to explain how they got their powers. In 2004, Lee recalled, "I couldn't have everybody bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to a gamma ray explosion. And I took the cowardly way out. I said to myself, 'Why don't I just say they're mutants? They are born that way. In a 1987 interview, Kirby said: The X-Men, I did the natural thing there. What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X. Of course, it was the natural thing to do, instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were. Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that'll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they'll help us – and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together. Lee devised the series title after Marvel publisher Martin Goodman turned down the initial name, "The Mutants," stating that readers would not know what a "mutant" was. Within the Marvel Universe, the X-Men are widely regarded to have been named after Professor Xavier himself. The original explanation for the name, as provided by Xavier in The X-Men #1 (1963), is that mutants "possess an extra power ... one which ordinary humans do not!! That is why I call my students ... X-Men, for EX-tra power!" DC Comics's Doom Patrol, which debuted several months before X-Men, was suspected by its creator Arnold Drake and its fans of having had the basic concept copied to a great degree - including a wheel-chair bound leader - by Marvel Comics to create the X-Men. Other fans also speculate that Doom Patrol share similarities with another Marvel superhero team that preceded them, the Fantastic Four. Publication history Original run Early X-Men issues introduced the original team composed of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, and Iceman, along with their archenemy Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants featuring Mastermind, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Toad. The comic focused on a common human theme of good versus evil and later included storylines and themes about prejudice and racism, all of which have persisted throughout the series in