re: The old X-men cartoons on Marvel/Disney really hit the ground running

This and Batman: TAS came out within a month of one another. A couple of years later, Spiderman and then Superman and then Justice League.

That was a magical time for superhero cartoons.

XMen was the first real, serious attempt to make more faithful superhero cartoons since the Fleisher Superman cartoons from the 40s (I don't count the done-on-the-extremely-cheap effort on the Marvel series from '69 - the art was solid for the time but the animation and writing was drek).

As is usual, much of what they pulled from was from the Claremont era. I can't help but wonder how much longer that content can be rehashed before it becomes like Batman's or Spiderman's origin stories.