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Legendary comic book writer and editor Stan Lee is often credited with the creation of the Marvel Comics and, subsequently, the MCU as we know it. The creator gave the world one of the best gifts before passing away.
From thousands of characters and hundreds of stories, Stan Lee was a creative genius who would sit down with a pen and paper and create these iconic characters who are larger than life. However, it wasn’t always easy for the Excelsior.
Stan Lee took a while in figuring out the X-Men
It was September 1963 whenThe X-Men #1was released to the world. The original run featured Professor Charles Xavier alongside a team of mutants and fighting off against Magneto.
However, there was a reason why the X-Men were created in the first place, and it all ties back to the popularity of the Fantastic Four. Since the earlier comic runs had found worldwide fame and acclaim, Stan Lee needed to continue this forward.
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There was a catch. Stan Lee had already given the Fantastic Four some iconic powers and he was out of ideas on what this next team of superheroes will have. In an interview withRolling Stone, Lee talked about how it went down.
Well, I think it was the fact that the Fantastic Four had sold so well. And we figured, my publisher and I, figured why not do another group? My problem was, what powers would I give them? So it wasn’t easy.
He further continued,
Then, once I figured out what powers they’d have, I had to figure, how did they get their powers? And I took the cowardly way out, and I figured, hey, the easiest thing in the world: they were born that way. They were mutants.
And that is where the creative genius emerged. Although Stan Lee admitted that it was a cowardly way to simply state that they were born that way, Lee created a world where the mutants were not the superheroes, but the outcasts.
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Lee took the idea to his publisher and Martin Goodman liked the idea immediately. However, before they were called The X-Men,Stan Leewas originally going to name them“The Mutants”.
How would anyone know what an X-Men is?
That’s the question Stan Lee asked his publisher Martin Goodman since it was originally Lee’s idea to call the team “The Mutants”. The idea was rejected by Goodman who said“Nobody knows what a mutant is.”
As the interview further continued, Stan Lee talked about his original name idea and how he came up with the name The X-Men. He wasn’t too happy about it in the beginning.
So I figured, well, they’re men and women with extra powers, and their leader is Professor Xavier, why don’t I call them the X-Men? And as I walked out of the office, I thought, ‘If nobody would know what a mutant is, how is anybody gonna know what an X-Men is?’
However, after its initial release in 1963, the X-Men comics were closed for a while, and only reprints of the comics were made. It wasn’t until 1975 whenThe X-Menfound fame and people started falling in love with the characters.
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After the revival,The X-Mencomic books became Marvel’s one of the most successful and recognizable franchises of all time and millions of people still wait to this day for the next issue.
Visarg Acharya
Senior Writer
Articles Published :3263
Visarg Acharya is a Senior Writer at FandomWire, majorly focusing on movies, with over 3000 articles published. He has been an entertainment journalist for the past three years and a copywriter at a corporation. Visarg usually covers news and theories on the MCU and the DCU, with an emphasis on Avengers and Superman; Game of Thrones, and more.A Tarantino fan, Visarg, spends his time critiquing various directors’ filmographies and watching them with curiosity. Medieval fantasy like The Lord of the Rings or sci-fi movies like Interstellar, watching the latest horror movies, and listening to Hans Zimmer become his comfort zone. When idle, he can be found reading fantasy novels with a terrible cup of coffee in hand.
