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Marvel Comics did a drastic revamp of the X-Men with Giant-Size X-Men - and the original writer was "pretty pissed off" when he learned he had been replaced

Meet Mike Friedrich, the original writer for Marvel’s Giant-Size X-Men #1

News by Joshua Lapin-Bertone, Contributing writer

Published on Wed Jun 04 2025

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In 1975 Marvel Comics published Giant-Size X-Men #1, a comic which revamped the X-Men franchise after five years of dormancy. The comic, which was written by Len Wein and penciled by Dave Cockrum, took the team in a bold new direction and introduced iconic new characters. However, Len Wein wasn’t the original writer attached to the title - which some people may be surprised by.

The original plan inside Marvel Comics' offices to rejuvenate the dilapidated X-Men title after five years of pour sales (to the point that it switched to reprints) was to bring in then-Iron Man writer Mike Friedrich to handle the script. However, missed connections, a cross-country move, and an editorial shakeup resulted in Friedrich being replaced by Len Wein without even Wein's knowledge.

According to Friedrich, Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas approached him about an X-Men reboot inspired by the Blackhawks. The new X-Men would be a group of international heroes traveling the globe. Friedrich recalls a lunch meeting where he brought in artist Dave Cockrum.

“I knew Dave Cockrum with whom I was distantly acquainted, had been showing an idea over at DC to revive the Blackhawks with a number of new characters, and I thought maybe he’d be interested instead in creating these characters for Marvel as X-Men. I know my intentions, which Roy and I clearly discussed at the time, were that I would work with Dave as the writer of the new series, if Marvel liked Dave’s characters,” Friedrich recalls during a 2003 Alter Ego magazine interview, which Thomas owns.

It's worth noting that Cockrum recalled being on the project prior to Friedrich when he was interviewed for Fantagraphics’ The X-Men Companion.

Either way, development stalled on the project, and Mike Friedrich moved to California. What happened next is a bit unclear due to contradictory recollections.

“Roy couldn’t devote any attention to it, and the whole thing kind of got shelved, but I had drawn up a whole bunch of characters. Time passed and Roy decided that now was the time to do something with this. He approached me again, Mike Friedrich was no longer available, so Roy asked Len [Wein] if he wanted to handle it,” Cockrum recalled when interviewed for Fantagraphics’ The X-Men Companion.

However, Roy Thomas believes that Len Wein didn’t become the writer on the book until after he became editor-in-chief in 1974. Speaking to Fantagraphics, Thomas theorizes that after he stepped down as EiC, his replacement Wein wasn’t aware that Friedrich was the original writer.

It’s worth noting that multiple interviews cite Roy Thomas working alongside Len Wein and Dave Cockrum to build the characters and concepts before he left Marvel, which lines up with Cockrum’s version of the events.

However it happened, Len Wein was now the writer of the book. Friedrich was upset when he heard the news. “The next thing I heard, but I don’t remember how, was that the new X-Men was going forward and Len was now writing it. At the time, I was pretty pissed off that I’d been cut out of a writing assignment that I had helped create. In recent years, my longtime friend Len has told me that he was unaware that I had been involved at the beginning, and I’m more than happy to believe him,” Friedrich said.

Friedrich also realizes that being on the other side of the country probably caused much of the confusion. “It’s not like Dave and I were close buddies, and I had nothing to do with developing his characters. What I did do was get ‘the deal’ started, and I can understand how that can be forgotten when I’d taken myself 3,000 miles away and my deal-partner had left his position.”

While working on X-Men would’ve been nice, Friedrich has no regrets. After moving to California, Friedrich launched the independent comic anthology Star*Reach, which grew into a small company and later a talent agency.

“This episode hastened my transition over to running my own publishing company, with Len contributing a couple of stories at my request. Since starting Star*Reach was one of the smart career moves in my life, I’ve never had a regret. Len and Dave were totally responsible for the success that they enjoyed.”

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Joshua Lapin-Bertone: Joshua is a pop culture writer specializing in comic book media. His work has appeared on the official DC Comics website, the DC Universe subscription service, HBO Max promotional videos, the Batman Universe fansite, and more. In between traveling around the country to cover various comic conventions, Joshua resides in Florida where he binges superhero television and reads obscure comics from yesteryear.