Charles Xavier opened his school to train young mutants in the use of their powers, but after his first class of X-Men, the newer members of the team were pretty much exclusively adults. Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Banshee, and Sunfire were all adults when they joined the X-Men and went on their first mission.

The New Mutants changed all of that. They were a group of teenagers who needed Xavier's guidance to learn to use their powers to their maximum extent. The team would go through several incarnations over the years. In 2020, with their movie finally debuting and a new series started, it's time to learn a little bit more about them.

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10 Their Name Was A Play On Stan Lee's Original Name For The X-Men

Stan Lee is one of the fathers of modern Marvel. Working with Jack "King" Kirby, a man with just as many ideas and concepts as Lee, Lee helped create some of the greatest comics characters the world has ever seen, including the X-Men. However, he didn't want to name them the X-Men.

He wanted to name the team The Mutants, but his editors told him that no one knew what mutants were yet, so naming the book that would be sales suicide. So, he decided on calling them the X-Men. When Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod created a new team of mutants, they named the New Mutants as a homage to Lee's original name for the team.

9 Xavier Started The Team Because He Thought The X-Men Were Dead

After an attack by the Brood, Professor X believed the X-Men to have all been killed. Distraught, he closed down the school, vowing to never put any young mutants in danger ever again. However, entreaties from his friend Moira MacTaggert convinced him to reopen the school.

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MacTaggert convinced him by telling him that without the Xavier Institute, young mutants would be forced to learn about their powers from the likes of Magneto or the Hellfire Club. This argument was enough to get Xavier to relent and the New Mutants were born.

8 Originally, Xavier Didn't Want Them To Fight

By the time Xavier formed the New Mutants, he had lost a lot of X-Men. Starting with the first team he sent to Krakoa to rescue his first class of X-Men (a retcon from the miniseries X-Men: Deadly Genesis), he would also lose Thunderbird in a battle against Count Nefaria, and of course, the suicide of Phoenix.

These deaths would weigh heavily on his conscience and when he started the New Mutants, he vowed that while he would train them in the use of their powers, they wouldn't be a team of warriors like the X-Men were. The dangers of the world made him relent on this one, but his original idea for the team was quite different than what it became.

7 Magneto Would Become One Of Their Mentors

In Uncanny X-Men #200, Xavier is injured by the Fenris Twins at Magneto's trial. Magneto saves him and Xavier has Magneto take over as headmaster of the Xavier Institute. Magneto had always been one of the X-Men's fiercest foes, but he also loved mutantkind and Xavier entrusted his old friend turned enemy with the future of mutantkind while he convalesced.

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Magneto was fiercely protective of the New Mutants. The group would bristle against his over-protectiveness and the series would play off this tension between them.

6 Moonstar Would Become A Valkyrie

Moonstar in Marvel Comics nocking her bow

Loki, in attempt to punish the X-Men for a slight against him, would task Enchantress to attack the team. She would capture Storm and the New Mutants instead and bring the team to Asgard. While there, Dani Moonstar, a Native American mutant who could create lifelike holograms, would develop a psychic link with a winged horse and become a Valkyrie.

This would grant her many new powers, including a death sense that would allow her to be able to tell when someone was going to die.

5 Cable Would Take Over The Team

Cable would make his first appearance in New Mutants #87. Unbeknownst to the characters and readers at the time, Cable was Nathan Summers, the son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor returned from the future.

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Cable would take the team in a more militaristic direction, a move which fit his outlook on life and his life's mission- preventing the ascension of Apocalypse. Eventually, the team would break away from the X-Men and become the first X-Force.

4 The Name Would Be Brought Out Of Retirement

For years after the team split away from the X-Men, the name the New Mutants would be retired. However, there would eventually be a large mutant population boom and the Xavier Institute would become more of a full-time school. The X-Men would teach these young mutants how to use their powers, among other lessons.

The name New Mutants would be given to the New Mutants Training Squad, a group being groomed to take over for the X-Men. However, in the aftermath of the M-Day, the group would be absorbed into the X-Men.

3 The Original Team Would Reunite

Cannonball, with permission from Cyclops, would bring the team back together, with original team members like Sunspot, Karma, Moonstar, and Wolfsbane joining up again. They would fight Xavier's Legion, just like old times and be reunited with their resurrected friend Magik.

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The team would have a variety of adventures throughout the Utopia era, including helping the X-Men resist Norman Osborn's attempt to take them out. Moonstar would regain her Valkyrie powers and the team would side with Cyclops during the Schism.

2 The Team Disbands

The Phoenix Five and Hope Summers

During the events of Avengers Vs X-Men, the Phoenix Force returns to Earth and bonds with five of the X-Men, including Magik. This event would be a disastrous one for all involved but would end with the Phoenix being used to reignite the mutant gene around the world.

In the aftermath of these events, the New Mutants would disband, as Sunspot and Cannonball would go on to become Avengers and most of the rest of the team would end up Wolverine's school teaching mutants or off on their own.

1 A Krakoan Reunion

Krakoan New Mutants Cropped

Mutantkind would go through many ups and downs after the team disbanded. Eventually, Xavier and the mutant island of Krakoa would come to an understanding and a new era for the X-Men and mutantkind would be born. Using the fruits of the island, mutants would gain political power on the world stage for the first time.

Mutants from around the world, be they X-Men, villains, or unaffiliated, would flock to the island. The New Mutants would reunite again, a seasoned team of friends and go to retrieve Cannonball from the Shi'Ar Empire, where he's living with his wife, Smasher, and their child.

NEXT: The New Mutants: 10 Things You Never Knew About Magik