Thirty years ago, the world met the X-Men.

Although the comic book characters debuted in 1963, in the early 1990s, awareness of the property wasn’t as widespread as superheroes like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. There had been no movies or television shows about Marvel’s mutants. Hollywood was skeptical about the marketability of the superpowered team of outcasts.

The most notable exception was Margaret Loesch. From 1984 to 1990, Loesch was the president and CEO of Marvel Productions, and during that time, an X-Men cartoon became her passion project. She even financed a pilot for the X-Men in 1989. While Pryde of the X-Men failed, Margaret didn’t stop believing in the X-Men. So when she became CEO of Fox Kids in 1990, she returned to the property.

“I identified with the X-Men,” Loesch tells Inverse, “I believed in the show, even when Fox was telling me I was risking my job over it.”

The result was X-Men: The Animated Series, the groundbreaking cartoon that ran for five years and became a runaway success. The series catapulted awareness of the X-Men and set the stage for the X-Men films, which, of course, led the way to a revolution in comic book movies. The show was so successful that now, 30 years later, a reboot is in the works titled X-Men ‘97, which picks up right where the original left off.

X-Men: The Animated Series debuted on October 31, 1992 with part one of a two-part pilot called “Night of the Sentinels.” The story centers on Jubilee, a teenager discovering her mutant powers. After her foster parents report her to a non-government organization that promises to help, she’s suddenly terrorized by towering, mutant-hunting robots. Jubilee soon meets the X-Men and learns what it means to be a mutant.

It was a mature, complex story about prejudice and discrimination that set the stage perfectly for the series that was to come. To mark the occasion of 30 years since the cartoon’s debut, here, talking to Inverse, is the creative team behind X-Men: The Animated Series and its pilot “The Night of the Sentinels.”

Assembling the team

Margaret Loesch: I first heard of the X-Men as an adult in the 1970s when I met Stan Lee. I had been a comic book fan as a child but it was mostly DC, not Marvel Comics. But when I met Stan and began working with him, I loved asking him questions about how he and Jack [Kirby] came up with things. He would always give answers that were very intriguing. Through those conversations, we talked a lot about the X-Men because Stan was a big fan of the X-Men.

I was intrigued by X-Men because it was so different from anything I had been exposed to. This was in the 1970s and the X-Men I first became exposed to were the comics where the X-Men themselves were teenagers. I was enthralled with the idea of these disenfranchised youths who were dealing with all the problems we see today for people who aren’t accepted for their differences.

I had an immediate identification and empathy for the X-Men and, when I joined Fox [as the head of programming for Fox Kids] in 1990, the show was a priority for me after we got past our first year of programming.

“I was intrigued by X-Men because it was so different from anything I had been exposed to.”

Larry Houston (Producer Director on X-Men: The Animated Series): I’d started at Marvel Productions about a decade before X-Men. I’d worked on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and shows like that. Whenever one of these shows had a sequence with one of the X-Men, I’d grab that clip to compile them to use as a marketing tool for an X-Men series.

Stan Lee and Margaret Loesch were the two executives at Marvel who believed in the X-Men as a series. In 1989, she found the money to do an X-Men pilot, Pryde of the X-Men, which I was one of the co-directors on. We put our best foot forward with that show, but it didn’t sell.

About six years later, Margaret had become the CEO of Fox Kids Network for Saturday mornings and she called me up and said “Larry, we’re doing the X-Men and I want you to be a part of it.” I’d been trying to get the X-Men on the air since the 1980s, so, of course, I said “Yes!”

Eric Lewald (Executive Story Editor on X-Men: The Animated Series, Author of Previously on X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series): The first big meeting to discuss X-Men: The Animated Series took place on February 17, 1992 at the Saban building in Toluca Lake. Everyone was there, including Fox TV Network executives, people from Marvel comics, artists, producers, animators, marketers, and financiers. Even Stan Lee.

I’d been hired just twelve hours earlier by Fox executive Sidney Iwanter to be in charge of writing the show. The problem was, I knew next to nothing about the X-Men so I just kept quiet during that meeting to hide my ignorance.

Mark Edward Edens (Head Writer of X-Men: The Animated Series): I was hired along with Eric, as we’ve worked together on many shows. The problem was, Fox only budgeted for one story editor, so they suggested we do it together and split the fee. Well, we didn’t want to do that and Eric always liked going to meetings more than I did — I just like to sit down and write — so Eric became the story editor and I became the head writer.

“We only had three weeks to write the first draft.”

Lewald: After that first meeting, I started to get caught up on the X-Men. I bought some trading cards and an X-Men board game. Larry Houston also gave me a copy of the 1988 Marvel Universe coffee table book, which was about 400 pages of all the characters and their powers and their history. Mark and I both educated ourselves that way, which we had to do quickly because we only had three weeks to write the first draft.

Choosing the roster

Edens: One of the first things we had to do was figure out who was going to be on the team. Right away, we knew we needed Wolverine because he was the most popular character and we had to have Cyclops because he was the leader and there was a built-in conflict there.

Lewald: There were a few different factors at play in determining the lineup. From the writers’ perspective, we wanted the eight most distinct characters we could have. We also wanted a diverse array of powers. We also had to consider who Marvel wanted. Gambit, for example, was a newer character and they wanted him.

We also had to consider who was easier to animate. A character that flies is easier to animate than a character who runs. So, the fact that Storm and Rogue could fly gave them a slight edge over other characters we could have chosen.