“First, I had to come up with an origin. How does this group get their superpowers? Well, the Fantastic Four had been clobbered by cosmic rays. The Hulk was hit with gamma rays. Incidentally, I had no idea what cosmic rays or gamma rays were, but they sounded good. And they were the only rays I knew. I had run out of rays, so what the hell was I going to do for this new group? I took the cowardly way out and said they were born that way; they're mutants. In fact, I called them the Mutants. Martin hated the name, so we changed it to the X-Men. At a certain point, we had every variety of superhero with every possible origin tale and power.”