‘X-Men ’97’ #4 Review: What Are We Even Doing Here?

X-Men ’97 #4 is bright, colorful, and fun. It’s also incredibly slight, and coming over a month after the series it’s meant to tie into wrapped its first season. If it’s meant to piggyback on the success of that series, well, it seems like that ship has sailed. If it’s meant to provide some kind of key information or depict a critical event that takes place before the start of the animated series, it’s not doing that either (unless people were dying to see Jean/Madelyne’s baby shower). So then all that’s left is to wonder: what was even the point of all this? 

X-Men ’97 #4 features the baby shower for Jean/Madelyne (the issue only hints at this being Madelyne, but viewers of the show now know this to be the clone and not the actual Jean), which is quickly disrupted by the combined attack of Mister Sinister’s Marauders.

This group includes Siena Blaze and Hazard alongside traditional Marauders Harpoon, Arclight, Prism, and Riptide (Sabretooth sits it out, something pointed out via an inexplicable scene between him and Mister Sinister, as the watch the ensuing fight before Sabretooth leaves). The resulting action sequence takes up most of the rest of the issue. 

To their credit, Steve Foxe and Salva Espín use the fight to give each member of the team a moment in the spotlight. As with previous issues, seeing 90s jobbers like Siena Blaze and Hazard alongside the very 80s Marauders is a fun dynamic that replicates the spirit of the animated series. The fight scenes are clear and straightforward (if a bit stiff). Foxe continues to have a good ear for the characters’ voices, with dialogue that sounds like it’s being delivered by the respective voice actors.

There’s a cute two page spread which replicates the closing image of the show’s opening credits, with the X-Men lined up on one page and the Marauders lined up opposite them on the other (later in X-Men ’97 #4, a panel homages Todd McFarlane’s cover to Incredible Hulk #340, with Prism taking the place of the Hulk in Wolverine’s claw’s reflection). 

Execution-wise, none of this is bad, per se. But again, it all seems a bit…pointless. Once upon a time, seeing comic book action in the animated style was a novelty; the strictures of 90s era Standards and Practices meant that the action in the animated series was often toned down, whereas the comic book could push things a little further.

But X-Men ’97 largely ameliorated that concern, being able to present superhero action on par with what a comic book can render. So what is this comic offering that the animated series can’t provide? 

Similarly, in an apparent bid for narrative relevancy, the second-to-the-last page is composed of four panels, each of which sets up events that unfold early in the animated series. But none of them offer any information that actually changes or recontextualizes anything we already know.

Does knowing that Magneto received a copy of Xavier’s will from Emma Frost demonstrably change anything? Does seeing Roberto’s power manifesting shortly before the start of the series add anything, to either this comic or the animated series? Not really.  

So we’re again left wondering what the point of any of this is. The obvious answer, of course, is that Marvel is simply going for that cross-promotional synergy. Yet in that case, it would probably work better if this issue came out when the animated series was actually releasing new episodes. X-Men ’97 #4 — and the entire series — is not without its charms. But it’s ephemeral and purposeless, too much its own thing to be a required tie-in to the animated series, too steeped in the aesthetics of the animated series to stand on its own as a comic book story.