The Animated Series’ Most Groundbreaking Details Are a Happy Accident

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For millennials, the main cast of the 1992 “X-Men” cartoon will always be the definitive X-Men team. This is a team with a striking gender balance: five men (Professor X, Cyclops, Wolverine, Beast and Gambit) and four women (Storm, Rogue, Jean Gray and Jubilee). Feelings of equality extended to the way characters were written; the X-Women never held back in action scenes and received as many main episodes as the male characters. Snape (Lenore Zann), whose powers kept her from touching others, yearned for Gambit (Chris Potter, later Tony Daniels), but she wasn’t defined by this impossible romance.

The feminism of “X-Men” has been positive for its legacy (as critic Meghan O’Keefe argued at Decider), but the creators did not want to make a statement. Eric and Julia Lewald, husband and wife showrunners of “X-Men,” recounted their experience in the 2020 book “X-Men: The Art and Making of the Animated Series.” In an interview with Marvel.com About the book, the Lewalds confirmed that it was “pure luck” that the team was evenly matched.

“Jubilee and Gambit were newer, Marvel wanted to make sure they had them. And obviously Professor X. And Jean [Grey] And [Cyclops] were the main people from the beginning. And Wolverine is the biggest name in X-Men history. So you’re already about six hours in. And it happened that some of them [picks] were already women,” Eric Lewald explained. Storm and Rogue are two of the other greatest X-Men, so adding them to the series must have been a no-brainer.

“I will give credit to Margaret Loesch [then-head of Fox Kids]”, that in the project that she was passionate about, I don’t remember hearing any reluctance: ‘Oh, you have too many girls on the team,'” Julia Lewald recalls.

The Lewalds compared their “X-Men” ensemble to how other cartoons only allowed one female character, for example “The Smurfs,” where there was a girl defined by her gender: Smurfette. In 1991, critic Katha Pollitt coined this phenomenon as the “Smurfette Principle” writing in The New York Times. According to the Smurfette Principle, boys are allowed to have different personalities beyond their gender, while girls are not. It puts girls in a box and teaches the children watching to accept masculinity as the default state of being human.

Another 80s cartoon that showed this was “The Transformers.” During the first two seasons, the main cast of Autobots and Decepticons were entirely male robots; the Autobots’ only female guest starred in one episode. In writing “The Transformers: The Movie”, writer Ron Friedman took some initiative and introduced female Autobot Arceefinally bringing “Transformers” to the bare minimum of representation seen on “The Smurfs”. “Transformers” sister show “GI Joe” was slightly better about it, but the male characters still greatly outnumbered the female ones.

Even 10 years after “X-Men” premiered, DC’s superhero cartoon “Justice League” was unbalanced with five men and two women. Add Hawkgirl to the team was a reward for JL’s classic six-man lineup and Wonder Woman.

“X-Men” also understood that having more girls on the show is one thing, but how you write them is another. Compare “X-Men” to the failed pilot of 1989’s “Pryde of the X-Men”which had five male heroes (Professor X, Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Colossus) and three female heroes (Storm, Dazzler and Kitty Pryde). Kitty played the role Jubilee would play in the 1992 series: a young woman joining the X-Men for the first time. But while Kitty was a damsel in distress in “Pryde,” Jubilee was smart and brave.

The 2019 film “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” contains a cringe-worthy scene where Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) scolds Professor X (James McAvoy) for renaming the team “X-Women.” However, the feeling is not false! Most of the biggest stars from the “X-Men” comics are the X-Women and the 1992 cartoon honored him.

It goes back to Chris Claremont, who wrote “X-Men” steadily from 1975 to 1991. The most enduring “X-Men” characters he (co-)created were women: Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Psylocke, Moira MacTaggert, Emma Frost, Jubilee, Shi’ar Empress Lilandra, etc. Claremont is the heir of William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman — he writes strong and complex female characters And wants them to step on him. Claremont was particularly impressed with Storm; if there’s a central protagonist in her “X-Men” series, it’s her.

The first “X-Men” comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby followed the Smurfette principle to the letter. There were five guys and one girl, Jean Grey, who was a shrinking violet in and out of fights. Claremont’s first revolutionary move on “X-Men” was to reborn Jean as Phoenix; he took the stereotypical “fragile woman” of the book and made her a flesh-and-blood goddess.

Yet the feminism of “X-Men” is inextricable from Claremont’s flaws. Writer Ann Nocenti explored these contradictions in “Classic For Emma, ​​her body is not exploited when she shows it off. Instead, she exploits the men who gawk at her by tying them around her finger.

Marvel Comics

Having female characters in stories is vital representation, but it’s just as important to make sure women get the chance to write those characters.