How Morph went from Marvel cannon fodder to X-Men cartoon canon

polygon.com:

If you were a fan of X-Men: The Animated Series, there’s a lot to look forward to with the reboot, X-Men ’97. Is Charles Xavier truly dead? Will Cyclops ever find out that Cable is his son from the future? Will the show introduce any characters we’ve met over the past couple decades? Oddly enough, one lingering question involves Morph, a character most casual comics or MCU fans might not even know.

Kevin Sydney, aka Morph, is the original X-Men animated team member that time forgot, a minor character seemingly killed in the show’s pilot to kick off inter-team conflict as he was mourned out of proportion to his prominence. As comic stories usually do, Morph was eventually resurrected and had a surprisingly complex arc throughout later seasons. X-Men ’97 is turning the whole thing on its head: A character famous for being disposable is now an indelible part of the X-Men cartoon canon. And the team behind the reboot is treating him that way, with a whole new look and reconsideration as a nonbinary character. But what’s actually going on behind that blank, noseless face? What’s the deal with Morph?

Sydney, a mutant shapeshifter, was originally a minor X-Men villain called Changeling. He was part of a lesser-known and short-lived group in the comics called Factor Three (which also featured more famous characters like the Blob) that fought our heroes starting in X-Men #37. He only lasted a few issues before meeting an untimely death while he was impersonating Xavier. While he showed up a couple times in other series, he finally got his moment thanks to X-Men: The Animated Series.

First, his name was changed to Morph, out of concern that his name would raise the ire of DC Comics, whose character Beast Boy also went by the name Changeling. And then Morph was introduced with the rest of the team in the Animated Series pilot as a good friend of Wolverine (yes, it’s possible for the guy to have friends). When he’s killed by Sentinels, it devastates the team, especially