Sometimes interesting things happen by accident. I was heading over to the big ballroom at the con in order to get into what I thought would be a pretty big line to see the screening of Mutant Chronicles. I wasn't disappointed, the line was huge. A little bit of investigation revealed that it wasn't for the Mutant Chronicles, however, it was for the preceding panel on the upcoming Wolverine and the X-men cartoon. I was informed that they weren't kicking people out after the Wolverine panel, so if I wanted to be guaranteed a place, I should wait in line. Wait in line we did. It was already pretty crowded when we got in, but we still managed to get pretty good seats. They launched right into the cartoons; we got to see three episodes. The story appears to be an attempt to capitalize on Wolverine's current popularity. It's basically a telling of the same X-Men story about the rise of the Sentinels that we get to see over and over in cartoons and movies, except this time with Wolverine in charge of the team. The basic plot is as follows: A mysterious explosion occurs at the School and Professor X and Jean Grey are missing in action. The X-Men scatter. Helping out some people that helped him causes Wolverine and Beast to team up and break quite a few mutants out of an MRD containment facility. They eventually gather up the X-Men that are available and go up against the MRD, the Brotherhood, and even Magneto. The X-Men team this time around consists of Wolverine, Beast, Forge, Ice-man, and Shadowcat. Emma Frost and a washed-up (and annoyed at not being leader) Cyclops join a bit later. Rogue vacillates between the Brotherhood and the X-Men. Angel flies around a lot but keeps his distance for the most part. Nightcrawler was also mentioned as being in the series but didn't show up in the episodes that we saw. The overall package wasn't bad, but it also wasn't really innovative. I would much rather see a series about a different arc of the X-Men's story than a retelling of the same one again. I'd like to see a slightly more adult-oriented show too, where Wolverine (the title character, after all) could actually act like Wolverine in the comics and use his claws for more than cutting up bad guys' guns. It wasn't bad, though. The artwork seemed very inspired by anime. The voice acting was actually pretty good. There was quite a bit of romantic tension between Rogue and Wolverine, which was definitely different. Forge was pretty much a geeky kid. I'm not sure I understand why they chose to do that. I really liked the character in the comics, he was my favorite X-Man next to Longshot. Now he's relegated to comic relief. Wolverine is always cute when it comes to Magneto. Every time it seems like he has to go up against him, he always seems to be thinking something like "This time I'll get him!" as opposed to something like "Huh, my skeleton is made out of metal, maybe I should avoid the guy with magnetism powers." Wolverine is also a horrible leader. But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that's familiar with him. I suppose there's something nice about your leader being able to regenerate himself, but there are other qualities than stamina involved in leading. If the story develops his character a bit more in that direction, as well as his relationship with Rogue, then I suppose it just might have something new to say at the cost of deviating even further from the comic story. It's probably a worthwhile price to pay. If nothing else, it will be worth it to watch the wreck that was Scott Summers. If not even that, it's worth it to see the look on his face when Wolverine gets put in charged. That's worth watching it for at least a season. The first season is a 26 episode story. If it gets continued, they'll have a couple other stories to tell, but there will be a definite end to the series. I like the way they're handling that. It's good to end it on a high note than when you run out of ideas.

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