Below is rough art for one of the first team pose for the series, created for Saban Entertainment to publicize the series, long before we finished writing the first 13 episodes. Notice who is there and who is missing. There is no Beast, Gambit, or Jean Grey. When we started work in February, 1992, we were told that Beast and Jean Grey were secondary characters, less interesting to the core audience. But the more Mark Edens and I wrote as we created the story-arc for the first season, the more we wanted to use both Jean and Beast. Jean became kind of an emotional center for the team. Wolverine and Cyclops and Professor X and Gambit and Rogue and Storm might argue among themselves, but everyone seemed to trust and respect Jean. She provided a stable center in a volatile group of nine very different characters. She had a quiet strength. Beast was just way too fun to write for. We couldn’t leave him on the sidelines. There was no one like him. He was the most mutated, yet the most at ease with his mutation. He spouted obscure poetry, but was powerful and agile and courageous — a writer’s dream. So Mark and I didn’t listen to the initial instructions to minimize Beast and Jean. Will and Larry loved them too. By the time the stories were laid out, no one noticed (or mentioned) that we had used them a lot, and the team of nine was set. Gambit? I don’t know. He was supposed to be featured from day one. For some reason the marketing folks just left him out of the first promo picture. Enjoy:
