Varför producerades X-Men först?

X-Men skapades eftersom Stan Lee trodde att de skulle göra ett bra superhjälteam. (Tyvärr är det inte mycket mer komplicerat än det.)

Citat från Stan:

At the time, DC Comics had a book called The Justice League, about a group of superheroes, that was selling very well. So in 1961 we did The Fantastic Four. I tried to make the characters different in the sense that they had real emotions and problems. And it caught on. After that, Martin asked me to come up with some other superheroes. That's when I did the X-Men and The Hulk. And we stopped being a company that imitated.

Om du undrar "Varför mutanter?"

från en annan intervju :

Then with the X-Men of course I figured everybody loved teenagers in stories in those days because they were the ones reading the books, and everybody was looking for a good group series because the Justice League was doing well and the Fantastic Four was doing well and they thought let's get another group. So I thought I'll get a group of teenagers and I'll give them each a super power. But by now I had run out of ways for characters to get super powers because I'm not very good at that. I mean I take the simplest, easiest way, the coward's way out. I had Spider-Man -- Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider: That's easy. You can say that in one sentence. He became Spider-Man. He was bitten by a radioactive spider. The Hulk, Bruce Banner, was subjected to gamma rays. There was a gamma ray explosion. He got caught in it. I have no idea what a gamma ray is but it sounds pretty scientific, logical. Well, now I had already done radioactivity. I had already done a gamma ray. What am I gonna do next?

So I again, as I am tempted to do usually, prone to do, I took the cowardly way out. I said, "They're mutants. They were born that way. I don't have to explain anything. I don't have to worry about any more rays so that's it. A bunch of mutants get together." So when I finally wrote the thing and I brought it to Martin, my publisher, I wanted to call the book The Mutants. He said, "Stan" because he still didn't have much respect for the readers in those days. He said, "Nobody is gonna know what a mutant is. You can't call them the Mutants." So I went back and I thought for a while and the leader of the group was called Professor Xavier with an 'X,' and these were all a bunch of kids with extra powers so it occurred to me I'll call them the X-Men even though one was a girl but I hoped nobody would notice. So I said to him, "Okay. Instead of the Mutants we're gonna call them the X-Men," and I was amazed. He said, "Yeah, that's a good name," and I thought to myself as I left his office if nobody is gonna know what a Mutant is how is anybody gonna know what an X-Man is if he sees that on the cover?" But I had a name. I had won my battle. I didn't want to have any problems and you know, on and on. Then I did a lot of others and we were lucky and they sold and now I'm talking into a microphone for the whole world to listen. This is what happens when you write about monsters who have Jekyll and Hyde tendencies.

Varför är de så populära?

Oavsett (eller kanske inte) en av de största orsakerna till X-Menens popularitet och andra serier i Marvel-universet var exakt att hjältarna hade verkliga känslor och verkliga problem.

De talade också uppenbarligen med dagens politiska klimat, tack vare stora problem som rasism och fördomar. Själva tanken på ett lag som kämpar för att skydda dem som hatar och fruktar dem gör dem till hjältar i orättligaste ordets betydelse.