

Two of Marvel’s most critically acclaimed Disney+ exclusives will release on cable this week, according to a recent report from Comicbook.com’s Cameron Bonomolo. From June 30th to July 4th, the first seasons of this year’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and last year’s X-Men ‘97 will premiere for the first — and presumably only — time on the Disney-owned FXX.
In addition to the budget-conscious, the move is sure to delight those that long for the bygone days of the Fox Kids programming block, where these series’ predecessors made their debut in the 90s and early 2000s. X-Men ‘97, as the name implies, is a direct continuation of X-Men: The Animated Series, which ended its original run on a cliffhanger with “Graduation Day” on September 20th, 1997. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, meanwhile, acts as a spiritual successor to Spider-Man: The Animated Series that offers a more traditional version of the character compared to his high-tech MCU counterpart.
Both shows also weathered their share of controversy around the time of release. X-Men showrunner and head writer Beau DeMayo (Moon Knight, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf) was fired a week ahead of the series’ premiere for what Disney called “egregious” on-set behavior in a statement to Variety. A year later, Spider-Man voice actor Hudson Thames (Malibu Country, The A-list) raised eyebrows when he complimented “Your Friendly Neighborhood for not being “annoying and woke” ahead of its premiere, inadvertently turning discussions of the show into the latest site of an ongoing online culture war surrounding diversity in television. (Thames would later amend that his previous comment had been “a poor choice of words,” clarifying he had meant to compliment that “equality and diversity was always baked into the story” of the series and “nothing felt forced.”)
Despite these mishaps, X-Men ‘97 and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man have both been critical successes for Disney, boasting Rotten Tomatoes scores of 99 and 97 percent, respectively. At least one more season of each is in development at Disney+, which gives newcomers plenty of time to catch up — though this may be their only chance to do so without a subscription. You can find a full schedule for the programs on FXX here.