X-Men: The Animated Series original director reveals the one thing they couldn't do in the '90s

"He would pop in as a utilitarian character" Back in the early 1990s, X-Men fans knew Cable was cool, but they didn't know exactly why. (Besides that fact that he was a badass, battle-hardened, time-traveling super soldier, of course.) Turns out, neither did the creators of X-Men: The Animated Series. "Back then, the only thing we knew about Cable was that he had a son named Tyler," X-Men '97 executive producer Larry Houston tells Polygon. Houston also played a crucial role in X-Men: The Animated Series, directing all 76 episodes of its original '90s run. He also serves as an executive producer on Marvel's follow-up show, X-Men '97, which puts the spotlight on Cable (aka, Nathan Summers) in its second season. Nathan made his debut in a 1986 comic written by Chris Claremont as the infant child of Scott Summers/Cyclops and Jean Grey. It wasn't until four years later that Cable showed up in The New Mutants #87 from writer Louise Simonson and artist/co-writer Rob Liefeld. Back then, nobody at Marvel knew Cable's backstory, and it wasn't until 1993 that he became Nathan Summers, transforming the anti-hero into X-Men royalty. So when X-Men: The Animated Series debuted in 1992, the show c