How Hill Street Blues Influenced X-Men: The Animated Series

[TMC]

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-animated-s...ues-influence/

Hill Street Blues was a popular police procedural that ran from the early to late '80s. Though its Cops and Robbers premise may seem blase, it was the way that it handled the material that made it such a revolutionary show. Instead of mere one-and-done stories, the show treated the stories of its cast as their actual lives. This meant that certain story elements wouldn't wrap up entirely in one episode, and instead continue throughout the season before fully being resolved. The show's incredible success and groundbreaking storytelling changed the game for prime time television, and its format would quickly become the norm for adult television.

This inspired Fox executive Sydney Iwanter, who had a huge hand in X-Men's development and wanted to give cartoons a similar treatment. According to Iwanter, "We were breaking new ground. Like the change with Hill Street Blues in prime-time television in the 1980s. That show was crucial to my understanding of how to tell TV stories. Before it would be single, 'stand-alone' episodes: set up a problem, develop the problem, and then solve the problem. One week didn't have anything to do with the next. I said to Margaret [Loesch, then president and CEO of Fox Kids], 'We ought to do the same kind of stuff that they do on Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. Interconnecting storylines, multiple arcs."

The cartoon's production was a good few years after Hill Street Blues had ended its run, but its dramatic presence was still felt in the radically changing television landscape. Due to this, having a superhero cartoon of all things try to imitate its style was almost beyond belief, especially for a comic book property that had yet to have a successful adaptation. Loesch was especially worried about children's ability to follow the various storylines from week to week, which Iwanter countered with a simple solution. " I said 'Look, within one minute, you can catch up on what's going on.' This is not string theory. The genesis of that was me seeing how storytelling had changed thanks to guys like Steven Bocho. Saturday morning was the same old, same old. X-Men: TAS proved that the kids watching on Saturday morning were more sophisticated than the executives at other networks thought they were."

Ironically, intertwining and slowly developing plotlines had become more and more the norm in mainstream comic books. This was especially the case with Marvel's X-Men comics, which, under the pen of Chris Claremont, had regularly been compared to the melodrama of a soap opera. Despite this, having a product explicitly meant for a younger crowd with this level of depth was unprecedented. Truly adapting the ongoing stories and deeper themes of the comics were problematic already, with previous attempts planning to notably dumb down the material. This included an idea where Professor X and Cyclops would simply ride around in a van and solve mutant-related mysteries, Scooby-Doo style. However, by taking the success of an '80s cop show, as well as trusting in the underrated intellect of children, X-Men: The Animated Series was able to bring Marvel's mutant superheroes to the small screen in all of their epic, long-form storytelling glory.

[king of comedy]

This the best police show

[Charley Knox]

Originally Posted by TMC

https://www.cbr.com/x-men-animated-s...ues-influence/

Bunch of bull! Chris Claremont, (70's/80's Uncanny X-Men writer) was plotting his stories like this from the very beginning. Uncanny X-Men and about any other classic Marvel comic book, took their inspiration from soap operas and Jack Kirby.

All the Marvel writers learned how to plot their books from Jack Kirby. No mistake he co-created the first romance comic book.