I love the X-Men Animated series from the early 90s. I’ve mentioned on the blog before that this was my main introduction to X-Men. Since the show’s heyday I’ve read a lot more X-Men, catching up on plots I didn’t totally understand from the cartoon when I was a kid. In a way, I’ve come to appreciate the X-Men Animated Series more now that I’ve read classic runs of X-Men by Stan Lee and Chris Claremont. A lot of those episodes are almost exact adaptations of many of the most famous X-Men comic stories, including the introduction of Magneto, the Proteus Saga, and The Dark Phoenix Saga. Yet there’s one point in the X-Men Animated Series that I think departs from any X- Men comic I’ve ever read. Apparently, according to the cartoon, Wolverine hates ducks.

I caught Wolverine’s anti-duck rant when I was re-watching The Dark Phoenix Saga on DVD with my friend Adam. During episode 3 we both found ourselves on the floor laughing. Now if you remember The Dark Phoenix Saga it’s one of the more serious X-Men story-lines and explores the corruption of absolute power through the Phoenix’s interplanetary genocide. That’s not really a laughing matter. However, by the one minute mark of the episode wolverine finds himself being thrown into a duck pond and curses the pedestrian mallards for his misfortunate. This might not seem that funny on the onset, but I argue you have to ask yourself why the anti-duck sentiment is there in the first place.

I can only assume that someone on the X-Men writing staff had a bad experience with a duck once. Maybe, while calmly feeding the ducks at the park, one of the writers was viciously mauled by a raft of ducks leaving them horribly deformed and their hatred manifested itself in this one-off line for Wolverine. Better yet, maybe the writer intended to influence thousand of kids who looked up to Wolverine by using the old canuklehead as his podium for duck hatred. Or, maybe I’m reading to much into this line, but I don’t believe it. I refuse to accept that the production company would have taken the time to animate Wolverine falling into a duck pond and paying the voice actor to scream, “Ducks! I HATE Ducks!” if there wasn’t some horrific duck experience from the past. And why is Wolverine the vehicle for this duck rant? The intrigue of Wolverine mysterious origin thickens.

If you want to hear the line in question it starts at the one minute mark of the attached video.

-Jon

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