Cartoon Review: Wolverine and the X-Men Ep. 8

"Time Bomb"

Review
I watch this episode last week but I was unable to find the time to actually watch this episode until recently. Though from the looks of it this will be the last new episode for at least now since last week we got a rerun of the first episode of the series. And this week we are going to get a rerun of the second episode of the season but hopefully next week we will see a new episode. But will see I guess.

Now with this episode we are introduced to Nitro, which Marvel fans will remember as being the catalyst that started the Civil War event. Though Nitro is not a mutant in the comics or an X-villain the writers of this show did a nice job making the viewer sympathize with the character as he is one of the mutants who is cursed with not being able to control his powers similar to Cyclops and Rogue.

And speaking of Rogue we finally get to see her back in the show since the initial 3 episodes. While it is interesting to see how her views of how the Brotherhood should "help" Nitro I kind of feel that "been there, done that," since the previous cartoon (X-Men: Evolution) had her start the series as a member of the Brotherhood. And since Craig Kyle and Chris Yost, two of the producers of the show, also worked on X-Men: Evolution it feels like they wanted to have Rogue on the show but because Kitty has taken the role of youngest mutant on the team they needed to make Rogue a "villain" again. What I would like to see happen with the character at the end of the season is that she is still in a villain-type role instead of just rejoining the X-Men but next to Magneto's side and maybe have her and Magneto have some sort of working relationship along with Mystique (who has yet to appear).

Though I may hate how Cyclops and Wolverine's roles have switched with one another I have to say I love what the writers are doing with Emma Frost character. Since the character has started a relationship with Scott in the comics Emma as character has slowly become more of a PC version than her previous portrayal and has basically become Jean Grey-lite in the comics, which is one of the reason's I hate the Scott/Emma relationship. As a fan of her character she has always been at her best when she is the bitchy character a reader loves to hate and you never really now what side she is playing: a hero or villain. And the writers have seen this as we really don't know what side this version of Emma is actually on as she shows a manipulative side to her character in every episode she's in. It was pretty cool to see how strong of a psychic Emma is as she effortlessly was able to handle Psylock, another psychic. From the looks of how strong this version of Emma is I would like to see her have a match with Professor X and Jean as she seems to be on a similar power level as those characters.

Also I have to give credit to the animators for being able to pull of some nice action scenes even though they are restricted due to being a show aimed for kids. The battle between the X-Men and the Brotherhood along with the animation every time Nitro exploded was nicely done and I am glad that they are able to show how powerful each mutant is as each one of them, other than Toad (for obvious reasons), is able to flex there muscles during the action sequences. I especially loved how they had Bobby create a whole island out of ice in the middle of the ocean. It was a very cool scene that many Iceman fans will like as this version of Iceman seems to be an Omega level mutant like his comic counter-part.

Now while the last episode featuring a rematch of Wolverine vs Hulk did not even come close to living up to what we saw in the Hulk vs. DVD this episode was a quality episode featuring Nitro. Hopefully the next new episode, when ever we get it, continues the nice flow this young X-Men show has created for itself.

Episode Rating - 8.3/10