Sunday, October 31, 2004

Happy Halloween/Dias del los Muertos / Cartoon Chronicles: Super Madness #10

I'm surprised all that could fit in the subject line. So it's Halloween. What am I doing? I'm dressed up like Bishop from the X-Men (I painted an "M" over my eye and I'm wearing leather and carrying a plastic gun) and passing out candy to kids at the door. It's also Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Mexico. For those of you who don't know, it's a November 1st holiday when you honor those close to you who have passed on. For little kids, it means playing with toy skeletons and eating sugar candy-skulls. Speaking of my X-Men costume, it's time for tonight's Chronicle... X-Men Now, Phoenix, you and I are one! *faint* So imagine you're 13, you wake up one day, and you're different. Puberty aside, let's say you found out you could shoot fireworks out of your fingertips. Right. Now imagine there are thousands of teens and adults just like you, only with different powers, and society hates you. In fact, they hate you so much, giant anime-style robots are hunting you down for sport. The same thing happened to a girl named Jubilee. Lucky for her, she was rescued by the X-Men, a team of mutants who use their powers to protect their own kind, and humans alike. Their goal: a peaceful co-existence. The team is lead by Cyclops, a man who shoots a concussive energy from his eyes; and Storm, a woman who can control the weather. This was one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons during the 1990s, and (obviously) one of my favorite superhero teams (up yours, Avengers!). The show was pretty interesting. You got to know a cast of weird yet angst-ridden characters who were torn between their jobs of saving a planet that hates them, and their own screwed-up personal lives. Somewhere between saving millions of lives and preventing a holocaust, a sticky love triangle developed between Cyclops, Jean "Marvel Girl" Grey, and Wolverine. Speaking of Jean Grey, that woman fainted everytime she used her powers. I can understand fainting when she became one with a cosmic entity, but she collapsed everytime she lifted a pencil. There were also frequent, confusing time-travelers teaming up with them to prevent the future from going down the crapper; they include a man named Bishop and Cyclops' own son, Cable. Would I recommend it? Yep. Of course. It's in my top 10, for goodness sake. And that's the end of the Super Madness portion of the Cartoon Chronicles. What subgenre of animation will I cover next? Not even I know. Much Love Fright

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