‘X-Men’ are real heroes
“IRON MAN” looks great [“A Hero Complex,” March 9]. Marvel Studios looks like a winner. But Geoff Boucher overlooked the single biggest reason for Marvel’s rebirth in Hollywood: the highly rated, 1992-97 TV show, “X-Men: The Animated Series.”
For 30 years Marvel Comics had had no luck translating its “serious” vision to film or television. Networks and studios didn’t get it, or it was dumbed down.
Then Fox Kids TV executives Margaret Loesch and Sidney Iwanter pushed through and supervised the first series that respected the creations of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and their colleagues. Years later, when Bryan Singer and his writers were asked to produce the first “X-Men” feature, Singer was quoted as saying, “I watched all [the] episodes of the animated series, and really familiarized myself.”
No animated series super-hit, no movie. No movie, no Marvel Studios. The Marvel “breakthrough” happened on TV, in 1992, on a revolutionary Saturday morning cartoon show.
Eric Lewald
Glendale
Lewald was a story editor on “X-Men: The Animated Series” and has worked in television as a story editor, writer and producer.
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