The comic legend Stan Lee created many heroes for Marvel, which still today are among the most important figures in pop culture. Sometimes he had selfish claims about his ideas as well. This is also true for one of the most important superhero teams, which is still loved by fans.
Which team is it? Stan Lee created many important Marvel characters with partners like Jack Kirby until his death in 2018. These include:
- The Fantastic Four (1961)
- Hulk (1962)
- Thor (1962)
- Spider-Man (1962)
- Daredevil (1964)
Under his pen, well-known superhero teams like the Avengers or also in 1963 the X-Men were created. The mutants under Professor X represent a peculiarity not only in the Marvel universe. Stan Lee wanted a team where he had to worry less about how the superpowers are acquired.
In games, the X-Men have also fought against video game characters:
I can’t have them all bitten by a radioactive spider
What was his lazy
reason for the X-Men? In 2004, Lisa Terrada interviewed Stan Lee for the Living Television Collection. They discussed various points of his career, the competition with DC, and the origin story of several heroes, including the X-Men. Lee explains how he came up with the idea of mutants:
Anyway, I wanted to design another group, another group of superheroes, but I was getting tired of constantly coming up with how they get their superpowers. I couldn’t have them all bitten by a radioactive spider or subjected to a gamma ray explosion.
[…] And I took the coward’s way out. I said to myself, “Why don’t I just say they are mutants? They were born that way.” We all know that there are mutants in real life. There is a frog with five legs, just things like that. So I don’t have to come up with new excuses. I get as many as I want.
Stan Lee on the creation of the X-Men (Source: YouTube)
In the Marvel universe, mutants are humans with the X-gene, which gives them abilities that are different for each mutant. As Homo superior
, the central conflict of many X-Men comics is the hatred of many people towards mutants because they are different
. Even though later backgrounds regarding the X-gene were added, it was originally just a gene that could bring out any ability.
With this idea, Stan Lee went to his publisher boss. Initially, he wanted to call them the Mutants
. His boss probably thought the idea itself was quite good, but not the name. He thought that name would be difficult if none of the readers knew what a mutant is. He then came up with the idea X-Men
, fitting for the leader of the group, Professor Xavier.
His boss thought this name was better, even though Stan Lee himself was confused as to why this name was suddenly okay: If a reader doesn’t know what a mutant is, how will he know what an X-Man is?
Even more than 60 years later, the X-Men are special
How special are the X-Men today? The X-Men are not just a team like the Avengers besides their X-gene. Even in their beginnings, they could be understood as a metaphor for the civil rights movement in the USA in the 1950s and 1960s.
In an article for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Brian Powell wrote about the representation of the civil rights movement in Marvel comics. He compares the characters Professor X
and Magneto
with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, who were central figures during the movement.
The Sentinels, huge mutant-hunting robots, are for him an answer to police brutality during riots in Los Angeles in 1965.
Even today, many X-Men comics address racism, exclusion, and hate. A good example is the animated series X-Men ’97, which will be released in 2024. There, there is a trial for the villain Magneto, who now wants to do good. In this, he questions why he should use his powers for people who hate mutants and would prefer to exterminate them. Read more about the X-Men here: An underestimated heroine in Marvel finally gets the story she deserves
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