X-Men Trivia
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This X-Men trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and runs the whole 60-year history of Marvel's mutants. It starts with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 1963 original five, moves through the 1975 relaunch in Giant-Size X-Men #1, Chris Claremont's sixteen-year run, the Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past and the record-breaking X-Men #1 of 1991, then on to House of M, Genosha and the Krakoa era. The characters get their own questions - Wolverine, Magneto, Professor X, Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Beast, Jubilee, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister - and so do the screen versions: the 1992 Fox Kids cartoon and X-Men '97, the Fox film series from the 2000 original through First Class, Days of Future Past and Logan, and the Deadpool films up to Deadpool & Wolverine. Roughly a third are warm-ups any casual fan can get; the rest climb toward the detail only a longbox owner would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which artist co-created the X-Men with writer-editor Stan Lee in 1963?
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby drew the heroes Lee decided were simply 'born that way': Lee admitted he made them mutants so he wouldn't have to dream up another radiation accident.
Q 02Why did Marvel's publisher reject Stan Lee's first X-Men title, 'The Mutants'?
Too obscure a word
Too obscure a word, publisher Martin Goodman ruled: nobody would know what a mutant was, so Lee took the X from Professor Xavier and the kids' 'extra' powers.
Q 03Which hero was one of the original five X-Men introduced in 1963?
Angel
Angel, the wealthy Warren Worthington III, later had his feathered wings amputated and was rebuilt by Apocalypse as the metal-winged Archangel.
Q 04After sales slumped in 1970, what filled The X-Men for the next five years?
Old reprints
Old reprints ran from #67 after new stories stopped with #66, and the drought ended only when an all-new team arrived in 1975.
Q 05Which living island captures the original X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975), forcing Xavier to recruit a new team?
Krakoa
Krakoa was first shown as an island mutated into a single hungry creature by nuclear tests; decades later it became the X-Men's own homeland.
Q 06Which writer, co-creator of DC's Swamp Thing, relaunched the team in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975)?
Len Wein
Len Wein had co-created Wolverine a year earlier; he plotted two more issues, then Chris Claremont took over and built the series into one of Marvel's biggest.
Q 07Which member of the 1975 relaunch team was a Native American of Apache descent?
Thunderbird
Thunderbird, John Proudstar, died on only the new team's second mission, clinging to a villain's escaping jet until it exploded.
Q 08Which scientist designed the first mutant-hunting Sentinels, seen in The X-Men in 1965?
Bolivar Trask
Bolivar Trask built the Sentinels to protect humanity from mutants, then died blowing up his own lab when the robots turned on their makers.
Q 09Which actor played Magneto in the first X-Men film trilogy?
Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen's Magneto is introduced as a boy in a Nazi camp in 1944 Poland, twisting the iron gates as guards drag him from his parents.
Q 10Which disco-singing mutant made her debut during the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1980?
Dazzler
Dazzler was devised with Casablanca Records, which planned to launch a real singer under the name alongside the comic before the deal fell apart.
Q 11Lilandra, empress of which alien empire, demanded Jean Grey's death after Dark Phoenix destroyed an inhabited star system?
Shi'ar
Shi'ar custom left one way out: Professor X invoked a duel of honour, and the X-Men fought Lilandra's Imperial Guard on the Moon for Jean's life.
Q 12Which Marvel editor-in-chief vetoed the Dark Phoenix Saga ending in which Jean Grey went free?
Jim Shooter
Jim Shooter said a hero who had killed billions couldn't just lose her powers and go home; he suggested prison, and writer Chris Claremont countered by killing her off.
Q 13Which 13-year-old who could walk through walls debuted in Uncanny X-Men #129 (1980)?
Kitty Pryde
Q 21Wolverine first appeared in 1974 as an opponent for which Marvel hero?
The Hulk
The Hulk met him in The Incredible Hulk #180 and #181, where Wolverine was a Canadian government agent pitted against both the Hulk and the monstrous Wendigo.
Q 22What is Wolverine's real birth name?
James Howlett
James Howlett was a frail boy on an Alberta estate; the name Logan came from the family's groundskeeper, a secret Marvel kept until the 2001 series Origin.
Q 23Magneto's helmet was specially built to protect him from what?
Telepathic intrusion
Telepathic intrusion was his fear: Magneto built the helmet to shut out psychics, above all his old friend Charles Xavier.
Kitty Pryde, an ordinary teenager suddenly handed great power, was the biggest influence on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, creator Joss Whedon has said.
Q 14In the 1981 comic 'Days of Future Past', whose assassination leads to a future ruled by Sentinels?
Robert Kelly
Robert Kelly, an anti-mutant senator, is killed by the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in that timeline, so an X-Man's mind is sent back from the future to stop it.
Q 15Roughly how many pre-order copies of X-Men #1 (1991), the best-selling comic ever, were sold?
8 million
8 million, about 8.1 million by Guinness's count, were ordered partly because the issue came with five collectable covers that fans and speculators wanted complete.
Q 16In 1991 Cyclops led the X-Men's Blue team and Storm led which colour?
Gold
Gold was Storm's squad: with the team larger than ever once the original five had returned, it was split in two, and Cyclops's Blue team headlined the new X-Men title.
Q 17Which artist co-launched X-Men #1 in 1991 and left months later to help found Image Comics?
Jim Lee
Jim Lee walked away from Marvel's top seller because Image let artists own the characters they created instead of handing the rights to a publisher.
Q 18In House of M (2005), whose three words 'No more mutants' depower most of the world's mutants?
Scarlet Witch
Scarlet Witch had first remade reality into a world ruled by mutants; when that fantasy collapsed, her three words left only a few hundred with powers.
Q 19Which island nation off Africa's coast became a mutant homeland under Magneto before Sentinels wiped it out?
Genosha
Genosha first grew rich on enslaved mutants; Magneto later made it a haven for 16 million of them, nearly all killed in a single Sentinel attack.
Q 20Which writer relaunched the X-Men in 2019 with the twin series House of X and Powers of X?
Jonathan Hickman
Jonathan Hickman's relaunch gave mutants a nation of their own and a way to resurrect their dead, a setup that shaped the whole line until 2024.
Q 24What is the name of Magneto's orbital base of operations in space?
Asteroid M
Asteroid M has been destroyed and rebuilt several times; one wreck that crashed off San Francisco was raised from the sea to become the mutant island Utopia.
Q 25Which 1950s Hollywood star's look did Stan Lee say inspired Professor Charles Xavier?
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner was the bald star of The King and I; Lee pictured Xavier looking like him, then put him in a wheelchair so he was physically helpless but mentally mighty.
Q 26Which X-Men villain is Charles Xavier's stepbrother, Cain Marko?
Juggernaut
Juggernaut gained his power in Korea, where he and Xavier served in the same army unit: Cain wandered into a hidden temple of Cyttorak and seized its mystic ruby.
Q 27What is the address of the X-Mansion in Salem Center, New York?
1407 Graymalkin Lane
1407 Graymalkin Lane is the Xavier family estate, which Charles turned into a school; attackers have levelled it and the X-Men have rebuilt it several times.
Q 28Which Marvel hero did Storm marry?
Black Panther
Black Panther made Storm queen of Wakanda, but he annulled the marriage after she sided with the X-Men in their war against the Avengers.
Q 29What is Gambit's real name?
Remy LeBeau
Remy LeBeau was kidnapped from the hospital as a newborn and raised by New Orleans' Thieves Guild, who called the red-eyed baby 'the white devil'.
Q 30Which X-Men villain is Nightcrawler's biological parent?
Mystique
Mystique was long said to be his mother, with the demon Azazel as father; a 2023 story rewrote it so that she fathered him with her wife, Destiny.