Stan Lee Created The X-Men Out of Laziness

The X-Men are one of the most beloved superhero teams in the Marvel Universe, but Stan Lee’s reason behind the creation of the team stemmed not from a desire to tell a unique story, but out of sheer laziness. The famed comic creator is known for his many contributions to comics: Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and perhaps his most famous creation Spider-Man. But the X-Men were created to fix a simple problem, one that Lee had trouble solving every time he spearheaded the creation of a superhero.

In Marvel’s nascent beginnings, Lee’s formula for creating superheroes was to introduce a human element into the extraordinary. The Incredible Hulk didn’t have control over his abilities, Iron Man was an arms dealer looking to atone for his past sins, and Spider-Man was the first teenage superhero who notably wasn’t a sidekick. But the origins were beginning to appear distressingly similar. Cosmic rays (for the Fantastic Four), gamma bombs and radioactive spider bites could only satisfy readers for so long before they realized the were all essentially the same origin: powers from a rapidly-introduced plot device. Lee needed something more and he found it in the genesis of the X-Men.

While Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are both credited with the X-Men’s creation, it was Lee who stumbled upon the idea of mutants. In X-Men: The Official Guide, Lee writes his idea “…guaranteed I’d never have to worry about explaining the origin of a superpower again! It hit me when I thought of the word ‘mutant.’ We all know that mutations occur in nature. For no apparent reason a frog will be born with three legs, or a banana will be the size of a watermelon or a child prodigy will have the ability to play Mozart at the age of 3. And the beautiful things about such mutations is they don’t require any explanation. They can happen to anyone.” 

The X-Men were quickly created after that, and Lee decided to go against cliches with certain characters. Professor X, though confined to a wheelchair, was one of the strongest telepaths alive and the team’s leader; the physically-imposing Beast was the most literate of the group. As for Iceman, Lee included him simply because he was a fan of the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch and wanted to include his opposite on the team, hence Bobby Drake’s ability to transform into snow (and later, ice).

The X-Men would eventually become stand-ins for all persecuted groups; the team of mutants would be hated and feared by most of the Marvel Universe for their differences. It is notable, then, that Lee didn’t have that plot thread in mind at all when creating the X-Men; the ‘mutant’ aspect of the team was simply introduced to solve a writing issue. Stan Lee’s laziness ended up creating the beloved and powerful X-Men, and the world is better for it.