Por que o X-Men foi produzido pela primeira vez?

Os X-Men foram criados porque Stan Lee pensou que eles fariam um bom time de super-heróis. (Desculpe, não é muito mais complicado do que isso.)

Citação de Stan:

At the time, DC Comics had a book called The Justice League, about a group of superheroes, that was selling very well. So in 1961 we did The Fantastic Four. I tried to make the characters different in the sense that they had real emotions and problems. And it caught on. After that, Martin asked me to come up with some other superheroes. That's when I did the X-Men and The Hulk. And we stopped being a company that imitated.

Se você está se perguntando "Por que os mutantes?"

de outra entrevista :

Then with the X-Men of course I figured everybody loved teenagers in stories in those days because they were the ones reading the books, and everybody was looking for a good group series because the Justice League was doing well and the Fantastic Four was doing well and they thought let's get another group. So I thought I'll get a group of teenagers and I'll give them each a super power. But by now I had run out of ways for characters to get super powers because I'm not very good at that. I mean I take the simplest, easiest way, the coward's way out. I had Spider-Man -- Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider: That's easy. You can say that in one sentence. He became Spider-Man. He was bitten by a radioactive spider. The Hulk, Bruce Banner, was subjected to gamma rays. There was a gamma ray explosion. He got caught in it. I have no idea what a gamma ray is but it sounds pretty scientific, logical. Well, now I had already done radioactivity. I had already done a gamma ray. What am I gonna do next?

So I again, as I am tempted to do usually, prone to do, I took the cowardly way out. I said, "They're mutants. They were born that way. I don't have to explain anything. I don't have to worry about any more rays so that's it. A bunch of mutants get together." So when I finally wrote the thing and I brought it to Martin, my publisher, I wanted to call the book The Mutants. He said, "Stan" because he still didn't have much respect for the readers in those days. He said, "Nobody is gonna know what a mutant is. You can't call them the Mutants." So I went back and I thought for a while and the leader of the group was called Professor Xavier with an 'X,' and these were all a bunch of kids with extra powers so it occurred to me I'll call them the X-Men even though one was a girl but I hoped nobody would notice. So I said to him, "Okay. Instead of the Mutants we're gonna call them the X-Men," and I was amazed. He said, "Yeah, that's a good name," and I thought to myself as I left his office if nobody is gonna know what a Mutant is how is anybody gonna know what an X-Man is if he sees that on the cover?" But I had a name. I had won my battle. I didn't want to have any problems and you know, on and on. Then I did a lot of others and we were lucky and they sold and now I'm talking into a microphone for the whole world to listen. This is what happens when you write about monsters who have Jekyll and Hyde tendencies.

Por que eles são tão populares?

Eles também obviamente falaram sobre o clima político do dia, abordando grandes questões como racismo e preconceito. A própria ideia de uma equipe lutando para proteger aqueles que odeiam e temem torna-os heróis no sentido mais nobre da palavra.