Since the year 2000, 20th Century Fox has produced nine X-Men Films! Some of them have been amazing, some of them have been amazing, some average, and some have been so bad that several X-Men films had to be made to ignore and undo the damage of it. But thankfully it will not be named. Just to give you a hint, it rhymes with The Shhhmast Land.
In just over twenty years we've seen Hugh Jackman go from a young man with a dad bod to a man in his late 40's that actually looks like a mutant! It's been an amazing journey over the last two decades but new fans that are entering wonder why they haven't seen their favorite mutants fight alongside The Avengers or Spider-Man just like they do in the comics.
So are the X-men Marvel?
X-Men First Appearance
The first issue of The X-men was published in 1963 and created by Iconic comic book writers Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. According to Stan, due to the success of The Fantastic Four comics, his publisher wanted him and Jack to come up with a new superhero group.
Due to the powers that were in The Fantastic Four, Lee was concerned that their might be overlapping. So for any process of creation, he would always ask the same three questions.
What powers do they have?
What are their names?
How did they get them?
The easiest solution he could come up with was that they were simply born with powers, so he categorized them as The Mutants and took the idea to his publisher. Later issues went on to show that all mutants in The Marvel Universe possessed an "X-gene" that when triggered through stress or puberty etc, would give the individuals superhuman abilities that were sometimes a gift or a curse. However, there was an issue with the publisher, the same publisher that tried to turn down The Amazing Spider-Man comic.
According to Stan, his publisher said that no one knew what mutants were and therefore Stan reverted to naming the comic and the team after its leader Professor Charles Xavier - Professor X for short.
X-Men in Marvel Cinematic Universe
After the epic collaboration and team-up that we saw towards the end of Avengers Endgame, new fans wonder why they didn't see other members of The Marvel Universe join the fight against Thanos.
Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel distributed their film rights to different studios for their characters to make it to big the screen and have their stories told. The rights of X-Men and similar characters such as Deadpool were sold to 20th Century Fox which lead to the first X-Men Film being shown in 2000.
However, fans have been extremely excited since August 2020 when Disney announced the acquisition of 20th Century Fox, due to Disney now having ownership over the rights to these characters. The X-Men can officially enter into The Marvel Cinematic Universe.
X-Men in DC? - Amalgam Universe
The X-Men were born and continue to live in The Marvel Universe, not DC. However, new fans have a right to be confused.
In 1996, DC Comics and Marvel comics came together to create a publishing imprint, Amalgam Comics. It was here that they merged some of their most loved characters into one so that we got to see a blend of DC and Marvel characters. We saw Superman and Captain America merge to become Supersoldier.
Deathstroke and Daredevil joined to become Slade Murdoch. However, we also saw members of the X-Men amalgamate with the DC universe to create a brand new character. This included Wonder Woman and Storm from the Xmen who became "Amazon". The favorite character was Dark Claw who was a blend of Batman and Wolverine.
Related:Is Spider-Man Marvel or DC?