The latest installment of the Marvel TL; DR webseries provides an animated recap of the seminal "Dark Phoenix Saga" storyline, and in the process delivers the X-Men cartoon we've been waiting for.
Animator Fatine Aouiniya produced the visuals for the video, which give the cast of the X-Men a fluidity of movement that’s so slick we wish there were an entire animated series made in this style. It's simultaneously funny and cool, mixing genuinely impressive visuals during the climatic battle with a cartoony shot of the unconscious X-Men.
Created by Noah Sterling, Marvel TL; DR revisits classic Marvel Comics stories, and summarizes them as bite-size animations. Other stories adapted by the series have included Iron Man: Armor Wars and Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus.
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Written by Chris Claremont and illustrated John Byrne, the 1980 epic "The Dark Phoenix Saga" is arguably the most influential story in the entire X-Men canon. It's been adapted in animated form on X-Men: The Animated Series and Wolverine and the X-Men, and elements of the storyline served as a subplot in the widely ridiculed live-action film X-Men: The Last Stand. It will be revisited again next year in Dark Phoenix.
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