Thanks to the movie incarnation of X-Men, which turned comic movies around big time, Professor Xavier’s mutants are more popular than ever. And thanks to Joss Whedon’s big screen version of The Avengers, superhero teams have never been hotter.
So now that Bryan Singer is shooting the next X flick, Days of Future Past, and Whedon is preparing to shoot the next Avengers movie early next year, both superhero teams are hitting their 50th anniversary.
As Wired reminds us, both the Avengers and the X-Men hit comic book stores on September 10, 1963, and the X-Men were dubbed the “strangest superheroes of them all.” The Avengers were gathered from a group of superheroes Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had created the year before, namely Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, and the Wasp. Captain America came aboard in the fourth issue.
It’s good to see both teams still going strong, and with both of them coming back in new movies over the next two years, superheroes, and superhero teams, are still the bread and butter of Hollywood. Here’s to at least fifty more years of superpower at the comic book stores, television, and the big screen.
