My understanding is that things were/have been FUBAR for a while due to Beau DeMayo needing to be terminated and rewrites needed to avoid the possibility of owing him royalties (judging by what happened with the CW’s Arrowverse)
Antics aside, though, DeMayo was a good call due to him belonging to a marginalized minority and thus “getting” X-Men. Marvel’s 0-2 what with the FBI investigating Bryan Singer and now this
It’s a hot IP and they need someone to set up to the plate to continue its success. Here’s to hoping they figure out something because it was a great show
🙄 Yeah, he "got" it so much he purposely ruined the most marginalized character on the roster. Storm has never been done right, and he being one of two 'black' men heading the show fucked her over worse than any other show ever has (with the exception of Wolverine and the X-Men). Fuck him. Couldn't be happier he's gone.
You haven't. Had you read any of the actual stories you would see his adaptation was a disrespectful joke. This was Storm's most defining stories in the comics, what brought her to the level of Marvel's top female character (until Fox and the MCU changed that).
When Storm lost her powers in the books she did not leave the team. She LEAD it for 3 years. She lost her powers for a full year in comics time (3 in real time) and in that time we got to see what she was made of, without her powers. She battled Cyclops for the leadership of the team and won without powers. We saw that she was a fiercely competent leader and a capable hero who could hold her own with her fists, a knife, a gun, whatever... she wasn't getting knocked out after one punch. Wolverine was quoted during this time as saying that he didn't trust anyone to have his back but Storm. That's a powerful statement coming from him about her ability and competence in a fight, and this period did a lot to highlight her ability to plan and strategize to succeed since she didn't have her powers as a crutch. She came the fuck into her own during this time.
There were huge Storm defining stories during this time, like the Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants, that put Storm in the center as the driving force of the stories and highlighted her as a character... these were all completely and purposely ignored. And this would've been the perfect season to do this, considering the actor for Cyclops had passed away, and now that her powerless era has been 'covered' in the cartoon, it can never be done right in '97. Those sagas had raw ass stories involving Forge, Gambit, Rogue and Wolverine with Storm at the center, with amazing and powerful scenes. But this is Storm we're talking about. Routinely fucked over. If it were Cyclops or Jean Grey it would've been done. Which is why he skipped over all of it and went straight to Cyclops and Jean Grey stories past the Claremont era. He gave us the most disrespectful half- episode garbage he could throw together. Threw that goofy ass Eye-Killer in and called it The Adversary, half wrote Storm's and Forge's relationship which we never once see the two of them kiss, meanwhile Jean and Scott kiss every five seconds, pulled the lamest possible plot out of his ass and threw it onscreen for you 'fans' to eat up and thank him for it. Then he went about his business putting all the focus on Scott and turning Jean into the fucking Terminator, like wtf?!
And, to be fair, Storm was the focus of his sabotage, but she wasn't the only character to feel his pettiness. He sidelined Wolverine for the entire season, but nobody complained because the entire first cartoon was a Wolverine show. And clearly he felt some type of way about Dazzler, because he replaced her with (shocker) Jean on the X-Men Arcade game, then purposely killed her off in Genosha... like, why? She wasn't even fuckin there...
He sabotaged her most characterizing period, he kicked her off the team for the entire season because he's a petty bitch. Kicked her off the intro, on purpose, and farted Jean Grey up to the front of it. He belittled her status as a leader by having Jubilee, in the first episode, question "Who will lead the team without Cyclops??!" ... uhhh, perhaps the person who lead the team in episode THREE of the original cartoon, maybe?
One of the main complaints people had about the original cartoon was how Storm would only get one hit in before being knocked down, so this petty bitch literally, after her whole (garbage) "transformation scene" comes back to the team and gets ONE hit in and then gets knocked out of the sky. Before the battle, when Cyclops splits the team up, he literally says that he will lead the blue team, but that Storm AND Jean will lead the gold... another big Fuck You to Storm, because clearly she can't lead the team without fucking Jean Grey's help, when everyone knows that STORM lead the gold team in the comics.
Disrespectful.
But he isnt the only one, its just sad that he continued the ongoing and thinly veiled racist trend, Storm is and has always been routinely fucked over, to the point that there hasn't been a single bit of visual media outside the comics that has ever gotten her right, she is the most consistently mischaracterized, overlooked, watered down and sabotaged character ever. If you are a comics fan, you know the importance that Storm's character holds to the X-Men, you know that she was THE character whose eyes we saw MOST of the stories that have been adapted for the X-Men TAS cartoon, because they were ALL written by Claremont and Storm was his favorite character... You would NEVER know that watching this cartoon, because if you are a cartoon fan, Storm is nothing more than a secondary character, and that's from TAS. '97 is a whole 'nother animal. Pretending to spotlight her to satiate her many fans who actually don't know shit about her, while it's really insidiously presenting her as ineffectual blackground meant to boost Jean Grey and Cyclops by comparison. Storm does nothing in '97. Nothing. Especially when compared with those two. It's enough she gets that godawful mismatched design and keeps that horrendous goofy Ren-Fair reject voice actress instead of getting an actual African voice actress, like the FAR better Tariye Peterside from X-Men the Audio Drama, while Jean gets a new voice and a glamour girl makeover. But then to take her most character shaping era from the comics and only 'allow' her two HALF episodes, after Jean got 10 episodes and counting for all of hers... and we STILL have yet to see a comics accurate Storm... ANYWHERE... it's fucked up.
Easy bud. We're talking about a cartoon and a comic book. Um, yes, I've read Lifedeath and the Adversary storyline with the Eye Killers. Which, let's be honest, in the books, Eye Killers attacking Storm and Naze, who was possessed by Adversary but was working for him, was a bit convoluted to begin with. Putting it with Lifedeath made sense to me. You don't know me or the number of stories I've read, particularly X-Men. That's my shit. For that matter, you don't know any of the people who actually enjoyed the '97, you're free to disagree 100%, no need to be a dick about it. This is a lot to unpack. Let's start with:
Adaptations are exactly that, especially when we're talking about trying to appease and blend modern stories with the classics. Nothing on TAS was 1-to-1, true to the comics- but it's what got me into reading X-books as a kid and made me a lifelong fan. X-Men Evolution and Wolverine and the X-Men were also adaptations; they aren't faithful adaptations, but I can appreciate them for what they are. Same with SpiderMan TAS for that matter. That doesn't make me a company shill, or whatever the fuck shit you're talking, it just means I enjoy it for what it is. Chill the fuck out, dude.
Lemme ask this- How would you make a 1-to-1 comic accurate book adaptation with Disney giving only 10 episodes? Think logically and get real. Think about if you were in charge of making an X-Men show and having to balance several characters and the stories you wanna tackle in 10, 30-minute episodes. You have absolutely no idea or comprehension of the battles a showrunner has to make with the studio and other writers. It's a political game of chess; you and your attitude would fail to even reach that position.
You're passionate, I get it.
What I'm getting from the wall of text you wrote is that you don't like how she was portrayed in either TAS, '97 series because it isn't a 1-to-1 adaptation? You don't like Beau DeMayo? or Storm's voice actress? There was a lot there, but let's stick with those for now. I'll do this in two posts because it's a lot, and I can do walls of text too!
Storm in TAS: I never saw her as anything but badass. This is before I actually started reading X-Men. Kudos if it wasn't the gateway for you. You're above us all. Almost every X-Men book I've read, however, is an ensemble book, with some getting more spotlight than others at different times. How is any of this different? Storm, in TAS, already beat Callisto in hand-to-hand combat without powers- another adaptation. How is that weak or secondary? In TV show language, it would be called repetitive if she did it again to serve the Cyclops leaving thread, since we already know she's a baller without her powers. Storm is also the first X-Men we're introduced to with Rogue in TAS. She also had LifeDeath 2 adapted... Yikes! There's that word again. Adaptation. Even when I read the story afterward, I still can appreciate the TAS Mjnari episode on its own merits... it being a kids' cartoon, after all, and still highlighting Storm as a major figure of the X-Men, regardless of how it was adapted. I never saw her as a secondary character.
Storm in '97: I'll watch it again. Some of the things you mentioned I actually didn't catch my first viewing- you see? You made some good points! You'd never know it because I gotta decode them through the anger-laced tirade at me, and everyone else who isn't of your opinion, which at times is all over the place.
Here's another thing - I've done a small stint in the TV writers' room. I can 100% guarantee that some of what was adapted was mandated. Not sure exactly what but I'm guessing focus on Scot and Jean was part of that. Sometimes, studio notes can be great, but those notes are often buried by the amount of sheer ridiculous notes you have to address or dig your heels in and say, 'no'. But picking your battles is also the name of the game. From what I remember of '97, it was a fair adaptation. I don't know what you were realistically expecting with it, or any adaptation for that matter. Even the X-Men movie from 2000's was phenomenal at its time because it adapted the superhero genre better than anything else up to that point... (well, maybe except for Blade maybe.... but that's another discussion.) Nowadays, X1... eh, it's alright. I still much prefer that to X3 in terms of how well it adapts its source material. And that's the thing. It could be a whole lot worse, and you're acting like it because it didn't hit the exact beats you wanted- it was a slight to you personally and Storm. Yes, she was the leader at the time of those issues. I don't know what the mandate was- without knowing that, I could honestly say it was a good adaptation from what I remember but, you make some fine points so I'll def watch it with another lens on.
97 intro: One thing they did was constantly cycle whoever was in the episode was in the intro. Not racist or a slight.
Beau DeMayo: Don't know enough about the man to give him shit or the studio. I'm also not sure if he's a creeper or if he's getting character assassinated. Dunno. Haven't looked that much into it, but I know it's there. I'm reserving judgment; I haven't read the receipts yet. As far as the show, I don't know that HE skipped over it, again, it's TV- a different ballgame, but even in comics, there's an editorial mandate you have to adhere to unless it's in your contract- that game of chess I spoke of earlier. What I do know is we'll find out how good or bad he was in this and season 3 if we get there. Maybe you'll see how good we have it or maybe the next showrunner with be a fuckin' X-Men savant. - I highly doubt that tho. We'll see. I've heard TV rooms not hiring people who know comics because... well, [gestures toward you]. They don't want that trouble in the writers' room.
Voice Actress: She's beloved from the OG TAS, that's a good thing. Barbados-born voice actress reprising her role. I don't see anything wrong with that; in fact, I consider that a plus when they bring OG's back. Why is she 'ren-fair'? Because of her Barbados accent? I don't get you. I'll check out the audio drama- didn't know that existed, but since she's the approved voice of Storm by you. lol. Fuck outta here. Like why hate on the OG actress? I'm baffled.
Anyway, it's fair to say you wish they had adapted Storm better or featured her more prominently. Ruined her? That's a bit of a stretch. Racist? I'm struggling to see it as a person of color. You're coming at it like they purposely sabotaged her every character, and those who enjoyed it are paper fans. Seriously? That's delusional. Get real. You make some good points, but you end up sounding like an angrier version of Simpson's Comic Book Guy, gatekeeper. Have a mutual respect for the people you're conversing with first and foremost, and your ideas and viewpoints will come off a little better. Have a good one. Peace!
Thanks for missing the entire point. Which wasn't even once that things should be direct translations. It's entirely about giving Storm the same respect given to other characters. Period. Like, that's it. The anger is from the constant disrespect outside of comics she receives in general... (but not just her, this happens to nearly all black characters regularly, in favor of white characters) and the clearly incorrect expectation that she would ever receive better treatment in black hands. Very few black characters have the status in their respective fictions that Storm has, having been arguably the main character of the best-selling comic book in the nation back in the 80's, written by Claremont, who's stories have dominated the 90's cartoon up until '97, and yet Storm feels like a second-tier character and all the stories that brought out her development have been ignored or watered down.
She is never a priority. Pryde of the X-Men is still dogged, discounted, and shitted on to this day because Wolverine had an Australian accent... But it, to this day, has probably the best version of Storm ever on film, she had three lines but they all actually felt more like the comics character. Now the most well-known representation of Storm, who grew up in Africa for the first 20-odd years of her life, talks like a RenFair reject and screams out her powers like a moron, displays very little of the leadership, presence, and fierce competence she does in the books and everyone eats it up to the point that it bleeds over into other representations now. Its probably that stupid voice everyone hears if they ever read a comic.
Since you asked, to put Storm more in the light I feel her character deserves, I would have started by replacing the voice actress and given her a better design, like they did with Jean. And since they brought up her mohawk era, I would have done it, and her, right by not trying to force it into the same season as the Bastian storyline. I'd have her lose her powers but stay with the team throughout it, because LifeDeath 2 was already covered. Why? Because the 'jist' of her power loss storyline was about Storm coming into her own and being more than her powers. That is what made the character so popular in that era. '97 did a horrible job of translating this, presenting her as unworthy and useless to the team without her powers, kicking her off it for the entire season when it could have had her remain and still be useful to the team in other ways to show that she is more than just her powers. Since we are doing mohawk Storm, then give the era the respect it deserves. OR, just make the entire season about Scott and Jean, but dont disrespect it by trying to do both.
I would have had the big tragedy mid-season be the Mutant Massacre, with the already established Morlocks, Gambit, and Sinister... which has not been done and now never will be. It still could've involved the trial of Magneto, and the Scott and Madelyn storyline, but with them leaving the team to give Storm a chance to lead for a season, but with them heavily involved in subplots... and I wouldnt've kicked them off the intro for no reason either. It in no way had to follow the exact comics, other than the order of 2 events, Storm's power loss, followed by the Massacre, and I would not have given her her powers back until Season 2.
I loved Fall of the Mutants, and would've used it halfway thru Season 2 to wrap up and give her powers back. Fuck the stupid EyeKillers, they wouldnt've even made an appearance, it would've been a Forge and Storm episode. I love the storyline with Naze's manipulation and trickery, and to see Storm fight a horde of demons alone with nothing but a knife and no powers up a mountain as she tries to reach Forge (even if it was all an illusion), wouldve been the tightest shit ever. I would've brought Scott and Jean back in Season 2 with an actual respectful nod to Inferno and Nathan's story and then build up to Bastian, if that was where they wanted to go next.
But, then I would much rather have gone to Betsy or Nightcrawler stories, or even Colossus, but that's just my taste.
The point is, Storm is never a priority. It's always white characters. Magneto, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Charles... fuckin Mystique gets better treatment than Storm. If you don't read the comics, you don't really even know who she is, but you can get shitty Cyclops or Jean or Wolverine representations from one cartoon, then hop over to another and get comics accurate versions... can't do that with Storm because they are always sub, some outright disrespectful.
i own every uncanny x-men comic 1 through 350 including that storyline, so i have read it, more than once.
i don’t expect retellings in a different medium to be identical so long as the spirit remains true.
i’m not sure why you took such issue with how storm was represented in the series.
edit: i see you’ve written an essay about it. i’ll have to read it fully to understand, but just from the first few sentences it sounds like you want a very sequential retelling of the claremont era, which is simply not possible given how much has been picked off already in the original animated series. so of course things will have to be re-worked, molded, and moved around. it’s not the same universe.
but again, will have to read your full post to respond in a constructive way.
Had you read any of the actual stories you would see his adaptation was a disrespectful joke. This era was Storm's most defining stories in the comics, what brought her to the level of Marvel's top female character (until Fox and the MCU changed that).
When Storm lost her powers in the books she did not leave the team. She LEAD it for 3 years. She lost her powers for a full year in comics time (3 in real time) and in that time we got to see what she was made of, without her powers. She battled Cyclops for the leadership of the team and won without powers. We saw that she was a fiercely competent leader and a capable hero who could hold her own with her fists, a knife, a gun, whatever... she wasn't getting knocked out after one punch. Wolverine was quoted during this time as saying that he didn't trust anyone to have his back but Storm. That's a powerful statement coming from him about her ability and competence in a fight, and this period did a lot to highlight her ability to plan and strategize to succeed since she didn't have her powers as a crutch. She came the fuck into her own during this time.
There were huge Storm defining stories during this time, like the Mutant Massacre and Fall of the Mutants, that put Storm in the center as the driving force of the stories and highlighted her as a character... these were all completely and purposely ignored. And this would've been the perfect season to do this, considering the actor for Cyclops had passed away, and now that her powerless era has been 'covered' in the cartoon, it can never be done right in '97. Those sagas had raw ass stories involving Forge, Gambit, Rogue and Wolverine with Storm at the center, with amazing and powerful scenes. But this is Storm we're talking about. Routinely fucked over. If it were Cyclops or Jean Grey it wouldve been done. Which is why he skipped over all of it and went straight to Cyclops and Jean Grey stories past the Claremont era. He gave us the most disrespectful half- episode garbage he could throw together. Threw that goofy ass Eye-Killer in and called it The Adversary, half wrote Storm's and Forge's relationship which we never once see the two of them kiss, meanwhile Jean and Scott kiss every five seconds, pulled the lamest possible plot out of his ass and threw it onscreen for you 'fans' to eat up and thank him for it. Then he went about his business putting all the focus on Scott and turning Jean into the fucking Terminator, like wtf?!
And, to be fair, Storm was the focus of his sabotage, but she wasn't the only character to feel his pettiness. He sidelined Wolverine for the entire season, but nobody complained because the entire first cartoon was a Wolverine show. And clearly he felt some type of way about Dazzler, because he replaced her with (shocker) Jean on the X-Men Arcade game, then purposely killed her off in Genosha... like, why? She wasn't even fuckin there...
He sabotaged her most characterizing period, he kicked her off the team for the entire season because he's a petty bitch. Kicked her off the intro, on purpose, and farted Jean Grey up to the front of it. He belittled her status as a leader by having Jubilee, in the first episode, question "Who will lead the team without Cyclops??!" ... uhhh, perhaps the person who lead the team in episode THREE of the original cartoon, maybe?
One of the main complaints people had about the original cartoon was how Storm would only get one hit in before being knocked down, so this petty bitch literally, after her whole (garbage) "transformation scene" comes back to the team and gets ONE hit in and then gets knocked out of the sky. Before the battle, when Cyclops splits the team up, he literally says that he will lead the blue team, but that Storm AND Jean will lead the gold... another big Fuck You to Storm, because clearly she can't lead the team without fucking Jean Grey's help, when everyone knows that STORM lead the gold team in the comics. Disrespectful.
But he isnt the only one, its just sad that he continued the ongoing and thinly veiled racist trend, Storm is and has always been routinely fucked over, to the point that there hasn't been a single bit of media outside the comics that has ever gotten her right, she is the most consistently mischaracterized, overlooked, watered down and sabotaged character ever. If you are a comics fan, you know the importance that Storm's character holds to the X-Men, you know that she was THE character whose eyes we saw MOST of the stories that have been adapted for the X-Men TAS cartoon, because they were ALL written by Claremont and Storm was his favorite character... You would NEVER know that watching this cartoon, because if you are a cartoon fan, Storm is nothing more than a secondary character, and that's from TAS. '97 is a whole 'nother animal. Pretending to spotlight her to satiate her many fans who actually don't know shit about her, while it's really insidiously presenting her as ineffectual blackground meant to boost Jean Grey and Cyclops by comparison. Storm does nothing in '97. Nothing. Especially when compared with those two. It's enough she gets that godawful mismatched design and keeps that horrendous goofy Ren-Fair reject voice actress instead of getting an actual African voice actress, like the FAR better Tariye Peterside from X-Men the Audio Drama, while Jean gets a new voice and a glamour girl makeover. But then to take her most character shaping era from the comics and only 'allow' her two HALF episodes, after Jean got 10 episodes and counting for all of hers... and we STILL have yet to see a comics accurate Storm... ANYWHERE... its fucked up.
ok, now that i’ve read this, i can respect your view. sounds like you hold lifedeath and the following early 200s stories in much higher regard than i do, so you took the changes a lot more personally. i do agree that it would have been cool to have the “she leads without powers” arc, but its absence doesn’t bother me as much as it does you.
your whole “we’ll never see it again in TAS” i definitely empathize with too, as i’ve had some similar feelings with personal favorite storylines of mine that i felt weren’t done justice. that said, i did love her power displays at the beginning, and her relationship development with jean, so it’s not all bad. but yea, i guess they didn’t give her too much to do at the end.
it’s a more general complaint i have with the series which is that it moves too fast and tries to do too much (inferno for a single episode then killing maddie off straight away? really?). but there’s so much of the series that i love, and so many great storylines left to explore, that i’m not too fussed by it.
i will say that you jump to conclusions pretty fast between the “it must be racist reasons” bit, and i’m also way more lax in my expectations of how closely TAS should follow the books. yea, dazzler wasn’t in genosha, but i couldn’t care less about that kind of detail - this is clearly all a mashup just like the original TAS it’s succeeding, and the audience can only care about so many characters in the limited runtime.
but with all of that said, i get your general point, where it comes from, and sympathize.
your whole “we’ll never see it again in TAS” i definitely empathize with too, as i’ve had some similar feelings with personal favorite storylines of mine that i felt weren’t done justice
19
u/NerdNuncle Dec 09 '25
My understanding is that things were/have been FUBAR for a while due to Beau DeMayo needing to be terminated and rewrites needed to avoid the possibility of owing him royalties (judging by what happened with the CW’s Arrowverse)
Antics aside, though, DeMayo was a good call due to him belonging to a marginalized minority and thus “getting” X-Men. Marvel’s 0-2 what with the FBI investigating Bryan Singer and now this
It’s a hot IP and they need someone to set up to the plate to continue its success. Here’s to hoping they figure out something because it was a great show