10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About X-Men  

10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About X-Men‏

The strangest super-heroes of all have certainly got a strange history. Like, for instance, did you know that Stan Lee very nearly called them the Merry Mutants? And that for the first few issues, Cyclops’s real first name was going to be Slim? Or that, in issue #325 of Uncanny X-Men, the artist hid the plans for an experimental weapon? Well, we made that last one up, but the rest were totally true. And there’s plenty more where that came from.

In their fifty combined years of history, the X-Men have gone through numerous changes. Their uniforms have fluctuated from baggy black-and-white affairs to biker chic and back again. There numbers have swelled and shrank, with the core team’s line-up almost constantly in flux, and numerous splinter groups springing up everywhere. Heroes have become villains, villains have become heroes, and then there was Doop…

Certain changes, though, are best left forgotten. There are big parts of the X-Men’s bibliography that have been effectively bowdlerised, embarrassing choices on the part of both the characters and creators which have all but been expunged. We say “all but” because the shameful episodes of the mutants’ past are still there if you look for them. It’s just that most people don’t bother. Luckily for you lot, we’re not “most people”, so we have painstakingly gone through that fifty year history to dig up all the bits about the X-Men Marvel Comics would rather we leave well alone.

Nowadays, the X-Men comic is one of Marvel’s flagship titles. Or rather, it’s one of various flagship titles, as currently the merry band of mutants have diversified into a dozen different series, including (deep Banshee breath) A+X, All New X-Factor, All-New X-Men, Amazing X-Men, Uncanny Avengers, X-Men and X-Force. Phew. And that’s before you get onto the spin-off solo titles for Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Magneto and Cyclops. Which is all the more staggering and impressive when you take into account that the X-Men were once the least popular characters on the Marvel roster.

Yep, by 1970 – just seven years since its inception – the sole X-Men title had stopped publishing original stories and instead consisted of just reprints of old issues. It stayed that way until 1975, too, and in that period it looked like not only would we never see a new story starring the characters, but their title would get cancelled altogether. It was only with the relaunch in Giant Size X-Men, along with the introduction of writer Chris Claremont, that rescued them from obscurity and hoisted them to the heights of celebrity they exist in now.

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In this post: featured • Features • Lists • X-Men

This article was first posted on June 4, 2014

Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He\'s heard all of the Doctor Who jokes, but not any about Randall and Hopkirk.

What about that the X-Men are vaguely similar to Doom Patrol

To add to #4 let’s not forget Havok’s dumb “don’t call me a mutant” speech. It’s the same as saying don’t call me White, Black, Latino, Asian, etc. when you are indeed White, Black, Latino, Asian, etc. Definitely not a slur and then there’s the whole erasing the struggles mutants and real-life PoC face by erasing identifying as mutants and race respectively.

If it was up to Marvel they’d have us forget X-Men period. Hardly any merchandise, no cartoon, taken off most Marvel Universe product covers. If the Comics weren’t amongst their top sellers they’d love to bury the franchise

I think that has more to do with them not owning the movie rights, if they had the rights they would be puishing x-men HARD, spin off movies tv shows video games galore but i think marvel is making so much money off its movies that they see x men as a competitor and they doint want to advertise for Fox

In regards to number 4, you seem to think the terms “mutant” and “mutie” are interchangeable. One is a proper term, while the other is most definitely a slur as used in the comics.

The racist Kitty Pryde panel in #4 is from Uncanny X-Men #196 (a Secret Wars II crossover.) Kitty uses the same language with Stevie Hunter in “God Loves, Man Kills,” but it’s a different panel altogether.

I remember them, you remember them, everybody remembers them, and marvel’s not doing anything to brush them under the rug, even referencing some at times, so why would they want us to forget these things again? is it your opinion that marvel wants us to forget these? or are they truly written somewhere that it should be forgotten?

Cyclops is like peter, marvel editors keep screwing him over. The worst example of this was when cyclops was poised to retire with his new wife ( who looked like gray) and son. Sadly, in order to get him to join their stupid x-force group, they brought jean back and had scott abandon his wife and child 4 his old girlfriend. Words can’t describe how stupid that decision was, and still is!

Agreed. Bringing back Jean and retconning the Dark Phoenix Saga was a terrible decision.

I don’t think that was Kitty being racist. That was her saying “You don;t like being called a n*****, we don’t like being called muties”

Destiny was never Nightcrawler’s parent. That may have been Claremont’s plan but it never it was never written into the comics. Marvel can’t want us to forget something that never happened.

What about the fact that the X-Men used to age? Claremont originally planned for all of the X-Men to grow up and move on. Cyclops has been an X-Man for over 50 years!

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