The X-Men

In the late 1970s, Stan Lee was less and less involved in the day-to-day managing of Marvel Comics. He would ultimately move to California in 1980 to devote his time solely to adapting Marvel Comics into other media. With Lee's presence on the actual books lessening, Marvel began to do a sort of ceremonial introduction at the start of each issue to make it seem like Lee was still a part of the company (since even back then, Lee was one of the most famous names in comics). It would give a basic description of the comic book and end with Stan Lee presenting it. For the X-Men, after noting the individual team member names, it stated "Children of the atom, students of Charles Xavier, MUTANTS — feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect. These are the strangest heroes of all! Stan Lee presents: the Uncanny X-Men!"

That's really the X-Men in a nutshell — feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect. They are the strangest heroes of them all. However, a funny thing happened along the way. For the first decade of their existence (the series debuted in 1963), the X-Men were very much not only outcasts within the Marvel Universe, but they were outcasts to comic book readers as well. X-Men was one of Marvel's lowest-selling ongoing titles, and in the early 1970s, the series was canceled. A few months later, it was revived as a reprint-only series, spotlighting Lee and Kirby's original '60s stories. Yes, amazingly enough, the X-Men were actually canceled after less than a decade of existence!

Then, in 1975, a book called Giant-Size X-Men #1 came out that changed everything. A brand-new team of X-Men made their first appearance, and while even then the book was not a big seller right away (it was practically the end of the decade before the book even sold well enough to be released on a monthly basis), the book was slowly gaining in sales. Then, sure enough, the strangest heroes of them all ended up becoming the most popular heroes of them all.

Beginning in the 1980s, the X-Men were not only the most popular comic book series that there was, but it wasn't even close. X-Men sold twice as many copies as any other Marvel Comics title during most of the '80s. The only other titles that rivaled it in sales were the inevitable spinoffs from the X-Men series, like New Mutants and X-Factor. What began as a comic book series eventually became practically its own imprint at Marvel Comics.

During the '90s, when comic book sales were exploding, the popularity of the X-Men grew to new heights, complete with a hit animated television series, a best-selling action figure series, and a series of popular video games.

In 2000, Fox's X-Men was the first major Marvel superhero film to be released, and it was a hit. It paved the way for all the other superhero films to follow, eventually leading to Marvel forming their own film studio to make their own movies. However, in that regard, the X-Men almost became a victim of their own success. Once Marvel began to produce their own films, the fact that they did not own the movie rights to the X-Men made it a difficult situation for Marvel. They could push a comic book series which they did not own all of the rights for or a series in which they did own all of the respective rights (specifically the Avengers). Thus, by the end of the decade, the Avengers were ascendant and the X-Men found themselves eclipsed.

Nowadays, Marvel has recommitted itself to their XMen comic book line and we're in the midst of a second wave of X-Men films, following a 2011 reboot of the film franchise. X-Men film spinoffs are starting to become more popular, with 2016's Deadpool being one of the biggest film hits of the year. This looks like it will lead to more and more X-Men-related films from Fox, with New Mutants and Deadpool 2 both on the horizon.

In this book, we'll look at the comic book characters and creators that are most responsible for the X-Men becoming pop culture institutions, and we will examine the ups and downs along the way of how the X-Men went from being canceled in 1970 to eventually starring in the highest-selling single comic book issue in comic book history just 21 years later.

Chris Claremont

When you look to the most important people involved in the success of a particular piece of popular culture, you are almost always going to be looking at the people who were the creators of the character and/or series. When you look to the history of Spider-Man, for instance, the most important people involved with...