It was either late March or early April in 1993. The first season of the X-Men animated series had just wrapped up on Fox Kids, and I needed more. At ten years old, I somehow persuaded my mom to take my brother and I to the comic book store – New England Comics in Quincy, Massachusetts. We browse around a bit, looking at all kinds of fun things. I had also recently acquired a copy of Spider-Man Unlimited #1 – the beginning of the 14-part Maximum Carnage crossover event that spanned all four monthly Spider-Man titles that summer – from a grocery store’s magazine section while out shopping with my dad. I think it was earlier in the week, but these are childhood memories from over 30 years ago, so that part may be inaccurate.
Regardless, we got to the comic store, and it was amazing. So many comics! So many characters that I’d heard of, and passingly knew about, but had never really explored. I decided to stick to what I knew to get started – I’d watched Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends when I was very little, plus I had that first part of Maximum Carnage already. They didn’t seem to have part 2, so I got one of the other chapters. My brother picked out X-Men #20.
Around a year earlier, the kid who lived next door to us, Jimmy, had gotten me into collecting the Marvel Universe trading cards – Specifically series 2 – so I was AWARE of a lot of Marvel Comics characters. But I didn’t KNOW them from experiencing their stories first-hand.
The Spidey comic I got was cool, but I knew I was missing context between the first part of Maximum Carnage and whatever chapter it was that I got that day. But X-Men #20… The cover featured characters from the cartoon: Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast, Rogue, Gambit in a shirt that was the wrong color, and who was that other character? Oh, that’s Psylocke! One of the other X-Men characters I knew from the trading cards. Okay, well, cool. I already knew everyone else from the cartoon, so I could get to know her in the comic!
The issue itself is actually pretty weird. Written by Fabian Nicieza (doing his best Chris Claremont impression, although I didn’t know who Claremont was yet) and drawn by Andy Kubert (who had a pencilling style very similar to X-Men artist superstar Jim Lee who had recently quit drawing X-Men to go found Image Comics and do his own comic, WildC.A.T.s), the issue shows the X-Men characters in the downtime after a series of events. Jubilee acts as the audience surrogate as she rollerblades through the X-Mansion and meets up with each character, seeing what they’re all up to. Rogue has been blinded in combat, but it looks like she’ll be okay. Cyclops is repairing the X-Men’s jet. And Psylocke is wearing a “fuck me” dress as she goes to visit Cyclops. Jubilee eventually heads outside and talks with Wolverine, while Psylocke surprises Cyclops and plunges her tongue down his throat. Distraught over the recent events of the X-Cutioner’s Song storyline (which I would love to summarize here, but honestly, it involves clones and time travel and more clones and genetic engineering, and… just, trust me. It was traumatic for Cyclops), Cyke packs up and heads up to his grandparents’ cabin in Alaska. His long-time girlfriend Jean Grey wants to comfort him, but there’s nothing she can do for him at the moment. Jean confronts Psylocke in the X-Men’s training facility, the Danger Room, which can create “Hard-light holograms,” which is sci-fi nonsense, but perfect for a comic book training course.Jean accuses her teammate of having an affair with her lover. Psylocke denies the accusation, but agrees that she’s interested in Cyclops. Suddenly, an armor-clad Psylocke in a hood appears, and the actual Psylocke thinks it’s a hologram program that Jean whipped up. But, one psychic attack later, Psylocke realizes this imposter is a real person. The other X-Men rush in and the second Psylocke reveals her identity to be… Psylocke! Whaaaat? The teaser for the next issue reads, “Psylocke, Revanche, Betsy Braddock and Kwannon… WHO’S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY HEAD?”
(Betsy Braddock is Psylocke’s secret identity. Except when she’s in the body of Kwannon, a Japanese assassin. And “Revanche” — French for “Revenge” — is the name that the duplicate Betsy took up. Look, it’s super-confusing, okay?)
The thing about the issue that works so well is that it featured nearly every character from the cartoon series, so new readers would instantly be familiar with who they were and the setting they were in. Even though I’d never read an X-Men comic before, I already knew everything I NEEDED to know to follow along by having seen the cartoon.
Honestly, I think it’s why the 1992 X-Men cartoon is so beloved by comics fans, even 30 years later. It’s still the only comic book cartoon adaptation that felt so much like what was going on in the books at the time that there was no barrier between what we were watching and what we were reading. Everyone was in the same outfits, had the same personalities, acted more-or-less the same way (comic Cyclops is infinitely more interesting than his animated counterpart, and all the characters would use words like “hell” and “damn” in the comics whereas they couldn’t in the cartoon thanks to TV broadcast standards), and it just… worked.
There’s other comic book-inspired cartoons that I think are better shows than X-Men, but none of them let you go from watching the show to reading a comic as seamlessly as that one weird cartoon did for its first few seasons.
The combination of the excitement of the cartoon and the intrigue of the reveal of ANOTHER Psylocke brought me back for the next issue. And the next. And the next. And then I missed #24, but picked back up at #25. And I kept reading X-Men off-and-on for the next several years, until the whole comic industry crashed in late 1996/early 1997. But I never stopped reading comics.
