Tales of Suspense #6, by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Joe Sinnot, introduced the idea of “mutants walking among us” with powers.
It ends with paranoia.
Then, Stan reexplores the same idea–but with no reference to the earlier story. And this time, it’s almost as if he’s creating Professor X…
A kid has the power to both read and move things with his mind, his peers fear him for it and try to kill him, and then an old man appears in his mind telling him he is not alone and “mutants” are everywhere…”We are the future!” the voice says.
Steve Ditko gets no credit for helping create the X-Men, but we see the concept for the entire series in this short story, which has largely been forgotten.
And of course, the very next issue of Amazing Fantasy (they dropped the word “adult”) would launch Marvel’s most famous character of all time.
I’m still kicking myself for not picking up Marvel’s omnibus hardcover of these stories for below cover price when I had the chance (collecting AMAZING ADVENTURES 1-6, the retitled AMAZING ADULT FANTASY 7-14, and the again retitled AMAZING FANTASY 15 that introduced Spider-man).
I also enjoyed in 1979-1980, when DC introduced a 5-issue anthology series called TIME WARP, where Ditko was briefly doing the same kind of stories he did in these early Marvel series. With 5 gorgeous covers by Michael Kaluta, all worthy of gracing a science fiction pulp digest.
On the issue of stories about prejudice and paranoia by regular humans toward “mutants”, my favorite story on that subject is the X-MEN: GOD LOVES, MAN KILLS graphic novel in 1983, by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson.
I had it. Gave it to a friend to help his son get into comic books. Never got it back. Arrgg!