For the first decade of their existence, the X-Men were one of the most homogenous superhero teams, consisting entirely of white Americans belonging to the middle and upper classes; also four of the six core members, including the team's leader and mentor, Professor X, came from one state (New York). This changed dramatically with the "All-New, All-Different" team which debuted in 1975. Gathered from America and around the world by Charles Xavier, it included (besides two members of the original team) Wolverine from Canada, Storm from East Africa, Nightcrawler from West Germany, Banshee from Irelandnote (actually attending a country music show in Memphis, TN, when Xavier recruited him), Sunfire from Japan, Colossus from Russia (Eastern Siberia, to be precise), and Thunderbird, an Apache. This initiated a trend of international X-teams in which the members also belonged to different ethnic, religious etc. groups, often to several at once. In the X-Men themselves the next new recruits included Kitty Pryde (later called Shadowcat, Jewish), Rogue (from the Deep South, but raised by a lesbian couple and fluent in French since childhood), Psylocke (British), Forge (Cheyenne), Longshot (an alien rather than a mutant), Jubilee (Chinese-American), Gambit (Cajun), Bishop (Black, at least partly of Australian Aboriginal descent), Maggott (South African), Thunderbird III (Indian), and so on.
This partly carried over into the movies. The opening scene of the first one establishes Magneto as a European Jewish survivor of the Holocaust (a flashback scene in First Class shows him celebrating Hanukkah as a boy). Also in the first movie, Wolverine is first seen in Canadanote Flashback scenes also showing him wearing a uniform that apparently identifies him as Canadian. and Halle Berry attempts to give Storm a Kenyan accentnote A deleted scene includes a flashback of her being chased from her African village., while in the second movie Nightcrawler's nationality is immediately obvious.
While the All-New, All-Different X-Men came over as somewhat stereotypical in their first appearance, new writer Chris Claremont fleshed them out and made them more complex. Nightcrawler was revealed to have been raised by a Gypsy family and within a travelling circus that included survivors of the Holocaust, making him anything but a "typical" German. Storm, who started out as a dark-skinned version of a "She"-like Jungle Princess, was born in Harlem of an African-American father and a Kenyan mother, and grew up in the streets of Cairo (the one in Egypt) after being orphaned before migrating south to her mother's native country. In contrast, when the original X-Men team was re-established with X-Factor #1 in the mid-1980s, the team's lack of diversity stuck out like a sore thumb.
The X-Men spinoff book The New Mutants followed this trend. Wolfbane was Scottish, Mirage was Cheyenne, Karma was Vietnamese, Sunspot was Brazilian and Cannonball was from an Appalachian coal-mining town in Kentucky. Later, they added Magik from Russia, Cypher (white) from the United States, Warlock who was an alien, and Magma who was from an offshoot of an ancient Roman tribe that lived in Brazil. Though, due to various retcons, she may be British.
Interestingly, these characters are each more complicated and "other" than their ethnic origins might suggest; the Scot Wolfsbane is too religious, conflicted and repressed to be seen as a "passionate celt" stereotype. The Native American Dani Moonstar is also uncertain, suspicious, self-destructive and perhaps bisexual. The Vietnamese Karma is a surrogate mother to her younger siblings, later a lesbian, and prone to losses of self-control. Sunspot was one of the first characters coming from a racially mixed marriage (also, his white mother comes from an established, upper-class family while his black father is a self-made man with a lower-class background); his origin that cuts him off from most normal relationships; his (white) girlfriend was murdered and died in his arms, he ceases to show deep relationships after this. Cannonball from an American point of view was the most "normal" member of the team, but when he and Dani Moonstar started to jointly lead the team, it was Dani who got the job of leadership in battle while Sam assumed the "traditionally female" job of emotionally holding the team together, of "team mother".
For Moonstar, her ambiguous bisexuality might be Genius Bonus: Identifying as "heterosexual" or "homosexual" as a bifurcation is rarer on Indian reservations, largely because of a tradition of winkte, kurami, and the like. Magik also later got the Legacy Virus, which is analogous to HIV in the Marvel Universe. Wait, an ancient Roman tribe that lived in Brazil?
Generation X, New Mutants' successor title, had a multinational team continued this trend, often making their characters opposite of their ethnic stereotype. For instance, Husk, an Appalachian girl (one of Cannonball's sisters), is generally considered the brain, and Skin, who was a Hispanic gang member, is generally the nice guy, etc.
The Academy-X mutants, another successor group to the New Mutants, include Surge (Japanese), Dust (Afghani), Pixie (Welsh), Tag (Puerto Rican), Wind Dancer (Venezuelan), and Gentle (from fictional Wakanda).
Excalibur, the X-Men's offshoot team in Britain, in its initial incarnation had Captain Britain (English), Meggan (British/Fey, raised by Gypsies), Nightcrawler (German), Shadowcat (American/Jewish), Lockheed (alien dragon) and Phoenix (Alternate Future America). In time the lineup changed and at one point or another also included Colossus (Russian), Douglock (blend of techo-organic alien and white American), Wolfsbane (Scottish), Widget (extradimensional robot), Black Knight (American), Feron (Fey/alternate universe), Cerise (yet another alien race), Pete Wisdom (English) etc.
Marvel's Circus of Crime is very cosmopolitan, featuring the Ringmaster (Austrian), Bruto the Strongman (Swedish), Fire-Eater (Spanish), the Great Gambonnos (Italian), Rajah (Indian). The Human Cannonball, the Clown, Live Wire, Princess Python, and Blackwing are Americans.
The Invaders and their Timely counterpart All Winners Squad were heroes from the various Allied Powers during World War II.
The Avengers, much like the JLA, have also had many international members as well as non-humans, although they are usually sponsored by the US government.
This began with "Cap's Kooky Quartet", starting in Avengers #16, when Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, natives of a fictional Balkan country (later revealed to have Jewish ancestry), joined the team. They were soon joined by the Black Widow (Russian) and Hercules (a literal Greek god).note Asgardian Thor was of course one of the founding members, but at the time he was also American by virtue of his civilian alter ego Donald Blake.
The League of Realms in The Mighty Thor was a Multi-Norse-Mythological-World Team, comprising Thor (Asgard), Screwbeard (Nidavellir), Ud (Kingdom of the Trolls), Lady Waziria (Svartalfheim), Sir Ivory Honeyshot (Alfheim) and Oggy (Jotunheim).
The Liberators in The Ultimates were a supervillain example of this trope matched against the mostly American superheroes team, with the Colonel (a Iranian-Azerbaijani), Crimson Dynamo and Abomination (Chinese), Perun (Russian), Swarm (a Georgian working for the Syrian government), Hurricane (North Korean), Schizoid Man (French) and Loki (an Asgardian masquerading as a Norwegian).
The newest incarnation of the Agents of Atlas features several Asian and Asian-American Heroes: Amadeus Cho, Silk (Korean-American), White Fox, Crescent and Luna Snow (Korean), Aero, Sword Master and Shang-Chi (Chinese), Wave (Philippine) and Raz Malhotra/Giant-Man (Indian-American).
An obscure team named Young Gods, created by Gerry Conway in a Spider-Man Annual, had people plucked from many time periods (but the story did not involve Time Travel) and ethnicities/nationalites: an Inupiat woman, a Polynesian girl, a 12th-century Irish white woman, an 18th-century Zulu woman, a Bollywood Nerd from the 20th century, a Japanese woman, an Israeli soldier, a 19th-century Colombian saloon dancer, an 18th-century Russian poet.
