This series was the second attempt to make an animated version of the X-Men comics. The first was a half-hour special titled "Pryde of the X-Men". Although aired numerous times between 1989 and 1992, Pryde was poorly received and was not picked up. Pryde was said to have almost killed any chances of a series being picked up. Executives objected to Wolverine's Australian accent and the dragon sidekick. Eventually the idea was reworked into this series.
Fox Kids vice-chairman Margaret Loesch and executive Sidney Iwanter bargained for a second chance. They hired Eric Lewald to be the executive story producer. They worked with Bob Harras to fill the staff with comic book geeks like Will Meugniot, Larry Houston, and Eric's wife Julia.
Meugniot was the first person hired.[1] Houston was the second and Eric Lewald was the third.
Meugniot and Houston were big X-Men fans since their childhoods reading the original comics. Eric Lewald was not yet a fan and simply wanted to tell good stories.
Outside of The Incredible Hulk, Marvel had had moderate success in television and almost no success in film. Loesch believed in the show and put her career on the line to get the show made even though senior executives, advertisers, and station owners did not.
Everyone involved knew that the characters needed to be taken seriously despite varying tones in the comics. Iwanter would refer to this series as "hard rock" and Batman: The Animated Series as "cool jazz."
Early in the series' development, Stan Lee expressed interest in running the show. He wanted something closer to the original comics of the 1960s with a teen vibe. The series writers decided to go with the intensity of the 1970s.
Eric Lewald said, "There were rumblings of 'This could really flop.' [Executives would say,] 'The scripts aren't funny.' 'These scripts seem a little dark.' 'Gosh, I'm afraid this is going to be a disaster.' There was serious anxiety until the first screening. But from that day onward, no anxiety."
Individual episodes were given out to individual writers instead of being developed in a shared writer's room, as with other dramas. Eric Lewald would conceive story arcs and bounce the ideas between individual writers. He would then take those to Marvel and piece them together into the show.
The series was perhaps the first animated series to have on-going series. Before X-Men, shows were episodic focusing only one the weekly story. Most stories would be wrapped up by the end of the episode and have little to no effect on subsequent stories. X-Men was the first to create continuity between the episodes creating a larger story. Besides multi-part stories like Days of Future Past and The Phoenix Saga, the show had story threads that continued throughout the seasons. For example, the first season had the subplot of Beast facing trial and building up to a big confrontation with Master Mold while the second season had Professor X and Magneto in the Savage Land that was unrelated to most stories of the season.