The Original X-Men: An RPG Player’s Guide to Xavier’s Team of Gifted Youngsters
They’re the biggest teen team to ever do it—brush up on the details of Professor Xavier’s team of original X-Men!
The X-Men comics hit shelves in the early 60s and changed the superhero genre forever. A teen team of mutants and social outcasts captured the hearts and minds of comic book fans everywhere. And for the last sixty years, the team has appeared all over the big and small screens—they’re a commercial and creative icon. There are hundreds of mutants associated with the franchise, but the most well-known are the original X-Men. And it was Marvel Girl, Cyclops, Beast, Angel, Iceman, and of course, Professor X who started it all.
The X-Men
First Appearance: The X-Men #1 (September 1963)
Created By: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
There are a ton of X-Men. The team has had a multitude of members over its nearly sixty years of existence. They’re not the first mutants in the Marvel universe—that title belongs to Namor. But the initial members—Beast, Marvel Girl, Cyclops, Iceman, and Angel—are the first of Professor X’s beloved mutant team of heroes. Noteably, Wolverine isn’t one of them.
Professor X: Founder of the X-Men
Professor Charles Xavier is a telepath. His whole schtick is giving mutants a safe place to learn and nurture their powers at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning (formerly the School for Gifted Youngsters). His powerset allows him to connect and command all of the X-Men, a team he formed in an effort to protect and maintain good human-mutant relations.
The Professor is a complicated figure. In movies and TV shows, he’s often portrayed as a benevolent father figure, but it’s worth noting that comic book Charles Xavier is also kind of a jerk. He disappears into space a lot when important stuff is happening. And he’s not always the nicest guy. Some have even argued that at the end of the day, Charles Xavier and Magneto have very similar means—using super-powered children for their own idealogical means.
Marvel Girl
Jean Grey, AKA Marvel Girl, is a telekinetic mutant. She would eventually discover a latent mutant power of telepathy, which leads to the discovery of the Phoenix Force living deep inside her mind. Considering she would eventually harness the powers of an endlessly-hungry god-monster, Marvel Girl wasn’t a such a terrifying force in the beginning.
The official story of how Jean awakened her powers was added in to her story later. The lore goes that she witnessed the death of her childhood best friend, which switched on her mutant abilities. Professor X used his mighty-mighty brain powers to turn of her telepathic abilities until she was old enough to control them.
Jean remains an absolute fixture in the X-Men universe. Her evolution goes from that of a young girl to a young woman and then to a universe-consuming entity. It’s a cliche, I know, but what are you gonna do?
Her romance with Cyclops has been long-running and (mostly) uninterrupted. He did accidentally father a child with a clone of her while the Hellfire Club was helping coax her into her Phoenix form, but we forgive him.
More recently, a younger, time-displaced version of Jean Grey (and the original X-Men team) are living in the modern Marvel universe.
Cyclops Was Right: The X-Men’s Most Troublesome Teacher’s Pet
His powers include shooting powerful laser beams out of his eyes and being the biggest teacher’s pet you’ll ever meet. That’s right, folks, it’s Scott Summers! Both Scott and his brother Alex were orphaned and wound up in the clutches of Mister Sinister, a really bad dude who was obsessed with using genetics to create the ultimate being. Cruel experiments woke Scott’s mutant abilities, which made living a normal life nearly impossible for him.
Scott was rescued by Charles Xavier and became the team leader of the Professor’s X-Men. Over the course of his career, he carried out Xavier’s vision of peaceful relations between humans and mutants. And after the death of Charles Xavier, Cyclops became a symbol of the mutant revolution.
The Second of the X-Men: Iceman
The second member to officially join the X-Men, Bobby “Iceman” Drake had the mutant power to create ice out of thin air. In the early days, his powers caused him to appear like a very fast snowman. Later, as he learned to master his powers, he’d look a lot more like a dude made of ice. Which is, admittedly, much cooler.
Bobby’s story didn’t evolve much over the years. It’s only within the last decade that his exploits have once again graced the pages of comic books. When the time-displaced teen X-Men came to the modern 616 timeline, young Bobby and adult Bobby came out of the closet, admitting that the character was gay.
Beast: The Mind and Heart of the X-Men
We all know and love the big blue guy, but Henry “Hank” McCoy didn’t start out abnormally hairy or blue at all! Experimentations on himself resulted in the extended triggering of his mutant abilities, which gave him his famous blue fur and pointy fangs.
Beast, as he would be known, was born with advanced musculature, strength, and healing abilities. He also has extreme dexterity in his feet as well as his hands. His immune system is highly advanced, and he’s got heightened senses like his good pal, Wolverine. He can also give off pheromones to attract people to him… Which is wierd? But ok I guess.
Hank, like Cyclops, is very committed to Charles Xavier’s vision for mutant and human coexistence. The two, however, fundamentally disagreed on what that meant after the death of their hero. Together, the idealogical differences between the two can be seen as symbols of peaceful resistance and the rejection of respectability politics in social justice.
Angel
Warren Worthington III, other than being the most Stan-Lee name a character has ever been given, is the mutant superhero Angel. If you couldn’t guess from his name, Warren was a rich kid. Before Professor X found him, Angel was a vigilante hero, and once he joined the X-Men, he was a valuable and beloved member of the team—and a helpful financier.
In all variations of his story, Angel is tragically separated from his wings. In the comics, he makes a deal with Apocalypse to get a new pair of wings. The process turns him into Archangel, the murderous robotic assassin. He is eventually able to merge the two identities—but not before killing Apocalypse.
