X-Men’97: Fire Made Flesh review S1 E3
Fire Made Flesh continued X-Men’97’s track record of sensibly adapting popular X-Men stories and weaving them to the season long narrative.
This episode had a significant challenge as Fire Made Flesh wove the storylines from the first arc of X-Factor and the mega crossover Inferno. That was a tall and probably ill-advised order. This was a large enough story that devoting two episodes might have been the more satisfying option.
Of course, Inferno is such a far-reaching and expansive story the X-Men’97 team would have been fine making it a full three or four episode arc. If the story is done well there’s no reason to feel hamstrung by making it simply a two-parter.
That’s not to suggest Fire Made Flesh is some lackluster effort. Hardly. It actually does a neater job of explaining the comic arc of Scott Summers, Jean Grey and Madeline Pryor set up by Mr. Sinister’s machinations. And if the intent was to streamline the Inferno storyline while getting the main beats down, there probably couldn’t have been a smoother way of accomplish that feat.
To the shock of the mutants, Jean Grey arrives at the mansion just after Jean Grey successfully delivered her son, Nathan. The decision to resurrect Jean Grey in the comics was as clean as possible yet still came off messy. This softens the fallout to prevent Cyclops from looking too bad. It’s easily the top moment of rough character moments for the X-Men’s leader. Yet comic writers did solid work in restoring him in a way they failed other characters.
One of the Jeans is a clone. Not too shockingly, the clone reacts by attacking the X-Men and adopting the Goblin Queen moniker. Inferno was the second big X-book crossover and marked the first time the X-Men and X-Factor faced each other.
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Fire Made Flesh isn’t nearly as nuanced. It’s just the standard team battling Goblin Queen’s nightmare demons. The action sequences are strong yet they’re missing the narrative punch of the escalating drama found in the source material.
In a welcome shift from the Saturday morning cartoons, characters answer Batman’s question and actually bleed. That makes the stakes feel more dire. And provide some more obvious physical consequences of these battles.
The payoff to the Sinister, Goblin Queen and Nathan feels rushed. Again, the story is far too dense to spotlight all the big moments in a 28-minute show.
While it doesn’t pack the same tight storytelling focus as the previous two episodes, Fire Made Flesh shows X-Men’97’s floor is of a higher quality than some show’s ceilings. The cliffhanger at the end offers some tantalizing glimpses into the future from another comic book-based storyline.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Photo Credit: Disney
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