All-New, All-Different

When Lee and Kirby's X-Men first appeared in 1963, it was one of many creations that were released in the wake of the book that launched modern Marvel, the Fantastic Four. Some would become great hits (Spider-Man, Thor), others would forever remain second -stringers (Ant-Man, The Wasp), and a third category would need a fair amount of time to really take off  and sustain their own books (The Hulk, Iron Man).[1]  X-Men sustained a nearly seven-year-long run of original material before becoming a reprint series at the end of 1970, with occasional guest appearances by the characters in other books over the next five years.   

X-Men was a team book unlike the company's better-selling Avengers or Fantastic Four.  The Avengers, like DC's Justice League, were a combination of heroes who had their own titles (Thor, Iron Man, eventually Captain America) and characters who were building a fanbase as team players (over time, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and the Vision).  The Fantastic Four was a family.  But the X-Men had more in common with the groups of characters favored by Jack Kirby:  the hidden civilization of the Inhumans, the far-off, self-contained adventures of the gods of Asgard, and, in the 1970s, the mysterious, isolated Eternals (who were never even meant to be part of Marvel's main continuity, let alone ruin the track record of the Marvel Cinematic Universe).  Though the X-Men's power sets could easily have been the results of the ubiquitous radioactive accidents that created the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man, instead the characters were mutants: born different from the rest of humanity, and therefore marked as outcasts. It would take years for the public's love of the Avengers and their irrational fear and hatred of mutants to become a story point, but that did not matter on the pages of the X-Men comics themselves.  The purpose of a comic about mutants rather than generic superhumans was to explore alienation, racial hatred, and the possibility of reconciliation.

Where DC's heroes, and even many of Marvel's, were aspirational, the X-Men's appeal stemmed from their status as outcasts.  In the tradition of twentieth-century science fiction and fantasy written primarily by straight white men, mutants became an all-purpose metaphor for any kind of difference, facilitated by the fact that almost all the initial mutants were straight white men. [2] Mutants allowed for the exploration of alterity without the baggage of actually existing alterity.  The mutants could stand for Jews without being coded as Jewish, for African Americans without being Black, and, eventually, for queer people without explicit depiction of queerness. Sixty years later, the limitations of this approach are glaring, but this does not take away from its power at a time when real explorations of difference, particularly in a medium intended for children, were few and far between.  The X-Men offered avenues of identification for readers who might not even know that they needed it.

X-Men did not keep its original creative team for long; Kirby was frequently joined by a co-penciler,  and he and Lee both left after issue 19. During their tenure, they introduced several important features of X-Men lore:  Magneto, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Professor Xavier's evil half-brother the Juggernaut, and the Sentinels.  Though the Sentinels would not become frequent antagonists until years later, these mutant-hunting robots signified that more was at stake than in an ordinary superhero story.  Mutants were being threatened with genocide. [3] Lee and Kirby were succeeded by Roy Thomas as writer and Werner Roth (and then Don Heck) on pencils. Other teams followed, but the comic only started to stand out again when it was reinvigorated by younger artists (Jim Steranko, Barry Smith, and Neil Adams).  Thomas and Adams' run on the comic remains beloved, but cancellation (in the form of the shift to an all-reprint format) put this brief experiment to an end.

Yet the X-Men still had their fans, including in the Marvel Bullpen itself.  During the Seventies, both Marvel and DC were willing to take chances on a wide variety of new books and new approaches, which led to Len Wein and Dave Cockrum creating a new team of X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men 1 ("Deadly Genesis!" May 1975). The next issue of the regular book (94) dispensed with the reprints (in mid-storyline, much to the frustration of my eight-year-old self) and continued the story of these new characters. All the old X-Men were gone except for Cyclops (though Jean Grey would quickly, and memorably, return), and they took Len Wein with them. Chris Claremont was credited as Wein's co-writer on issues 94-95,  co-wrote the next issue with Bill Mantlo, and became the sole scripter for a very, very long time. [4] 

The Legion of Ethnic Stereotypes

As part of a team with Dave Cockrum (94-107 and 110, returning  not long after the Eighties began) and John Byrne  (108-109, 111-143; for much of this time, Byrne was credited as co-writer), Claremont carved out an expansive corner of the Marvel Universe that made the rest of the company's mainstream adventures look tame.  Fresh off of redesigning costumes on DC's long-running Legion of Superheroes, Cockrum brought a modern and exciting look to the characters, most of whom he designed.[5] Wein had established the new X-Men as a multiracial, multinational team, and Claremont leaned into this diversity hard.  Granted, he did so with a stunning amount of stereotyping: every Japanese character has samurai blood and is obsessed with honor, Native Americans are always angry, and always announcing their tribal identity, while Irish, Scottish,  and Southern characters' accents are transcribed in an almost indecipherable manner.  But it was diversity nonetheless.

Notes

[1] The original comic series featuring the X-Men has undergone a number of name changes. It started out as simple X-Men, and was renamed The Uncanny X-Men with issue 114 (October 1976). In 1991, a second title was launched under the old name, X-Men  (often referred to as "Adjectiveless X-Men), renamed New X-Men when Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely came aboard with issue 114 (May 2001).  Various relaunches have recycled all three of these names over the years.

[2] In 2015, founding X-Man Bobby Drake (Iceman) came out as gay.  Though fans had speculated about his sexuality for years (with some writers dropping the occasional broad hint), it's safe to say that he did not function as a "gay" character in the 1960s.

[3] Of course, this term was not used in relation to mutants until much later.

[4] X-Men 106 was a fill-in by Mantlo with Claremont's framing sequence that clumsily fit into the ongoing story.  When Marvel reprinted the first decade of Claremont's X-Men in a monthly comic called Classic X-Men (later X-Men Classics), they left this one out.

[5] Cockrum developed the look for Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Thunderbird, and the re-design of Jean Grey as Phoenix.  Banshee, Cyclops, and Sunfire had already been established, while Wolverine had recently been introduced in an issue of The Incredible Hulk (drawn by Herb Trimpe but designed by John Romita, Sr.; he was co-created by Romita, Roy Thomas, and Len Wein).  

Next: New Recipe X-Men