Episode #27 - Out Of The Past, Parts One
Original Airdate 29th July 1994

An old lover of Wolverine's returns to New York in an attempt to use him to break into a strange alien vessel in the Morlock tunnels.

Episode #28 - Out Of The Past, Parts Two
Original Airdate 5th August 1993

With a life sucking alien on the loose, the X-Men must stop it before it reaches the streets of New York.

Credits
Written By: Michael Edens (Part 1), Len Wein (Part 2)
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy
Animation Services By: Philippines
Guest Starring: Tasha Simms as Yuriko/Deathstrike

Review: The first thing to say about these episodes is simply wow! The animation! AKOM occasionally managed to pull of have decent animation by their standards, but this episode is comparable to the likes of Batman and Superman in terms of visuals! It simply pops!

These are the first episode Philippines animated for the show, and they’re easily the best. They would later animated “Cold Comfort” and the final “revamped” episodes, but Out Of The Past simply has the best visuals the show had to offer, topping the work they did on the second season of Fantastic Four

The story itself isn’t too bad either, but the takes a somewhat dramatic shift in tone for the second part. The first introduces Lady Deathstrike (whose name actually made it past the same censors that thought Sinister Six “sounded to evil”!) as the bitter former love of Wolverine who had volunteered for an experiment to give her claws similar to Wolverine’s. The second episode features the X-Men trying to stop a big, bright green alien blob from well, killing everyone. The thing I liked most about the blob is the fact is helps set up later episodes, as the ship was apparently a Shi’ar enemy, who of course, would turn up in the following Phoenix episodes.

As said above, the undisputed highlight are the visuals. Cyclops in particular looked great. He always seemed to look like a dork with Akom, but Philippines tweaked his design slightly, placing blue shadows on a black suit, and it came across wonderfully. Wolverine himself also looked a hell of a lot more rugged. If every episode had visuals of this quality, I don’t think anyone would have a right to complain!

Whilst we never saw Lady Deathstrike again after this, I don’t feel there was a great need for her return. A nice, one-shot villain who played her role nicely in a change from the norm story.

Part One








Part Two