X-Men! The Animated Series vs. Evolution vs. Wolverine

So, I've been revisiting old episodes of X-Men: Evolution now that the first two seasons are on YouTube. Blessed, blessed YouTube. Evo is easily one of the best cartoon series of the decade and, at its best, rivals its 90s counterpart, X-Men: The Animated Series. True, Evo was initially marketed to a younger crowd and the majority of the X-Men were portrayed as teenagers, however after introducing the characters and laying the foundation, the latter half of the series took on a relatively serious tone and told some great stories. 

Evo also had a better sense of balance; let's face it: X-Men: TAS was obsessed with Jean Grey. The Phoenix Force was obsessed with her, Cyclops was obsessed with her, Wolverine was obsessed with her, Professor X was obsessed with her. I can't really remember anything about the show that's not directly related with the Dark Phoenix saga, which of course was a phenomenal story, but inadvertently rendered the other tales irrelevant. If Evo got anything amazingly right, it was the character development. Everyone had their turn in the spotlight and the writers adeptly integrated their convoluted histories into the dynamics between characters. As a result, very few of the episodes are throwaway.

Anyway, I bring this all up because I just found out there's a third (OK, technically it's the fourth, but are we really gonna count Pryde of the X-Men? Didn't think so.) X-Men series airing now titled...wait for it... Wolverine and the X-Men. I rolled my eyes so hard they hurt when I first heard it. That title sounds about as intelligent as 'The Pussycat Dolls featuring Nicole Scherzinger.' In other words, that title sounds really dumb. Am I the only one who thinks Wolverine is incredibly overrated and, worse, bordering on uninteresting? I mean, OK, his backstory is decent, but we've been hit over the head with it so many times. An extremely resilient, grumpy amnesiac with claws, got it, got it. Not that he's unnecessary but why is he so often put in the foreground at the expense of other, frankly, more fascinating X-Men?

I've caught a few episodes (again, bless you YouTube) of Wolverine and, believe it or not, they're chock full of Wolverine. Some episodes don't feature any other X-Men at all. The Professor is M.I.A. and Wolverine is actually leading the team. Like, seriously? The one episode I watched that attempted to focus on Cyclops kept panning back to Wolverine and how he felt about what Slim was doing. It was sickening. The team includes Nightcrawler, Iceman, Beast, Angel, Shadowcat, Storm, and Emma Frost and the show is admittedly a lot of fun to watch when they're featured. Unfortunately, we're stuck watching Mr. Grumpy stalk around most of the time, claws out but not actually able to slice anyone up (it airs on Nickelodeon after all). Apparently, the entire creative team behind Evo came back to do Wolverine, but I don't know whose idea it was to give Wolverine such a prominent role.

If you were a fan of the 90s version and are ever hankering for some mutey magic, I'd recommend Evo in a heartbeat. Wolverine, to be fair, is only in its first season, but it's inferior to the other two series. Hell, even go back and watch old episodes of X-Men: TAS. I watched the pilot yesterday; it was 90s-tastic and fabulous.