Back in the day, there was a character named Mojo. And Mojo was a really, really bad dude.
This episode of X-Men ‘97 does two things really well. One, it’s an incredible callback. Two, it really moves the needle forward for Ororo and the entire story of Storm.
Two Titles, and Where the Backup Story Comes From
The old X-Men show used to do this a lot. They’d split an episode into two stories. You can call it an A plot and a B plot, but really they’re telling half a story, then they stop, then they tell another half.
It’s a practice that comes from comic books. You always had what’s called the backup story. You got to a midpoint, you wanted to tell story but you didn’t have enough for a full issue, and you had enough to lay the groundwork for what you were doing. So the first 15 pages would be story A. Sometimes they’d even do something clever, where you flip the comic book over and from the other end it’s the beginning of a different story.
That’s what they’ve done here. The episode literally has two titles. The first is “Motendo,” and then it’s slash “Lifedeath Part 1.”
Motendo: Jubilee Turns 18
In “Motendo,” it’s Jubilee’s 18th birthday. Remember, if you look at it, she was found, or rescued, when she was 16. So now she’s 18. It’s an excellent callback to time and how things have moved in this show, and I do love the consistency if nothing else.
She wants to go play video games. Unfortunately, Magneto says everyone’s going to be training today, and he refuses to let her go. So she’s upset, her and Sunspot. And there’s what looks like a Super Nintendo sitting in her room that doesn’t belong to her, but on the top it says Motendo. Immediately she and Sunspot get magicked into the video game. From that point forward she’s in a video game simulation, and then she’s introduced to Mojo.
It’s funny. At first he shows up emaciated, and then once things start looking good, boom, he blows up to his normal size. That is the normal size. And by the way, that’s Longshot in there. I really wish we could get to see Longshot. There’s some great Art Adams artwork with him as well.
Mojo, and Why None of the Rules Apply
The X-Men are no strangers to Mojo, and the episode does a tiny clip show where he explains that the biggest ratings he ever got were with the X-Men. So now he’s going for the younger audience, that 18 demographic. What he does is the rise of Jubilee, a 16-bit style video game thing. It’s actually pretty clever.
Throughout this whole thing she keeps getting saved by someone in what looks like a biker helmet, with spikes and the whole nine yards. Come to find out, before Mojo could put his plan into action, he had to beta test it to make sure it was going to work right. So he created digital clones of Jubilee. Of all the digital clones, one of them survived, and she’s pretty awesome. She looks older now, because it’s taken him that long in game years. She hacked her way out before he deleted everything. So that’s who’s rescuing Jubilee and Sunspot: old lady digital copy Jubilee.
They eventually break out, and Mojo is defeated, somewhat. Spiral is there too. Spiral is a really cool six-armed mutant, and we’ve seen her before. So if you were worried about how Morph knows what Spiral looks like, they’d met Spiral in the previous iteration of all of this nonsense.
I enjoyed his interruption. There was a Mojoverse miniseries within the X-Men comics back in the day, but I always felt like Mojo was the X-Men’s answer to Mr. Mxyzptlk from Superman. Mojo is an extra-dimensional being, and as a result none of the rules apply. He’s not magic per se, but an interdimensional TV producer is what he calls himself, so he’s got to be entertaining and make everything work, and he has special effects on his side.
It’s a fun opening half. And when it wraps up, it ends with Sunspot and Jubilee kissing. Oh, yeah. So hopefully we’ll see where that relationship goes.
Lifedeath Part 1: Forge’s Secret
In the back half, we join Storm and Forge. Forge has explained to her how his powers work, and she sees he’s got the artificial hand and the artificial leg. He tells her he was in the military, in the war. His invention is designed to reverse the radiation and try to bring her powers back.
When it’s all said and done, it comes out that Forge has a secret. He helped create the anti-mutant power collars, and the technology that would eventually become the technology that took away her powers. In order to invent the collar, he had to invent the radiation part. So at the end of the day, he’s responsible for Storm’s pain, for what’s happened to her. He wants to make it better. He takes her for a horse ride.
She’s upset when she finds out the truth, and it seems like she’s going to run. But then somehow she gets thrown through the roof, and she can’t follow how she got where she is. Then she and Forge are seemingly attacked by what looks like a demon owl. And the voice coming from the owl is her voice.
There’s going to be something more. They ended on a cliffhanger, which most episodes of the X-Men always did, and they have been lately. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next episode in this chain of events brings us. I do believe we’re going to get Storm back as her normal self, with her powers.
I find it interesting that Forge was the one who helped, because that’s new. That may have been in the comics, I don’t recall. But I like that storytelling. I really do.
There you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.
The Verdict
X-Men ‘97 Episode 4, “Motendo / Lifedeath Part 1,” is a 7.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I’m giving it a combined score, because I feel like you have to. It’s one short story and half of the next story.
For me, it was a good episode. It was fun. Because they set the bar so high with how they came out the gate, this episode feels lackluster, but it’s not. It’s an excellent episode. It’s doing a lot of fun stuff very well.
Let me know what you thought of the episode. Did you enjoy how they split the two stories, or do you wish they’d done a little more conjoined storytelling? I’d love to have that conversation with you in the comments on the video above.
