The X-Men Are Marvel’s Most Important Team (And You Can’t Change My Mind)

Marvel has introduced readers to some of the greatest superteams of all time. The Fantastic Four’s super-science/Cold War American exceptionalism welded to a family dynamic showed readers that Marvel wasn’t just DC in different clothes. The Avengers took the idea of the Justice League/Justice Society — combining the greatest heroes of their respective universes — and kicked it to the next level, giving readers great character focused superhero action. Both of these teams aren’t exactly original; the Avengers are a well-worn comic trope and the FF are basically DC’s Challengers of the Unknown, down to co-creator Jack Kirby. However, there is one classic Marvel team that is not only completely original, but also holds one of the most important messages in comics: the X-Men.

The X-Men rose from their humble origins as the teen hero book that barely sold into the most popular team in the history of comics. Their ’90s animated series made them household names, and the 2000 X-Men film was Marvel’s biggest cinematic success and paved the way for every superhero movie that came after it. The X-Men have rose through the ranks, but even if one takes away the plaudits of being the bestselling comic team of all time, the X-Men are easily Marvel’s most important team.

The X-Men Changed the Direction of Comics Multiple Times Over Their History

The X-Men was different from other superhero comics right off the bat because of the team’s mission. The X-Men weren’t just a bunch of heroes out to save the world; they had an important societal message in the ’60s — equality. The whole point of the X-Men is Charles Xavier’s dream of peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants. Mutants were used as a catch-all for racial, and later sexual, minorities. At the time, with the Civil Rights movement heating up, this message was extremely important. Kids read comics and the X-Men taught them that everyone, despite their differences, was equal and deserved respect. This was a lesson that spoke to the core of what superheroes were meant to be, but it was also one that had fallen to the wayside. Comics weren’t a deep medium when it came to social messages by the time the ’60s hit, so having a comic that’s whole premise revolved around one the the most important social issues was a huge deal.

This a big part of what makes the X-Men such an important concept. Looking at the various other superteams in superhero comics, there really wasn’t anything like the X-Men on stands. Most of the time, superhero comics are more about the action and the drama than the message, despite what a legion of anti-fans like to think. There are many who like to use an old Stan Lee quote to prove that the X-Men weren’t “woke”, but there’s no other way to think of the team’s message. Lee had a lot of deficiencies as a writer and a human being, but as a creator, he wanted to talk about the United States as he saw it. Marvel was always much more contemporary than their distinguished competition. Their Silver Age hero line is basically Cold War American Exceptionalism personified, so Lee knew what he was doing when he made the X-Men a civil rights metaphor.

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An argument can be made that the X-Men’s central metaphor didn’t come to the fore until the legendary run of writer Chris Claremont. Many of the greatest X-Men stories of all-time were written by Claremont and Claremont found new ways to use the premise of the X-Men. Claremont’s writing is heavily queer-coded and Claremont’s work had no problem taking a “warts and all” look at bigotry, something that was very rare in comics at the time. Claremont’s work brought the X-Men to the next level, and also played a much bigger role in the maturation of the comic medium than it gets credit for. One needs look no further than the monumental classic “The Dark Phoenix Saga”. Comics and drama always went together, but there’s a maturity to the story that comes through on every page. “The Dark Phoenix Saga” dug into a vein of tragedy that comics had rarely hit at the time, as Claremont used the story to explore themes of friendship, love, and responsibility in a way that comics never had before. Claremont’s stories were often like this; something like God Loves, Man Kills is a story about bigotry and religion that is still extant to this very day, over forty years after its publication.

Claremont changed the way comics worked forever; his soap opera approach to the X-Men became the rule for comic superteams as time went on, and his focus on social issues made X-Men comics into something unlike everything else on the stands. Claremont wasn’t writing simple morality plays, he was writing about very adult themes in the guise of superhero comics. Uncanny X-Men isn’t usually lumped in the with the classics of the mediums like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, but it definitely deserves to be. The X-Men has been consistently revolutionary, leading into the present day with the X-Men’s Krakoa Era, and easily outstrips its fellow superteams.

No Other Superteam Has Been as Important as the X-Men in Comic History

Looking at the history of superhero comics, there are several superteams that have very important places. The Justice Society was the first time that the top heroes of a universe were brought together, the Legion of Superheroes were the first major teen team. The Fantastic Four kicked off the Marvel Universe proper and the Avengers have become the most popular superteam in the world, the first team to make a billion dollars in one go. However, none of them really compare to the X-Men.

The X-Men have been the home of the best social commentary in superhero comics for decades. They showed that superheroes could do more than save the day from supervillains; they could bring an important message to readers that the world needed to hear. The X-Men have helped young readers come to terms with themselves in a way that no other comics have, and their metaphor has proven quite malleable; just look at the way X-Men books have gone from their original Civil Rights Movement roots to becoming the most queer friendly comic on the stands. The X-Men changed the comic industry in numerous ways over the years. While they may not be as big as the Avengers are today, the X-Men actually mean something.

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