Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of Saturday morning cartoons. I consider those days something of a lost art, and X-Men: The Animated Series was a premiere piece in that collection. But that was then.

In the 1990s, religion was not a common theme in superhero cartoons. But X-Men: The Animated Series used Nightcrawler to address the topic in a thoughtful way.

Many animated series based on comics inspire comic book tie-ins. More often than not, these books are extraneous, serving no purpose other than making money off of fans of the show who are unwilling ...