10 Words Popularised By Comics

Even though Marvel Comics was successful from the get-go, Stan Lee was quickly running out of explanations for how his superheroes obtained their powers. How many times can someone get bitten by an irradiated creature, be exposed to a radioactive isotope, or be bombarded with cosmic rays?

But in 1963, Stan the Man had an idea. "What if they were just mutants?" he thought to himself. And thus, the X-Men were born.

Even though Charles Darwin promoted the concept of mutation in his Survival of the Fittest theory over a century earlier, the word was still very unknown when X-Men was published. In fact, Stan Lee wanted to call the team "The Mutants" but changed his mind when his publisher, Martin Goodman, informed him that "our readers wouldn't know what a mutant was".

Nowadays, the word is so established, it serves as a common plot device in stories like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and other comics like Judge Dredd.

As humanity's understanding of mutations in animals, humans, cells, and viruses has expanded exponentially over the last few decades, the concept of a mutant has become universally known.