10 Amazing Comic Books That Should Have Flopped

By 1970, the X-Men were finished. Their main book was officially canceled at issue #66 and subsequent issues were filled with reprints from earlier issues. In 1975, a revival of the X-Men was planned, and Marvel’s then-corporate owners Cadence Industries suggested the team should be international, giving them a “foreign appeal”. Also, most of the team would be older people who were already skilled in the use of their powers, unlike the teenage students of the original X-Men.

Len Wein and Dave Cockrum created the new X-Men team with existing characters Sunfire, Banshee, and Wolverine and new characters Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Thunderbird. In the 68-page Giant Size X-Men #1, the new team, along with Cyclops was assembled to rescue the previous group of X-Men from the living mutant island of Krakoa. After accomplishing their mission, the original team and Sunfire left, and the rest continued in new stories in the X-Men title starting in issue #94.

Chris Claremont took over as writer of Uncanny X-Men in 1975 and became the series' longest-running contributor and wrote seminal parts of the X-Men’s history. The new team of X-Men gradually became so successful that the spin-off titles became its own subsection of Marvel called the “X-Books”. Wolverine became the breakout character of the series and spun off into multiple titles and appearances in other comics.