Character Sheet for the X-Men's Secondary Teams.
The X-Men have various spinoff and sister teams helmed by other mutants.
The most prominent and steady one is the "Junior X-Men" team, which has gone through many name-changes (New Mutants, Generation X, New X-Men, and the Young X-Men) but retains the mission of preparing teenage mutants for the hardships mutants must go through and gives them the training they need to defend themselves and become X-Men in the future if they wish. These teams have to have a very high mortality rate, as the writers usually employ a shotgun strategy of introducing new characters - tossing out a ton of them at a time and killing off anyone who doesn't become popular. This leads to even more angst and survivor's guilt for the remaining members of the teenage teams. Only a few members graduate to the actual X-Men, with the rest killed off, depowered, or sent into comic book limbo. Because of this, these series have a very high reader turnover rate.
X-Factor started out as an undercover team of the original five X-Men members pretending to hunt down mutants, while secretly protecting them and aiding them. In the '90s, X-Factor more or less became a team of X-Men working for the government; this ended up going badly. Eventually, a couple of members of that team got back together with some other C-list mutants to become became X-Factor Investigations, led by Multiple Man - who are superhero detectives for hire. The "detectives" part stayed the same during the Dawn of X-era when X-Factor investigated mutant deaths and approved them for resurrection.
When the Dark Age hit, the New Mutants got grimdarked into X-Force, a paramilitary team with big guns, bigger shoulder pads, and questionable anatomy. Eventually, X-Force went back to more character-focused stories before being given a Darker and Edgier Retool again and then being killed off. That was when things got interesting. Another team who bought the X-force name to use as a superhero team based on reality television, back when that hadn't been run into the ground yet. They had to change to X-Statix when the real X-Force was forced to come out of the shadows and admit they weren't dead after all, so the name was not up for grabs like they'd thought in the first place. X-Statix was a rather strange series where the team members died, a lot. Nowadays X-Force is back as the X-Men's black ops team, while the original New Mutants are back together under that name. And when that X-Force was disbanded, Wolverine and Angel decided to keep it as an unofficial mutant death-squad as the Uncanny X-Force. Confusing enough?
Remember, this page is for characters and examples from the Prime Marvel Universe X-Men series only. Please do not list characters, or examples from other shows, movies or alternate universes here. If you have thought of a trope that fits anyone in their rogues gallery from another universe please take that example to its respective page.
WARNING: There are unmarked spoilers on these sheets for all but the most recent comics.
Prime Marvel Universe note
Secondary teams
- Children of the Atom: Click to expand
- Excalibur: Click to expand
- Generation Hope: Click to expand
- Generation X: Click to expand
- New Mutants: Click to expand
- New X-Men: Academy X: Click to expand
- S.W.O.R.D. (2009): Click to expand
- X-Club:
- X-Corp:
- X-Factor: Click to expand
- X-Force: Click to expand
- X-Statix: Click to expand
- X-Terminators:
Other teams
- Alpha Flight: Canada's national superteam. Extremely prone to infighting. The only team afiliated with the X-Men to constantly have a majority of non-mutant members, but more likely to have mutants than most non-X-Men teams. Tends to go through a lot of Conspiracy Redemption, since the Marvel version of Canada leans towards evil, racism, and fascism for some reason.
- Exiles: A group of dimension-hopping mutants out to help the multiverse - sort of like Sliders meets X-Men
- Hellions: A group of "bad" mutants on Krakoa during the Dawn of X era. Since they cannot just live peacefully, the Quiet Council has put them under the command of Mister Sinister to allow them to use their mutations in a healthier way — mainly in black-ops suicide missions. The team is led by Kwannon, with members including Havok, Greycrow, Empath, Wild Child, Nanny and Orphan-Maker.
- Marauders: A group of mutant pirates working during the Dawn of X era. Led by Captain Kate Pryde, their mission is to rescue any mutant who can't get to Krakoa and facilitate the black market shipmets of Krakoan drugs. Do not confuse with Mister Sinister's Marauders.
- Starjammers: A team of heroic Space Pirates who pop up occasionally when one of the X-series is doing a space opera story. Their leader, Corsair is Cyclops's long-lost dad.
- X-Treme X-Men: A short-lived splinter group that acted more internationally, traveling the world, wandering the earth looking for adventure.
