X-Men (Earth-1610)

The X-Men are a team of heroic mutants founded by Charles Xavier and centered in the United States. In contrast to the borderline genocidal Brotherhood of Mutants, the X-Men strive simply for survival in a world that treats them with hatred and prejudice.

History

Origin

Professor Charles Xavier founded the X-Men after a falling out with Magneto. The two had established a mutant sanctuary in the Savage Land, devoted to protecting their kind from the world's judgment, especially that of the American government and their murderous Sentinel robots. But their worldviews soon diverged: Magneto saw mutants ("homo superior") as being the rightful inheritors of the Earth, while Xavier simply wanted to live in peace. Magneto gravely injured Xavier, crippling him, and Xavier traveled to the U.S. to regroup.

He established the Xavier Institute for Gifted Children in New York, a private-school front for his own mutant refuge, with the intent being to recruit mutants to stop the coming war between Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants and the human race at large. He developed Cerebro, a device that amplifies his already considerable telepathic abilities, to locate other mutants for this new team, the X-Men. He also used a latex-based material to make suits for the X-Men that would disguise their mutanthood from the Sentinels. His earliest recruits were Cyclops and Marvel Girl, who became the X-Men's team captain and primary recruiting agent, respectively.

2001

Marvel Girl, born Jean Grey, brought in several young mutants in early 2001 on Xavier's instruction: Beast, Colossus, and Storm. With the X-Men's first full team assembled, the five were sent on another recruiting mission, this time for a teenage boy named Bobby Drake in New York City. Drake had left his home after discovering that he was a mutant, fearing what would happen to his parents if he was found. The X-Men collectively centered around Drake in Times Square, moments before a towering group of Sentinels attacked. The X-Men, despite their inexperience, were able to fend off the Sentinels and protect Drake. One Sentinel went haywire and threatened to harm non-mutant humans, but Drake's mutant power awoke in his distress and covered it in solid ice, prompting Beast to give him the codename Iceman. Despite the fact that they had doubtless saved thousands of lives, the X-Men were nonetheless accosted by the bigoted populace of Times Square.

A few weeks later, Charles Xavier detected the presence of a mutant who had been apprehended by federal authorities and was being taken across the Canadian border. He believed it to be Wolverine, a dangerous killer who had escaped exploitation at the hands of the American government. The X-Men traveled to Syracuse to intercept the caravan transporting him. A small battle ensued between them and the soldiers guarding Wolverine; Beast and Colossus freed him from his cell, but he ran off, uninterested in further attention. They tracked him through the snowy woods to find him moments from killing a soldier in cold blood; Marvel Girl used telekinesis to knock him out, and he was transported back to their base. Unbeknownst to the X-Men, Wolverine had been sent by Magneto to assassinate Xavier, and his capture was a ploy to attract Xavier's attention and let his guard down.

Wolverine was fully inaugurated as a member of the X-Men. Alterations to his brain brought about by the mysterious Weapon X project made his mind impenetrable to Xavier, leaving his true motives a mystery. At this time, the Brotherhood of Mutants kidnapped the daughter of the President of the United States, announcing to the world that she would be killed as soon as one more mutant died at the hands of a Sentinel. Some of the X-Men, especially Storm, recognized the Machiavellian value of this act, but nonetheless arrived at the decision to rescue her. Xavier tracked down the Brotherhood—sans Magneto—to Croatia, and the full X-Men team initiated their rescue mission. The rescue itself was a success, concluding when Wolverine daringly drove a car off of a cliff directly onto the X-Men's jet's loading ramp. But moments later, Magneto arrived by plane, and Beast was grievously injured by a bomb, complicating the mission greatly.

Magneto scolded the X-Men for risking their lives to stop his plans, defending the race that would see them exterminated; Cyclops attempted to defend his team's position, but was clearly moved by his words. Magneto then left without incident with the rest of the Brotherhood; while Wolverine for all intents and purposes acted like a full-fledged X-Man in the mission, Magneto was certain of his loyalty, believing that he was simply waiting for the right moment. Back in New York, Beast was treated for his injuries, using a rare transplant treatment: to date, it had only been tested on animals, with the even rarer side effect of turning the subject's fur blue. Perhaps owing to Beast's mutation, this rarity would in fact see the light of day, as his hair would suddenly turn blue later that day. With Beast stabilized, a romance began to bud between Wolverine and Marvel Girl. As they kissed in the Xavier Institute garden, a jealous Cyclops looked on from the window.

The X-Men's efforts to save the president's daughter garnered them positive national attention. Xavier soon received word that the American government was suspending its Sentinel program, and the X-Men were invited to meet at the White House. Cyclops resented the fact that mutant lives were put at risk to save a homo sapiens, and that they were now to politely negotiate with the people who had been slaughtering them. He stormed out of the school after an argument with Xavier, traveling to the Savage Land and signing on with the Brotherhood of Mutants.

When the X-Men arrived at the White House a few weeks later, the president indeed agreed to suspend the Sentinel program, pending a final attack. Due to Cyclops' jet arriving there recently, the government had at last deduced the location of the Savage Land: as the president put it, "a refuge for a cult dedicated to the destruction of our very species." Xavier protested, realizing what Magneto would do in retaliation, but the president nonetheless initiated an attack on the Savage Land, intended to kill every last mutant living there. Indeed, untold numbers of mutants were killed in the opening moments of the attack (members of the Brotherhood escaped harm). But Magneto soon reacted, effortlessly disassembling the Sentinels with magnetism and reprogramming them to target humans instead of mutants and aiming them at Washington, D.C..

Back in Washington, Marvel Girl and Wolverine had been sharing a hotel room together. In a moment of weakness, Wolverine confessed the reason he had come to the X-Men in the first place. He had hoped to use this fact to demonstrate his newfound loyalty since meeting Marvel Girl, but it instead sent her into a rage. Before this could continue, Xavier telepathically notified everyone in Washington of the coming attack and braced the X-Men for battle. In the Savage Land, Cyclops searched for a way to get to Washington in time. Since joining the Brotherhood, he had quickly realized the extent of Magneto's evil and regretted his decision. He convinced Brotherhood member and Magneto's son Quicksilver, who himself had begun to resent his father, to transport him to Washington—faster than a jet, Quicksilver was the only feasible option to arrive in time.

A full-scale battle erupted in Washington between the Sentinels and the X-Men. Magneto commandeered several television cameras to show himself standing in front of the White House above the president, naked and cowering, as a warning to other world leaders. Charles Xavier confronted Magneto face to face; unable to penetrate his telepathy-blocking helmet, Xavier simply tried to talk to his old friend. But Magneto had none of it, throwing Xavier from his wheelchair and threatening to finish him off once and for all. Before he had a chance, Wolverine came up from behind and stabbed him in the back with a claw, finalizing his betrayal of the Brotherhood. Magneto responded with a large steel pipe through the torso: not enough to kill the nigh-invincible Wolverine, but enough to disable him and to make it clear that coming near him would be suicide for anyone else. Seeing his life coming to an end, Magneto fired off a magnetic pulse to trigger the controls of all of the world's nuclear missiles at once, threatening utter global annihilation within ten minutes. The X-Men were left in the predicament of needing to take down Magneto, but not being able to get near him. Quicksilver arrived and took upon himself the task of removing his father's helmet, taking it from him in the blink of an eye. With that, Xavier invaded Magneto's mind, raising him into the air and magnetizing him to draw in several incapacitated Sentinels, seemingly crushing and killing him. With Magneto defeated and millions of lives saved, the X-Men basked in their victory. Wolverine took a leave of absence soon afterward, looking to handle some unfinished business of his. The attack on Washington was a landmark event; the first major attack from a supervillain in human history. It was partly due to this attack that S.H.I.E.L.D. opted to create a superhero team known as the Ultimates.