In a fit of nostalgia I recently watched some episodes of 1990’s animated superhero cartoons: Batman the Animated Series (1992) and X-Men the Animated Series (also 1992). I might write about both at more length in the future but I was struck by something.
In almost all regards, Batman was much better. It had a distinct style and was nicely animated with great use of music. The voice acting was excellent. In contrast, I’d forgotten how poor much of the animation was on the X-Men cartoon (at least the earlier episode, maybe it got better). Backgrounds in particular are often very rough sketches and characters are drawn inconsistently.
Yet, of the two, the X-Men series drew me in a lot quicker. This was wholly due to the greater emphasis on serial story telling. The Batman episodes were largely wholly stand alone stories (until the two parter with Two-Face’s origin story). The X-men episodes while trying to rush through as much of the X-back catalogue, treated each episode as the continuation of the last one, even when it was essentially a one off story.
The oddness here is where at any given moment, Batman looks less dated (partly by being intentionally evocative of the past), the X-Men cartoon feels more like modern TV. Batman the Animated Series was still mindful that a TV channel might show episodes in any order and that viewers might not be able to see a continuous story as in the order it was intended. The X-Men episodes are still very episodic but everything is geared towards not missing an episode.
Camestros Felapton 
30 responses to “Batman versus the X-Men”
I really enjoyed the X-Men series but BTAS was a big leap upward in style and particularly voice talent.
You might try watching Mark Hamill as the Trickster in the John Wesley Shipp Flash series sometime. After BTAS it looks very much like a dry run for his Joker.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I remember seeing some of that Flash series when it was out. I remember it being OK.
LikeLike
I liked it a lot. It was the first live-action superhero show since Batman that cheerfully embraced the genre rather than trying to keep things realistic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mark Hamill had a turn as a version of the Trickster in the new Flash series also. (And Shipp of course has had several recurring roles on it.)
LikeLike
My memory says that X-Men Evolution was the best of the X-Men stuff, but it was a kind of weird one with all of them as teenagers, but Wolverine and Storm as teachers.
LikeLike
I don’t think I ever saw that
LikeLike
I watched that once or twice. Can’t say it worked for me.
LikeLike
I did, however, enjoy Wolverine and the X-Men, which has Professor X trapped in a Sentinel-ruled future and the other X-Men trying to prevent it in the present.
LikeLike
Interesting point. I watched B:TAS from time to time, but I watched X-Men as appointment TV (probably due to the serialization factor). Both series are still influential, I think – B:TAS introduced the character of Harley Quinn, and the X-Men cartoon is iconic enough that the Ms Marvel series included a snippet of the theme music just to tease the fans.
Agree with Fraserman about the 1990 Flash series and Mark Hamill. Good stuff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think the recent Doctor Strange movie used the tune as well
LikeLike
As a viewer: continuity is caring. Any series that presses reset at the end of every episode is automatically of lesser quality than a series with continuity, because the showrunner cares about money in the first kind and cares about the story in the second.
We know this is not true, of course. But that’s how it feels.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Personally I don’t have any such feeling unless I had been under the impression that this was going to have an ongoing story. If it’s just not that kind of show, then I would only think “they don’t care about story” if the story within the episode was lacking.
Everyone’s different of course, but I don’t see any reason to assume that viewers in general can’t enjoy a show of single-episode stories. That’s been a standard form for a lot of comedies and police/mystery dramas for a long time.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I do sometimes feel, like Cam said, that a serialized story will draw me in faster– if “draw me in” means “make me want to watch some more episodes ASAP, instead of just coming back to it whenever.” The feeling of wanting to know what comes next, and not wanting to delay and forget what happened before, is strong. But to me that’s not related to a quality judgment or a feeling that the creators did or didn’t care. I’ve seen plenty of serialized stuff where I stuck around to find out what happened but also felt like the creators did not care about the story, like the overall shape was arbitrary and they were just making up cliffhangers.
LikeLiked by 2 people
To me, continuity means having to watch the whole series, not just a single show. I’m enjoying a lot of classic series now, and some of them do have lives that progress as it unfolds, but not in such a way that I’m kneecapped by not knowing that when Ensign X glances at the empty spot on the panel wall, we’re getting a gut punch because of episodes 17, 19-21, and 34. Ow.
I watched enough Buffy in the first season to know that I’d enjoy it, and also that if I didn’t make a space every week at the same time for it, I’d miss out in some way, so I never watched any more, and picked and chose which shows I’d even look in on. I can only make but so many commitments, even with streaming. TV, to quote myself, is a vast wonderland, and there’s not enough time in a day to even check in on on the very best of the best. So I don’t even try.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It seems simple to me. If there is some sense of an ongoing story (and I mean that quite broadly, not just in terms of plot arcs) and you care about it or the characters, you want to see what happens next. But you can only get that from some degree of continuity. Shows without any continuity can only offer “more like that”.
LikeLike
“More like that” is good enough if “that” is good enough.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Even when the “More like that” is good enough, you can hit a point where you’ve ingested enough individual samples if you try to watch it like we watch shows with arcs.
In the days when tv shows were shown once, or maybe popped up again in syndication, episode of the week shows were comfortable because on the one hand, you couldn’t guarantee being there every week, and on the other, if you’re flipping through channels or looking at the tv guide, and you see Hogan’s Heroes or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. or Get Smart or whatnot, and you’re in the mood for that show, you aren’t worrying about whether you’ll be in the middle of a storyline you care about, because you won’t. You’ll get the complete experience you’re looking for.
(And even those shows changed. Man from U.N.C.L.E. tried to be more serious at the start and in the last season, but got goofy in the middle to try and catch up with Get Smart viewers. Get Smart’s later episodes involved trying to spy and keep a family while early Get Smart, Maxwell and 99 were lightly flirting. Even in Hogan’s Heroes, which stayed the nearest to the same, the things that Hans Schulz said “I Know Nothing” about got more and more strained and his aiding and abetting less deniable, and the departures from camp more and more extended.)
Of course, by the time I was watching shows, syndication got more reliable and video tapes meant people recorded shows, then pre-printed VHS started selling at minimum Sampler episodes and best ofs, with DVDs it became even more possible to collect shows in their completion. Meanwhile, successes like Babylon 5 started changing the habits of US TV makers*, and all those meant more and more shows had more and more arc. And now, with the leisure to sample almost anything at almost any pace**, we can much more earnestly debate whether tv was better or worse in arcs, because there’s no longer barriers to actually encountering the whole arc.
* I am aware that arc shows happened more in some other countries pre-B5
** That almost is still carrying a lot of weight… Some shows, I’m still sad don’t have more complete collections. We don’t need every single early Sesame Street Episode because so many segments repeat, but having a sample set of one per year, which is how they did Old School, was a bit TOO Few. And new SS is not wholly the same show.
LikeLike
I rarely binge anything. Pacing it out keeps me from becoming too conscious of individual writers’ tropes and pet shticks.
One downside to arcs is that they’re much less satisfying if things go wrong. A single episode/comic book that doesn’t stick the landing is bad but not as bad as a big, multi-issue/episode arc that turns to suck.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The show credited with introducing the concept and term “arc” was “Wiseguy” in the mid-late 80s. They had a couple of arcs a year. It was very good; the lead was, a, um, limited talent, but the guest stars and such were great (Look it up, kids).
I just can’t watch new SS. Sometimes literally because I don’t have HBO, and just because it doesn’t feel right whenever do I see it.
And as regards viewers liking stand-alone episodes… how long has “Law and Order” been on? Sam Waterston’s even still in it! (I guess he’s the continuity)
BTAS was always better to me, the quality of animation and voice acting was so superb. I never missed it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wiseguy was terrific.
X-Files also had a huge impact, with Scully and Mulder fighting a conspiracy (and exploring it secrets) over multiple seasons.
LikeLike
Thought Hill Street Blues lead the way there in the US?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hill Street Blues and LA Law both had a serialized structure but Wiseguy had much sharper, more defined story arcs. The first season, for example, had two — one where Vinnie takes down the mobster Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey in his last good role) and then the Profit siblings (Kevin Spacey in his first big role and Joan Severance). I could see the idea taking hold then, or I don’t know if that’s the case.
LikeLike
I’ve never heard of it. Sounds interesting
LikeLike
It was an excellent show.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe for more seasonal arcs, but the tv tropes entry for HSB notes that the network had to tell the writers that they had to wind up at least one story per episode as they often had three or four on the go simultaneously.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That fits with my memory. But with multiple plot strands I can see why it might not feel like story arcs — if it were, soaps had been doing them for years (though one soap opera magazine made a point of arguing HSB was not soap opera).
LikeLike
Wiseguy does sound intriguing certainly. Wonder if it’s streaming anywhere.
The tropes entry makes it sound like it was more like a number of short arcs per season with less overlap. Is that right?
LikeLike
Correct. Wrap up one case, then onto the next. By the standards of TV back then, taking half a season to carry out one undercover operation was radical storytelling.
LikeLike
It did. At the time, it felt like a distinct departure, from the one-day-per-show structure to the soap aspects. And I wasn’t reading 87th Precinct yet, so I didn’t say “Hey…”
LikeLike
Yeah, Wiseguys was a lot of fun – in addition to the Kevin Spacey (Mel Profitt) arc, I seem to recall Jerry Lewis doing a great job in a dramatic role.
LikeLike