You may never have watched a full episode of it, but there's simply no denying that X-Men had one of the most exciting opening credits in animation history.
From the very second that driving beat kicks in and seeing Rogue, Storm and the Blackbird fly over a giant 'X' shape which eventually blows up in the middle of an ocean, you knew you were in for something cool, weird and fun. If it sounded like something from fellow '90s childhood mainstay Power Rangers, that's because it was. Ron Wasserman, who wrote the theme music and background music for Power Rangers, Sweet Valley High, Mummies Alive! and - believe it or not - America's Next Top Model, wrote the theme song for X-Men.
The show's opening two-part episode, Night Of The Sentinels, was supposedly riddled with animation errors throughout - but the show's immediate popularity was enough for it to be reanimated and rebroadcast a year later. Most of the episode's plot was cribbed from various comic storylines from Uncanny X-Men, specifically the Mutant Registration Act and Jubilee's introduction. Aside from this, however, what X-Men did both in its first episode and throughout the five seasons was capture so effectively the feel and look of the comics.
Much of the design of the characters - Cyclops, especially - was taken from Jim Lee's drawings from the early '90s whilst a significant portion of Chris Claremont's stories were adapted successfully into the series. Claremont's work was known for its social subtext and the series was no different. Throughout the series, you had the X-Men dealing with everything from social exclusion, AIDS hysteria, racism and - in one episode - it even saw Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue and Jubilee arrive in Ireland to fight Juggernaut.
Like Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men helped to push comic books into the mainstream and within a few short years, Bryan Singer's live-action adaptation of X-Men helped it along even further.
Right, that's enough filler. Pump up the volume and hit play.
