X-Men: 5 Best And 5 Worst Writers

4. Stan Lee

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I can already hear the gasps. Yes, Stan Lee, the man who created the X-Men, was also one of the X-Men€™s worst writers. As I mentioned before, Lee may have created the idea of mutants as an allegory for minorities, but he didn€™t do very much with this. His run only lasted for the first nineteen issues of the book€™s history, and although he created Magneto, the character was extremely underdeveloped by him. In the early issues of the X-Men, Magneto was not the tragic character he€™s come to be regarded as, but rather a stereotypical comic book supervillain. Even his history of being a Holocaust survivor and an old friend of Professor X came from Claremont. The entire period was extremely unremarkable. Despite the introduction of Magneto, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Sentinels and the Juggernaut, most of the X-Men€™s foes were easily forgettable mutant criminals and alien invaders. Even among X-fans, this era isn€™t regarded with any particular fondness. Towards the end of Lee€™s Silver Age Renaissance, some of his later concepts didn€™t really get the same attention he devoted to the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. And some of those, like the X-Men and Daredevil, suffered as a result. Although Lee did create some famous characters, they were fairly one-dimensional under his pen. The work of developing these characters mostly fell to future writers, particularly Claremont.
 
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Percival Constantine is the author of several novels and short stories, including the Vanguard superhero series, and regularly writes and comments on movies, comics, and other pop culture. More information can be found at his website, PercivalConstantine.com