1963 X-MEN #1 Comic Book

Looking for new stories in the early ‘60s, Stan Lee began brainstorming characters and their super-powers. Having used the “radioactive-accident” origin story multiple times, Lee “took the cowardly way out” and decided they would be born mutants, providing the spark for the X-Men. He originally called the team the Mutants, but was advised by Marvel’s publisher that kids were unfamiliar with the term, so instead settled on the name X-Men. The X-Men series was not an immediate hit, but caught a second wind in 1975 when writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum introduced new characters like Wolverine and Nightcrawler.