Editing Marvel Comics (section)

===The X-Men===
The second major team-focused product from Marvel, the X-Men are a group of mutants - a newly emerging human subspecies who possess powers and/or deformities as a result of an awakened "X-Gene". Led by the visionary civil rights activist Charles Xavier, they seek to promote peace and equality between humans and mutants, whilst battling against myriad mutant criminals - most prominently Magneto, a charismatic magnetism-controlling Jew who, having seen his human family destroyed by the Nazis, is determined to prevent similar atrocities from being carried out against mutants.

After foundering for a while during the Silver Age, the X-Men really began to find their footing in the 70s and 80s, since they combined the super soap opera formula with an ability to stand in for any of the various Civil Rights movements of the time.

Hands down the '''biggest''' sub-universe of the Marvel universe. Seriously, there are literally dozens if not hundreds of X-Men and multiple spin-off teams of mutant heroes, usually designated with an X- prefix. Some of the more notable members...
* '''Cyclops:''' Original leader of the X-men. Possesses ocular force energy beams, but can't turn them off, due to brain damage. Sadly has come to be perceived as an uptight stick-in-the-mud and mostly defined by his borderline obsessive relationship with Jean Grey. Except for the brief period where he was dating Emma Frost.
* '''Jean Grey:''' Incredibly powerful telepath and telekinetic. Infamous for dying and being resurrected - the reputation is exaggerated, but she can't shake it off. Iconic for her love triangle between herself, Cyclops and Wolverine, despite the fact she married Cyclops for quite a while. Sometimes gets possessed by the '''Phoenix Force''', a cosmic entity made of fire and lemon juice that tends to go bananas when given a physical body to play with; this used to be special, but later writers have given the Phoenix Force to just about anybody.
* '''The Beast:''' Henry McCoy, possessing the brain of a genius and the strength and agility of a gorilla on speed. Originally just looked like the Thing minus the rocks, he accidentally mutated himself into a hairy, gorilla-like monster in the 80s and it stuck. Once a fun-loving jokester who was so beloved he managed to serve on both the X-Men and the Avengers, increasingly portrayed as an evil incompetent screwup. This is possibly due to people confusing him with '''Dark Beast''', his evil alternate-universe duplicate from the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline.
* '''Professor X:''' Leader and founder of the team, Charles is one of the most powerful telepaths in the world and uses his powers to act as team psychiatrist and mission control. Also an [[Eldrad]] level dick, depending on the writer. Consistently paralyzed from the waist down; originally this was due to a spinal injury, but adaptations kept linking it to his mutant power and eventually it stuck. When the writers feel like fixing his legs he tries leading the team from the front and calling himself just '''X''', usually acting as a bigger dick than usual at the same time. Used to be friends with Magneto and seek out other mutants together until their conflicting views on human coexistence drove them apart.
* '''Storm:''' African mutant with the power to fly and manipulate the weather, including throwing lighting and subzero winds at people. Originally of uncertain ethnicity, with it being noted that her mutation caused her to display a melding of physical traits from different human ethnicities (with cat-like eyes, for good measure!) but was retconned into being pure-blooded Kenyan. Spent some time as leader of the X-Men after Cyclops cracked and couldn't handle it.
* '''Nightcrawler:''' One of the rare mutants whose physical deformities were evident from birth, Nightcrawler looks like a blue devil, but has the heart of a swashbuckling, fun-loving action hero, and is a deeply devout Catholic. That last part gives modern comics creatives fits, so they keep trying to link his mutation to demonic villains like Mephiston. It never sticks. Has superhuman agility, prehensile feet and a prehensile tail, plus the ability to teleport with the iconic "BAMF" effect and a cloud of brimstone.
* '''Colossus:''' Russian mutant who can transform his body into living steel, granting him superhuman strength and durability. Real salt of the earth type, which comes in handy when it turns out he's descended from rah-rah-Rasputin (lover of the Russian queen) and his sister gets kidnapped by demons. At one point actually gained the powers of the Juggernaut, turning an already massive metal man into a massive metal man who is nigh-unstoppable.
* '''Angel/Archangel:''' One of the original X-Men, a millionaire's son with massive white-feathered wings. Famously got abducted by Apocalypse and forcibly transformed into a living weapon with metal wings that can shoot feathers like flechettes. He is to mutants what people like Elton John are to the gay community, someone attractive, approachable and rich who can act as a public advocate.
* '''Rogue:''' A former villain who was introduced taking out Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel. Drains the "life force" from others with a touch, rendering them unconscious and granting Rogue a copy of their memories and any superpowers. For most of her history has possessed "flying brick" powers due to siphoning so much life force from Carol Danvers that she almost killed her. Can't turn her powers off, forcing her to cover up. Has had a long, messy, on-off relationship with Gambit.
* '''Gambit:''' The most "90s" member of the main team. Louisiana thief with the ability to activate the kinetic energy in anything he touches... basically, he can cause whatever he touches to blow up. Actually is only operating on, like, a shadow of his full power, having had brain surgery to cut off most of his full abilities. At full strength, would have the ability to completely and totally manipulate kinetic energy, which includes blowing shit up by looking at it, turning ''people'' into walking bombs, and assuming an energy form that can travel between planets and dimensions. Very few people remember this anymore.
* '''Emma Frost:''' Formerly a teacher for a villainous group of mutant teens, she went straight(ish) and joined the X-men. Incredibly powerful telepath, but also can shapeshift into a living diamond form, in which she gains super strength and nigh invulnerability. A blatant vessel for Chris Claremont's femdom kink; she's used her psychic powers to [[Slaanesh|incapacitate whole rooms of people with forced orgasms]] multiple times.
* '''Iceman:''' One of the original five, Bobby Drake (CPA) has the power to turn into and generate ice. Usually depicted as the most light-hearted of the original team, and described as transparent about his feelings instead of being cold like one would expect from an ice-themed character. Despite his pedigree as one of the original X-Men and the popularity of his opposite number the Human Torch, poor Bobby gets no respect and these days is mostly known as the answer to trivia questions about a superhero who can do your taxes. He was retconned into being gay in 2015, which made no sense as he had spent the preceding decades as a complete horndog who would chase after the many attractive women in the superhero community.
* '''Kitty Pryde:''' The team little sister. Introduced when Marvel realized that "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters" should probably have some actual youngsters in it after the original team had grown up. She has the power of intangibility, and unlike a lot of kid heroes she's actually shown slowly learning to control it. She's cycled through several superhero names like Sprite, Ariel, Shadowcat, and the Red Queen. A metric fuckton of future comics creatives had crushes on her as a kid; she's invariably been described as "the X-Man you could go on a date with", as opposed to the smokin-hot-but-unapproachable legacy members of the team. This reached its [[Magical realm|logical conclusion]] when Warren Ellis had her aged up solely so his self-insert Pete Wisdom could bang her without going to jail. Practicing Jewish, which the writers mainly used to have her drop ethnic slurs like a [[/pol/]] poster and get away with it, under the guise of Teaching a Lesson to other characters about prejudice.
* '''Cable:''' Designed by Rob Liefeld and one of his most infamous and most "90s" characters, being an edgetastic cyborg from the future covered in pouches, guns and muscles where no man should have muscles. Nathan Summers is the son of Cyclops and the Jean Grey clone Madelyne Pryor. Possesses great telepathic and telekinetic powers, but they are mainly used to keep the techno-organic virus he's infected with contained to his metal arm.
Of minor note: X-Men is the premier comic for "Comic Book Death", where it's hard for the audience to take a death seriously because the next writer will undo it. Just about ''all'' of the above have either "died", or "for real died", or even "we mean it, he's not coming back (and to prove it, here are his replacements)", and been brought back. To quote the comic itself: "Sometimes it seems that in mutant heaven there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors." In 2020 they stopped even pretending and gave them them the ability to out-right resurrect the dead at no cost but time.<!-- September, 1963 -->

====Wolverine====
Wolverine is so popular his agent demanded he get his own section. Rude, mouthy Canadian midget with the mutant powers of [[troll]]-like [[regeneration]], heightened senses, ultra-sharp retractile claws in between his knuckles, and appearing in a dozen different stories every month. First introduced in a Hulk story that implied he was an ''actual'' wolverine that had mutated TMNT style, he was originally the least popular member of the 70s revival team. Luckily for him, Chris Claremont rescued him with a murky yet [[grimdark]] backstory and surprising character depth as the bloody-handed anti-hero of the team who nonetheless wants to overcome his savage instincts. This made him a breakout hit, to the point where Marvel started shoehorning him onto the covers of comics he had no part in so all the grade-schoolers obsessed with this hairy ball of rage would pick it up.

Wolverine's backstory has undergone a ''lot'' of changes, tweaks and retcons over the years, justified through a combination of massive amounts of trauma (it's literally been stated that his healing factor will actually try to blot out the most painful memories as a survival mechanism) and repeated attempts by various evil organizations to brainwash him into their personal killing machine. The ''simple'' version of the story as most people will recognize it is that Wolverine was born in the 1800s to a wealthy home owner's wife who'd had an affair with the gardener. When that gardener killed her husband, the man Wolverine (then called James Howlett) believed to be his dad, he attacked the man in a rage and accidentally killed him. This drove his mom insane, and James fled into the wilderness, eventually taking up the name of James ''Logan'' to cover up his tracks. He bummed around for decades, as his healing factor stopped him from aging once he reached maturity, and he would frequently hire on as a soldier. In the early 1970s (originally 1974) he was kidnapped by the Canadian Weapon X program, who brainwashed him and bonded [[Adamantine|adamantium]] to his bones (which only he could have survived thanks to his healing factor) making him even more durable than before. Eventually he escaped in a bestial state and was found wandering the backwoods by Department H, Canada's answer to the Avengers, who re-educated and trained him only to be repaid by watching him hop the border and join the X-Men in the hopes that Charles could give him his life back.

For the longest time, Wolverine's claws were said to be genuinely mechanical implants; there was even a brief period of time in which he was portrayed with metallic "chutes" implanted in his arms so the claws could safely emerge without injuring him, but that wasn't [[grimdark]] enough and so it got replaced with him having to carve through his own flesh every time he popped the claws and relying on his regeneration to keep him from bleeding out. Then came the famous early 90s story where Magneto nearly killed Wolverine by ripping out his Adamantium, revealing his claws had been a part of him all along.

Wolverine has his own rogues gallery, though the most iconic members of it are '''Sabertooth''', who is basically Wolverine's evil counterpart, '''Omega Red''', a Russian serial killer with a healing factor implanted with knock-off Adamantium retractile tentacles and subdermal armor, and '''Lady Deathstrike''', a Japanese woman from Wolverine's past with a serious hate-on for him and freaky cybernetic lawn rakes for hands.
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