play set: X-Men Pocket Comics Master Mold Play Set

By 1963, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko had created the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man. Each appeared in 12-cent, four-color comic books and were an instant hit. Lee predicted that Marvel fans would want more, and he started to develop a new group of a characters including a guy who shoots beams from his eyes, a telekinetic teenage girl, a human ice machine, and a telepath in a wheelchair. Lee called them the Mutants, but Marvel����_��s publisher informed him that kids did not know that word. Instead, Lee choose to use ����_�X-Men����_�_����_��a group with extra powers under the leadership of Professor Xavier.

����_�The X-Men No. 1����_�_ debuted shortly after The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Lee����_��s characters faced prejudice because of their differences. ����_�The main objective was to show that bigotry is a terrible thing,����_�_ Lee told ����_�RollingStone����_�_ magazine. X-Men did not get much attention in the 1960 or early 1970. In 1975, writer Len Wein added Wolverine to the line-up. Wein proved too busy to work on the project and a young writer, Chris Claremont, took over.

Claremont wrote X-men for nearly 17 years. He played on the teenage angst and hit the prejudice theme hard. Claremont worked with artist John Byrne to create a sleek, sexy-look for the characters and by the 1980, weird was cool. The theme continues to resonate.