon version of Dog Soldiers, but with more snow. But alas, there is no Spoon.

Instead there's Hulk. Come on guys, all he wanted was a brief skiing holiday and then a bunch of pesky moose hunters turned up and ruined everything. I'd be cranky too.

What happens to a Wolverine when it gets struck by lightning? An action packed opening, apparently. I do have to wonder how many more times we're going to see Wolverine taking down small armies single handedly though. Yes, we get it. He's tough. Now give someone else a turn.

And hello Nick. Now, the first thing to say is "Hello Nick. If you could call off mutant hunters, any chance you could have done that before they started rounding us up?" That said, Nick's looking good. I approve of the blend of Ultimate and 616 in his design. No Samuel L. Jackson clones here. That said, again, SHIELD now have the silliest uniforms I think I've ever seen. What the hell is with that?

Furydickery. Hrm. That sounds like Ultimate Fury. The real Nick would have just pointed out mutants aiding SHIELD would be good PR, aid their cause and he'd probably explain this while riding a rocket powered motorcycle through a window and kicking someone in the teeth.

Hmm, maybe it's Dog Soldiers after all.

With the Hulk. Man, I hope he's not just horny like the story just posted on Scans_Daily. Seeing Wolverine buggered to death is something I'd expect from a Warren Ellis comic, not here.

"Hulk remember you! Why little man not have whiskers on outfit any more? Hulk think they look cool!"

"All Hulk wanted was a hug!" As battles go, this is lacking a certain something. I don't quite see why this pairing crops up so often. Wolverine and Hulk doesn't make for particularly strong visuals unless you resort to gore. Otherwise it's just some little guy ineffectually bouncing at a big guy and getting tossed around.

Okay, THAT was kinda badass. But strangely lame at the same time.

Banner looks a bit young. Hrm. In this case I'm not sure the shaving off year works, like it does with Forge. He looks more like a Hulked up Rick Jones. Can't say that does much for me.

And again, some further SHIELD dickery. Although, admittedly, the regularity Banner gets tossed out of helicopters as a secret weapon these days is getting kind of comical, I'm not sure I approve of SHIELD being assholes in the cartoon universe too. Isn't it enough they've been thoroughly screwed over everywhere else?

OH SHIT, IT'S A RABID GOAT!

Yeah, that's a crappy Wendigo design.

"Its bite must have affected other people!" Yeah, either that of the Wendigo's been getting jiggy with it.

Have I mentioned I think the Wendig design is really crap? Yeah, it's really crap.

hee! Logan made a funny! .... Yeah, stop that.

"Hulk not a behind!" Okay, I admit it. I LOLed.

Okay, I also admit I'm starting to get amused by the sight of Wolverine being dangled by his head. And Hulk's expressions there were adorable.

Dawwww, he looks so sad. :(

And Fury really is a dick. Impressive that they took such a good character and made him even less likable than the Ultimates version. there's pretty much nothing to recommend the character at all, apart from his decent design. To the point where the ending amuses and entertains me. Just sad to see a decent character screwed over for plot and punchline.

In conclusion:

Where the hell was Alpha Flight?

In other conclusions: A light and fluffy filler episode with weak Wendigo designs but some excellent animation on the Hulk. However, we're only seven episodes into the series and there's a large number of X-men characters who haven't appeared or, when they have, have hardly had any screen time. After a solo Kurt story last week, the placement of this episode seems awkward and a little later in the series when we've had the chance to catch up with the other main characters would have been better served.

And more Pyro and Boom Boom plz.

But, as the episode goes, it was light and occasionally amusing, but the repeated "the government and military are all evil" mantra is starting to wear, slightly. It would have been nice if Fury hadn't been such a total dickwad.

In a word: harmless.

Rating - ***