In 1975, Marvel Comics revived the X-Men, a failed title which hadn't used new material for half a decade. It was a marginal project in an industry then in crisis. Five years later, it was the bestseller in a revived comics market. Chris Claremont wrote the comic from 1975 to 1991, developing new characters such as Wolverine and Storm, and taking themes from Freudian psychology, Christian temptation narratives, Existentialist philosophy, and the language of sub-cultural identity.

Marvel's Mutants is the first book devoted to the aesthetics of these comics that laid the foundation...