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The X-Men franchise is undoubtedly one of the most successful superhero franchises ever released. Created by the late legendary comic book writer, Stan Lee, X-Men became an instant hit upon its first release. However, creating X-Men was not an easy task, thanks to the previous successful reception of the Fantastic Four. The creator of the show acknowledged that coming up with a new superhero group story was a tedious task that could potentially keep up with the bars set up by the Fantastic Four.
During one of his past interviews with Rolling Stone, Stan Lee got candid about the incubation period of X-Men. He confessed that the success of Fantastic Four pushed him and his publisher to develop a new superhero group story. But the real struggle for Stan Lee began when he tried to ideate new superpowers for the story because he believed he had already covered quite a lot in the Fantastic Four.
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He revealed, “My problem was, what powers would I give them? Because with the Fantastic Four, we already had a guy who could fly, who could burst into flame, we had a woman who was invisible with a force field, we had a guy who could stretch, and we had a big strongest man in the world. So it wasn’t easy.”
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Further, the creator of the show admitted that he opted for the easy way out by making the X-Men about mutants as he had no idea about how these different characters acquired their powers. “I had to figure, how did they get their powers? And they were all separate people that weren’t connected to each other, so I knew that would be a helluva job. And I took the cowardly way out, and I figured, hey, the easiest thing in the world: they were born that way. They were mutants,” he commented.
Stan Lee also revealed that the franchise was initially named, The Mutants but upon a discussion with his publisher, they decided to change the name to X-Men, referring to the mutant team of Professor Xavier. But the late comic book writer accepted that he has no idea as to why he called his central character, Xavier. It’s just a name that struck him naturally, which led to the creation of an ever-lasting superhero story.
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