Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
MSRP for each volume: $23.99
Release date for both: September 15, 2009
Starring the voices of Cathal J. Dodd, Cedric Smith, Norm Spencer, George Buza, Lenore Zann, Catherine Disher, Alyson Court, Chris Potter, Alison Sealy-Smith.
For much of my childhood, I preferred Marvel superheroes to DC, both because Marvel seemed to have more fleshed-out characters in real-world locales and because Marvel’s cartoons were better animated. Warner Bros. Animation’s recent DC Comics projects have done much to sway me, so it’s a pleasure to look back on the X-Men cartoon that aired on Fox from 1992-95. To me, this remains Marvel’s best-looking, smoothest-animated project. Combine the animation, ambitious ripped-from-the-comic-book storylines, and Cathal J. Dodd’s much-echoed performance as Wolverine, and you have a classic.
My only complaint about X-Men when it aired was the stories were too complex to follow week-to-week. DVD solves that problem, of course. These volumes are presented in the original fullscreen with no special features, but it’s enough to be able to play the stories out in one sitting.
Volumes 3 and 4 cover the final two-thirds of Season 3 and all of Season 4. Here’s a disc-by-disc listing of the episodes:
Volume 3
Disc 1
34. Savage Land, Strange Heart (Part 1)
35. Savage Land, Strange Heart (Part 2)
36. Obsession
37. The Dark Phoenix (Part 1)
38. The Dark Phoenix (Part 2)
39. The Dark Phoenix (Part 3)
40. The Dark Phoenix (Part 4)
Disc 2
41. Cold Comfort
42. Orphan’s End
43. The Juggernaut Returns
44. Nightcrawler
45. Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape
46. One Man’s Worth (Part 1)
47. One Man’s Worth (Part 2)
48. Courage
Volume 4
Disc 1
49. Proteus (Part 1)
50. Proteus (Part 2)
51. Sanctuary (Part 1)
52. Sanctuary (Part 2)
53. Beyond Good And Evil (Part 1)
54. Beyond Good And Evil (Part 2)
55. Beyond Good And Evil (Part 3)
56. Beyond Good And Evil (Part 4)
Disc 2
57. Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas
58. The Lotus and The Steel
59. Love in Vain
60. Secrets Not Long Buried
61. Xavier Remembers
62. Family Ties
–Gerald So
