Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: "The X-men Adventure" (1983)
X-Friends: Go For It!!

Okay...just for you kiddos who are enamored with the recent DVD release of the early 90's FOX X-men cartoon. It's time to look back at 1983 and their pseudo "pilot episode".

After appearances in the Iceman and Firestar "origin" episodes of "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends", the X-men finally got their own special episode. The team is a little curious, as it's Prof. X, Storm, Cyclops, Colossus, Sprite (Kitty Pryde), Nightcrawler and...Thunderbird?! He's completely random. It's essentially the 1981-1984 team, sans Wolverine. But Wolvie was a completely useless putz in his only 80's Marvel TV appearance (Juggernaut tossed him into a wall and he got his claws stuck).

The X-men are down in their basement, playing in the Danger Room, when a cyborg guy named "Cyberiad" (who looks a LOT like the Legion of Super-Heroes' baddie, Tharok) lands in the attic and takes over the mansion. Thus, the heroes have to run through all the various traps of the X-mansion. Weird, as the mansion doesn't seem THAT threatening... mostly rooms with collapsing steel walls. But there's something called "The Maze of Madness" right below the attic. It's basically a portal in a late 60's Steve Ditko "Dr. Strange" comic.

X-men enter the Ditko-verse

The story centers around Firestar and her past romance with Cyberiad's human half. In a flashback, we see how he had exactly 1/2 of his body exposed to "Anti-matter" and completely blackened. The flashback also includes a cameo by AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics). In the present, the action isn't much to get excited over. In fact, it's quite stupid. The heroes split into teams of three and wander around the house. Iceman and his crew even manage to make a stop-off in the kitchen....because you should always make yourself a sammich before figthing evil cyborg supervillains. So the entire appeal of this episode is seeing the X-men run around. They make use of the names "Kitty", "Scott", "Piotr" and "Kurt"...which gives off the vibe that the X-men have their own chronology going on. Kitty's even a little enamored with Colossus.

Firestar checks on Tharok...errr, "Cyberiad"

Thunderbird's kinda' weird, as he suddenly has the ability to change into a giant bear. Even Iceman says: "wow..I didn't know you could do that". But this X-men team already had the Obligatory Strong Guy in Collossus, so you can see why Thunderbird woulda' been redundant. Thunderbird, to me, was probably the biggest enigma of the "All-New All-Different" X-men over in the comics. I know they've tried to develop his past more over the past 30 years, with his younger brother Warpath...but the original character was always a "huh?" moment to me. Same for Sunfire. The two are just big trivia questions. Their exclusion had a lot to do with the comic writing chores changing from Len Wein to Chris Claremont, but it was still weird.

For more worthless trivia, this was the fourth animated appearance of the X-men. Two previous appearances on "Amazing Friends", plus that weird "International Heroes" appearance on a 60's Sub-Mariner cartoon. I'm not sure if they appeared on the 70's Fantastic Four (w/HERBIE) cartoon. Somewhat noteworthy to mention that Cyclops was the only guy who appeared in all four.

This episode seemed like a primer for a possible spin-off show for the X-men, but it was never to be. At the time, DC Comics was also rumored to be pitching a Teen Titans cartoon to ABC, so it was entirely reasonable that Marvel would be doing the same to NBC. But for whatever reason, the X-men spinoff never materialized. I'd assume that the Marvel/Sunbow studios got bogged down with more work (and a bigger paycheck) doing GI Joe and Transformers cartoons the very next year. Marvel eventually created an X-men pilot, though. Circa 1987 when they produced Pryde of the X-Men. It's been over twenty years and I STILL haven't seen that thing. Although I remember an enthusiastic article covering it, in a comics magazine around 1988.

Really, this "Amazing Friends" episode piqued a lot of young kids' curiosities and probably helped sell a bunch of "Uncanny X-men" comics. I was one of those kids... so I went out to Safeway and picked up a random issue of X-men. Specifically The Uncanny X-Men #169, which proceeded to scare the living shit out of me. It featured the Morlocks kidnapping Angel, then tying him up in his underwear so Callisto could clip his wings off and have her own little playtoy. Creepy.

No word on if this show will ever get the DVD treament. Although it sometimes pops up on the cable channel "Toon Disney/"Disney XD", along with pretty much every other Marvel cartoon from the 80's and 90's. In the meantime, if you're a completionist, you might want to drop a few bucks and get it on VHS (with a subsequent home DVD conversion). But here's hoping that "Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends" (along with the syndicated 1981 solo Spidey series) eventually makes it to DVD. The show was amazingly and spectacularly goofy, but was an innocent tour of early 80's Marvel Comics.

Additional info on "Amazing Friends" can be found at: www.Spider-Friends.com

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