What 'X-Men '97' Gets Right And 'Velma' Gets Wrong About Adult Cartoon Reboots
Adult animated cartoons are on the rise again, but not every show does its source material justice. We examine what makes a good reboot, why they fail or succeed, and which dormant shows are rife with potential.
We’re in a golden age of adult-aimed animated series right now.
While TV used to be ruled by only a few animated shows such as The Simpsons and South Park, thanks to the streaming boom Netflix helped usher in, adult animation is really popping off.
At the same time, the ongoing streaming wars have transitioned into a new battlefront over existing intellectual property. From live-action reimaginings like Magnum P.I. and Bel Air to continuations such as Fuller House and Girl Meets World, the combination of nostalgia and existing IP must feel like delicious catnip to producers looking for something bankable in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing strikes from the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA.
The next logical step for streaming giants looking to lower production costs while maximizing potential profits? Animation. How fortunate, then, that streaming services like Disney+ and Paramount+ just so happen to have vast catalogs of popular animated shows from the '90s—the very era that millennial subscribers have such fondness for.
Viewers with a glut of content won’t watch your show just for nostalgia alone, though, which means there's something else about these shows that make them so popular. So, here’s what separates the good reboots from the bad ones…and a few other reboots that could have potential.
The Bastardization Of Scooby-Doo: Why HBO’s Velma was a misstep
After the success of Cartoon Network’s Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, it seemed like Mindy Kaling's HBO project Velma had a lot of potential. Mystery Incorporated played into the series' classic DNA while updating it with tongue-in-cheek humor, relationship drama, and enough TV-Y7 innuendo to appeal to adult and tween audiences alike.
While Mystery Incorporated was cancelled after just two seasons, it still stands as a smart modernization of a beloved franchise. It may have presented its characters and situations with a knowing wink to audiences, but it didn’t do so with malice. If Velma took this tact, it could have been a success. Instead, Velma comes across as contemptuous at times, confusing subverting a classic with irreverent humor with total irreverence to the subject matter itself.
Velma’s Rotten Tomatoes reviews are a wasteland of negativity, mixed in with casual racism and anti-wokeness, but the reason Velma was so poorly received had much less to do with its politics and much more to do with its pedigree. With Scooby nowhere in sight and characters unrecognizable from their original incarnations, even super fans of Kaling and the original 1960s television series felt alienated.
As The Atlantic’s Shirley Li wrote in a January 2023 essay about Velma, “Its edginess comes at the expense of its own characters and punishes the audience for being invested.” In other words, just because the fans who grew up with your show are grown up now doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in revisiting something familiar but updated.
Honoring Those That Came Before: What X-Men ‘97 Gets Right
Let’s contrast HBO’s disastrous reboot with a clear slam-dunk: Disney+’s reboot of the 1990s X-Men animated series, X-Men ‘97. Like Velma, X-Men ‘97 is more mature than the series it’s updating (and, no, I’m not talking about Gambit’s crop top). But from its iconic theme song to its soap operatic writing style and ability to condense multiple-comic arcs into digestible 30-minute episodes, X-Men ‘97 doubles down on everything that made it such a cherished show in the first place.
Let’s start with the content. Susan Polo has a riveting examination in Polygon of how X-Men: The Animated Series was largely defined by the Broadcast Standards and Practices of the 1990s. To sum it up: the sex, violence, and language that were part-and-parcel for the comic books needed to be severely toned down in a cartoon for children.
In X-Men ‘97, Disney+ is able to up the ante, but they do so without alienating younger viewers or making the series unrecognizable. Sure, Wolverine gets to say “damn” and “hell," and there’s even blood and action-packed sequences. But the edginess hasn’t been turned up so much that the series goes beyond a TV-PG rating. Compare that with how far Velma travels from TV-Y to TV-MA, and it’s no wonder people were repelled by HBO’s mature modernization of the mystery team.
Even if that sentiment sounds a little prudish—the whole point of Kaling’s Velma was, after all, to make things edgy, subversive, and adult—the real marker of success for an animated reboot is how it treats its source material. If Velma is a sign of how to poorly honor your source IP, then X-Men ‘97 is a masterclass in what to do right.
Sure, you can argue that the X-Men characters are more beloved and well-known than Scooby Doo and the gang. But what you can’t argue is that even with Gambit and Rogue’s ridiculous accents still in-tact from X-Men: The Animated Series, you truly are invested in these characters. When a jaw-dropping mid-season death occurs, you’re shocked not because of the boldness of the move but because of how the showrunners have ensured you care about each and every character.
X-Men ‘97 illustrates how you can handle beloved IP with maturity and respect, something that would have greatly helped HBO’s Velma.
What’s Next For Adult Animation?
In both Velma’s case as well as X-Men ‘97’s, one thing that certainly impacted the reception of each reboot was the context it was created and released in. While you don’t always have full control over this, in a world where episodes of South Park can be churned out in just under a week, it’s not so hard to be responsive to the cultural moment.
X-Men ‘97’s first two episodes justify its existence as a reboot in full color. Issues of allyship, identity, and acceptance (all themes which ran through the 1990s X-Men animated series) are even more current today. Combine that with the Friends of Humanity, an anti-mutant group whose protests call to mind imagery of the January 6 insurrection, and you’ve got a show that isn’t just back—it’s back with something to say.
Contrast that with Velma, a series whose characters and situations are so far removed from any previous iteration of the gang of teenage sleuths that you have to wonder why Kaling didn’t just create a completely new series rather than anger an existing fanbase.
What other shows hold the potential to be a win-win for streamers and audiences? While the still yet-to-be-released Ren & Stimpy reboot would need to land closer to the original Nickelodeon series than the Adult Party Cartoon version from Comedy Central, there’s hope it may stick the landing better—like some of the new Futurama episodes.
Other series that might be ripe for the picking include a continuation of Rocko's Modern Life following the 2019 TV special, or even more educational-focused shows like Captain Planet. For milennials who grew up watching these shows and now want to share them with their kids, having something that captures the spirit of the original while appealing to the changing sensibilities brings the old into the modern era.
There are plenty of beloved animated shows worth considering for a reboot, but these catalogs shouldn’t be viewed as ATMs. If streamers can look at their content libraries and balance prescience with profit, we’ll all reap the benefits. Besides, who doesn't want more good TV?
