In March 1990, Margaret Loesch (who had previously worked as president and chief executive officer at Marvel Productions) became head of Fox Children's Network.
Throughout its run, producers had to deal with quality control issues, including attempts to cut costs and requests to change the tone of the series to more child-friendly and integrated toys.
It consists of Cyclops, Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, Beast, Gambit, Jubilee, Jean Grey, and Professor X, as well as original character Morph, who is based on Changeling.
The series deals with social issues, including divorce ("Proteus"), religion ("Nightcrawler" and "Bloodlines"), the Holocaust ("Enter Magneto", "Deadly Reunions", "Days of Future Past" and "The Phalanx Covenant"), AIDS hysteria ("Time Fugitives"), and loneliness ("No Mutant Is an Island").
In the abbreviated form of the Secret Wars storyline, the Beyonder and Madame Web select Spider-Man to lead a team of heroes against a group of villains.
Other storylines include X-Men member Morph's death at the hands of the Sentinels, Beast's incarceration, and Apocalypse's minions attempting to assassinate U.S.
In the second season, Cyclops and Jean are married and targeted by Mister Sinister, who seeks to use the genetically perfect combination of their DNA to create an army of obedient mutants.
Other storylines include the introduction of Wolverine's former lover turned mercenary, Lady Deathstrike, former X-Men member Iceman, and the villainous Shadow King.
The original opening sequence, used throughout the first four seasons, features the X-Men demonstrating their mutant abilities to an instrumental theme written by Ron Wasserman and composed by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy.
When UPN began airing reruns on Sunday mornings, an alternate credits sequence was used: a high-quality Japanese-animated version of the original opening.
The end credits sequence was also changed: it featured shots of American X-Men comic books set to the song "Back to You", also by Ambience.
Episodes were edited for time so that new segments could be added to the end to promote X-Men: Children of the Atom, which featured the dub actors pretending to play the game as their characters.
A second dub was made in the early 2000s for broadcast on Toon Disney (Japan) that is more faithful to the original English scripts and does not cut episodes for time.
[21][citation needed] In its prime, X-Men garnered very high ratings for a Saturday morning cartoon and received praise for adapting many different storylines from the comics.
Beau DeMayo served as head writer for the first two seasons, with most of the surviving cast members of the original series reprising their roles, including Dodd, Zann, Buza, Disher, Potter, Sealy-Smith, Hough, and Britton.
They were joined by Jennifer Hale, Anniwaa Buachie, Ray Chase, Matthew Waterson, JP Karliak, Holly Chou, Jeff Bennett, and A.J.
Scheduled for publication in April of that same year, the series will explore an alternate universe where the events of Jonathan Hickman's House of X and Powers of X happened decades earlier, in the '90s of the original show.
[4] In the 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, produced by Marvel Studios, the theme song from the TV series (orchestrated by Danny Elfman and credited as X-Men '97 Theme) is played when Charles Xavier (portrayed by Patrick Stewart) first appears; in the film, unlike his previous performances as the character in Fox's X-Men franchise, Stewart's Xavier is visually redesigned to match his animated counterpart, complete with his iconic green suit, blue and black tie, and yellow hoverchair.
[40] In the Ms. Marvel episode "No Normal", set in the MCU, the theme song from the X-Men animated series is played when Kamala Khan discovers that she is a "mutant".