Professor X (Charles Xavier) debuted in 1963's X-Men vol 1 #1, by which point he was leading the X-Men and confined to a wheelchair.  His back story is surprisingly convoluted, thanks in large part to a number of different issues which swept over large chunks of his life, only to be elaborated on by later writers. 

Where the same issue features several times in the listings, page and panel numbers are given.

NEW X-MEN vol 1 #121 (flashback)
Charles Xavier battles Cassandra Nova in utero.  Unlikely to be beaten as his chronologically earliest appearance.

X-MEN vol 2 #12, page 19, panel 3 (flashback)
As a child, Charles Xavier and Carter Ryking play together in the shadow of Almagordo.  NB: In the Silver Age, the facility was named "Alamagordo", but the name "Almagordo" was introduced in 1992, possibly by mistake, and stuck.

X-MEN vol 2 #13 (flashback)
Charles and Carter play in the woods with a football.  A different occasion from the previous flasback.

GAMBIT vol 3 #4 (flashback)
Inside the Almagordo complex, Charles and Carter run away in fear, after Carter sees the Black Womb (a Gambit villain).

X-MEN vol 1 #12 page 4 panel 3 shows the death of Xavier's father Brian, in an accident at Almagordo (depicted as a mushroom cloud); Charles does not appear.  The exact circumstances of the death have never been shown, but apparently Kurt Marko failed to save him, despite having the opportunity to do so.

X-MEN vol 2 #12, page 17 panel 1 (flasback)
Sharon Xavier dresses Charles in preparation for Brian's funeral.

X-MEN vol 2 #12, page 7 panel 3 (flashback)
At the funeral, Charles looks at Brian's gravestone.

X-MEN FOREVER #4, page 11 panel 2 (flashback)
Charles kneels before the gravestone, while Kurt and Cain Marko are seen in the background.  [The main significance of this flashback is that it establishes Cain as being present at the funeral.]

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 4 panels 4-6 (flashback)
Still at the funeral, Charles watches in annoyance as Kurt Marko moves in on his widowed mother Sharon.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 4 panel 7 to page 5 panel 1 (flashback)
Some months after the funeral, Sharon and Kurt have married.  Kurt moves into the Xavier Mansion.  Charles' powers have emerged to some extent by this point ("even as a boy, my mutant brain let me sense secrets which were locked in the minds of others"), and he realises that Kurt only cares about money and power.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 5 panels 2-3 (flashback)
Time passes.  Kurt has begun to neglect Sharon in favour of his work.  Sharon tries to shelter Charles from Kurt.  Kurt reveals that his son by a previous marriage, Cain Marko, will be moving in tomorrow.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 5 panels 4-6 (flashback)
The next day.  Having been expelled from his boarding school, Cain Marko moves into the Xavier Mansion.  He meets Charles for the first time (which means that at least one of them didn't go to the wedding), and immediately hits him.

In New Mutants vol 1 #25, Professor X tells an anecdote about reading Cain's mind after he has been beaten by his father.  This is also presented as the first time that he read another person's thoughts.  Obviously that conflicts with X-Men vol 1 #12, where Xavier has his powers before Kurt and Cain move in; however, this could (with some generosity) be the first time Xavier actually reads specific thoughts.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, p7pn5 & p8pn2-3 (flashback)
A series of panels depicting an incident in which Charles, aged 10, sees Kurt beating Sharon.  Charles comforts her afterwards.  According to the story, Sharon had turned to drink by this point.

At some point after this, Sharon Xavier dies, heartbroken.  Neither her death nor her funeral have ever been shown.  Kurt Marko takes control of the family fortune, but only in trust for Charles.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 7 panel 5 to page 8 panel 4 (flashback)
Charles overhears Cain trying to blackmail Kurt.  Cain alleges that Kurt murdered Brian Xavier.  Charles intervenes and confronts Kurt and Cain.  In the following altercation, Cain knocks over one of Kurt's experiments.  There is an explosion, and the Mansion is set alight.

X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #12, page 24 panels 1-3 (flashback)
Kurt Marko picks up Charles and Cain...

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 8 panels 5-6 (flashback)
...and carries them to safety.  Kurt warns Charles about Cain, and reveals that he knows about Charles' powers.  Then he dies (from injuries caused by the fire).

X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #12, p24pn4 to p25pn2 (flashback)
Direct continuation from the previous scene, as Cain reacts to Kurt's death.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 10 panel 3-5 (flashback)
A three-panel montage sequence which covers most of Charles' teenage years.  Charles excelled both academically and at sport.  Over this period, Charles loses his hair.  The sequence seems to take us up to Charles' final year at school (as he became the school's "star quarterback").

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 10 panel 6 to page 11 (flashback)
Charles brings yet another sports trophy back home.  Cain flies into a jealous rage and starts to destroy Charles' trophies.  Realising that Cain will attack him next, Charles subdues him with a martial arts chop.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 12 panels 2-5 (flashback)
"After vacation", Cain drives Charles to college.  Cain drives recklessly in an attempt to scare Charles.  He crashes, but Charles makes him jump to safety in time.  Charles survives the crash by "creating a mental shield around me."

UNCANNY X-MEN #389, page 5 (flashback)
Charles is at Oxford University, having won a scholarship.  While attending a tutorial by "a renowned scientist", he meets Moira Kinross (later Moira MacTaggert).  Moira's boyfriend, Joe MacTaggert, is immediately jealous.

UNCANNY X-MEN #389, page 6 to page 8 panel 5 (flashback)
Charles, Moira and Joe spend a weekend in Devon.  Moira and Joe leave early, on Joe's motorbike.  Joe crashes.  Charles senses what has happened and goes after them.  He and Moira make telepathic contact, and they fall in love, beginning their relationship.

EXCALIBUR vol 1 #79 (flashback)
Charles and Moira on holiday together in Europe, as lovers.

X-MEN vol 1 #117, page 6 panels 2-3 (flashback)
Page 6 is a montage sequence and I'm using the term "panel" loosely.  These panels again show Charles and Moira as lovers.  Charles' narration says that they were considering marriage.

X-MEN vol 1 #117, page 6 panel 4, is a shot of Charles' call-up letter, drafting him into the US army.  To date, this is the only panel depicting (in any sense) Charles' conscription.  The letter is addressed to Charles in New York.  In the same page, Charles mentions Moira "returning to Scotland".  The implication is that at some point before this, Moira moved to New York with Charles; however, nothing from that period has ever been shown.  UNCANNY X-MEN #389 gives a different version; in that story, Xavier claims that he joined the army voluntarily in order to prove himself.  This is presumably an attempt to detach Xavier's history from the American draft, which hasn't applied since the mid-1970s.

In X-MEN vol 1 #12, Charles' military service was expressly placed in the Korean War.  More recent stories have dodged the question.  The art in some recent flashbacks seems to be laying the groundwork for a wholesale relocation of all Xavier's military exploits to Vietnam - but, to date, no story has said so explicitly.

X-MEN vol 1 #12, page 15 panel 2 to page 16 panel 2 (flashback)
Charles Xavier and Cain Marko serve in the same unit together.  Cain deserts under fire.  Charles gives chase.  They find the lost temple of Cyttorak.  Cain touches the gem of Cyttorak and is transformed into the Juggernaut.  Enemy fire collapses the temple.  Charles escapes, while the Juggernaut is trapped under the mountain.

X-MEN vol 1 #117, page 6 panel 5 (flashback)
A generic shot of Xavier in battle.

X-MEN vol 1 #117, page 6 panel 6 (flashback)
Xavier reads a letter from Moira, breaking off their relationship.  According to the narration, at this point he was "in the hospital, recovering from battlefield wounds."  UNCANNY X-MEN #389 establishes that at this point, he had less than a month to go in his military service.  UNCANNY X-MEN #309 suggests that Moira may have written the letter because she wanted to pursue a normal life with a human partner; otherwise, her motives remain obscure.

UNCANNY X-MEN #389, p10pn7 to p13pn2 (flashback)
Still in the army, Xavier goes on a helicopter search and rescue mission.  He is brooding over Moira's letter, but renews his focus in order to carry out his work.

Following this scene, Xavier leaves the US Army.  According to issue #117, he "went a little crazy then.  I became a nomad, bumming around the Mediterranean."  Most of that period remains undocumented.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, p9pn7 & p10pn2-3 (flashback)
In a bar somewhere, Charles re-reads Moira's letter, and then burns it.

X-MEN vol 1 #117, page 6 panel 7 (flashback)
Charles walks up a hill carrying a backpack, and meets a painter.  His accompanying narration says that he came to Kirinos, Greece, where "the people there needed my help... in return they gave me the care and love I needed to burn the psychic poison out of my system."  The details remain unexplained.

X-MEN vol 1 #117, pages 7 to 15 (flashback)
Charles visits Cairo, Egypt.  He crosses paths with the young Ororo Munroe, and then battles Amahl Farouk.  This is his first encounter with an "evil mutant."

UNCANNY X-MEN #161, page 5 panel 2 to page 9 (flashback)
"Twenty years ago."  Charles arrives in Haifa, Israel, having been invited by his old army colleague, psychologist Daniel Shomron.  At Shomron's hospital, Charles meets Magnus (the future Magneto), who is working as a volunteer.  On his first day there, Charles uses his telepathic powers to wake Gabrielle Haller from her catatonic state.

UNCANNY X-MEN #161, page 10 panels 1-3 (flashback)
Montage sequence.  "Over the weeks that follow", Xavier and Magnus tend to Gabrielle's recovery.  Xavier and Magnus become friends, and discuss their views on human/mutant relations.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, page 9 panel 2 (flashback)
Magnus watches while Xavier assists Gabrielle Haller with some sort of exercise.

X-MEN vol 2 #40
LegionQuest.  Charles has been at the hospital for several weeks.  The time-travelling Legion has arrived in the hospital as an amnesiac patient.

UNCANNY X-MEN #321
LegionQuest.  Magnus and Xavier get into a bar fight together.  Afterwards, as they return to the hospital, Xavier asks whether it would be right to have a relationship with Gabrielle.  Magnus encourages him to go ahead.  Back at the hospital, they are attacked by Legion.

X-MEN vol 2 #41
Legion battles the time-travelling X-Men, and accidentally kills Xavier while aiming for Magnus.  This creates the divergent timeline which becomes the Age of Apocalypse.

X-MEN OMEGA
Legion is defeated and the true timeline is restored.  The end of X-MEN vol 2 #41 (and possibly all Legion's appearances in the above issues) are deleted from history.  Xavier is left with no memory of what has happened.

UNCANNY X-MEN #161, p10pn4 to p20pn5 (flashback)
Xavier kisses Gabrielle, despite his fears that he may be exploiting her.  Baron Strucker and HYDRA attack the hospital, hoping to learn the location of hidden Nazi gold from Gabrielle.  Xavier and Magnus join forces to defeat them.  Magnus absconds with the gold, ending his association with Xavier.  Xavier and Gabrielle are left together as a couple.

At some point after this, Gabrielle becomes pregnant with Xavier's child (Daniel Haller).  He leaves Israel without learning about it, and does not find out about the child until years later.

X-MEN / CLANDESTINE #1 (flashback)
Xavier helps Gracie Gamble and Cuckoo against Synraith.

X-MEN vol 1 #20, page 14 to page 18 panel 4 (flashback)
"Some years ago", Xavier travels "through... Tibet" to a walled city "in the shadow of the Himalayas", investigating tales that he has heard about the place.  On arrival, he soon realises that Lucifer is controlling the city.  Xavier rounds up a group of rebels and leads them in an attack on Lucifer's citadel.  Lucifer's superiors order him to abandon the castle rather than risk exposing their plan.  Before leaving, Lucifer drops a slab of rock on Xavier's legs, crushing them.  Xavier is paralysed from this point onwards.  Lucifer escapes.

X-TREME X-MEN #44 (flashback)
Shortly after having his legs crushed, Xavier telepathically attracts help from Tessa (the future Sage), and they meet for the first time.  Tessa gets Xavier to safety.  This flashback curiously appears to relocate the battle with Lucifer to Afghanistan, and it is also unclear why Xavier would have been left in the hills after his encounter with Lucifer.  It may herald a wholesale revision of Xavier's initial paralysis.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, page 11 panels 2-6 (flashback)
Xavier has been airlifted to a hospital in India.  There, he meets Amelia Voght, who is working as a Red Cross nurse.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, page 12 (flashback)
Two weeks later.  Amelia is helping Xavier with his rehabilitation.  She reveals that she is in love with him.  They kiss.  Xavier does not tell her that he is a mutant.

UNCANNY X-MEN 2000
More rehab with Amelia.  Must follow the above flashback, because Xavier has shaved off his beard.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, pages 13-14 (flashback)
"Three months" after page 12 of this issue.  Xavier and Amelia are sharing an apartment in Bombay, India.  When Amelia finds his notes for a prototype Cerebro, Xavier reveals that he is a mutant.

After this, Xavier and Amelia leave India and return together to the Xavier Mansion in New York.  While "recovering", he is approached by the Grey family and asked to help Jean Grey, who is catatonic in hospital after the traumatic emergence of her telepathic powers: see the first story in BIZARRE ADVENTURES #27, pages 4-5 (in which Xavier himself does not appear).

X-MEN: THE WEDDING ALBUM, first story (1st diary entry)
Charles Xavier visits Jean in hospital and brings her back to consciousness.

X-MEN: THE WEDDING ALBUM, first story (2nd diary entry)
After regaining consciousness, Jean moves into Xavier's Mansion and begins training.  This flashback takes place before her telekinetic powers have emerged.

BIZARRE ADVENTURES #27, first story (flashback)
Xavier seals off Jean's telepathic powers and begins to tutor her in telekinesis.  Jean will proceed to undergo "several years" of therapy before finally joining the X-Men.

EXCALIBUR vol 3 #5 (flashback)
Xavier appears as a guest on the TV show "World Beat."  In the accompanying caption, he talks about "my original decision years ago to hide from the world the fact that I was a mutant."  That implies that this is supposed to be a very early appearance by Xavier as a public figure, and the flashback is placed accordingly.

CLASSIC X-MEN #19, second story (photograph)
A Magneto story.  Xavier appears in a newspaper photo, showing him attending a genetics conference.  By this point, Xavier has achieved some prominence in the field.

UNCANNY X-MEN #273 (flashback)
Xavier shows the first Cerebro machine to Moira MacTaggert and a young-looking Jean Grey.

CLASSIC X-MEN #42, second story
A Scott Summers story, set while he was still in Sinister's orphanage.  At the end of the story, Scott briefly makes mental contact with Xavier and Jean, who are testing Cerebro at the time.

X-MEN: THE WEDDING ALBUM, first story (3rd diary entry)
The aftermath of the preceding scene.  At some point after this issue, Jean Grey leaves the Mansion and returns to the Grey household.

X-MEN vol 2 #-1
Xavier and Amelia Voght meet up with Magneto, Pietro and Wanda in a Nazi concentration camp, and have an inconclusive discussion.  Pietro and Wanda have only just been recruited, and have not yet got their costumed identities.

X-MEN vol 1 #38, second story
Xavier begins recruiting the X-Men.  After reading a newspaper account of Scott Summers using his optic beam in public, Xavier makes contact with FBI agent Fred Duncan and forms an alliance.

X-MEN vol 1 #39, second story
Xavier goes on the trail for Scott, meeting with Duncan and with Scott's optometrist.

X-MEN vol 1 #40, second story
Xavier tracks down Scott and Jack O'Diamonds using Cyberno, a prototype of Cerebro.  He confronts Jack O'Diamonds.

X-MEN vol 1 #41, second story
Xavier fights Jack O'Diamonds.

X-MEN vol 1 #42, second story, [pages unknown]
Xavier defeats Jack O'Diamonds, and brings Scott to the Mansion.

UNCANNY X-MEN #309, pages 15-17 (flashback)
When Xavier returns home with Scott in tow, Amelia walks out, disapproving of the whole concept of the X-Men.  Xavier tries to stop her telepathically but immediately stops on realising what he has done.  Their relationship is ruined.

X-MEN vol 1 #42, second story, [pages unknown]
Xavier gives Scott his uniform and visor, and names him Cyclops.

X-MEN vol 1 #44, second story
Xavier reads that Bobby Drake has been imprisoned for his own protection, and sends Cyclops to rescue him.

X-MEN vol 1 #46, second story
Xavier rescues Scott and Bobby from a lynch mob, and enlists Bobby into the X-Men as Iceman.

X-MEN vol 1 #55, second story, page 4
Xavier detects the Angel...

UNCANNY ORIGINS #3, page 12
...and sends Cyclops and Iceman to track him down.

X-MEN vol 1 #55, second story, page 5
Xavier monitors as they arrive at Angel's apartment...

X-MEN vol 1 #56, second story
...and he gives mental commands as Cyclops and Iceman subdue the Angel.  Xavier enlists the Angel in the X-Men.

X-MEN vol 1 #15, page 16 panel 4 (flashback)
Xavier reads about Hank McCoy's college football exploits in the Alumni News.

X-MEN vol 1 #51, second story
Xavier learns that Hank and his family have been abducted by El Conquistador.

X-MEN vol 1 #52, second story
Xavier tracks Hank down with Cerebro

X-MEN vol 1 #53, second story, page 1 to page 5 panel 3
The X-Men defeat El Conquistador, rescuing Hank and his family.

X-MEN vol 1 #15, page 16 panels 5-6 (flashback)
Xavier has dinner with Hank and his family, and asks to have Hank as a pupil.

UNCANNY ORIGINS #6, page 16 panels 2-3
More of the same conversation, as Xavier explains how he blew up some of El Conquisator's equipment (tying up a loose end from the story).

X-MEN vol 1 #53, second story,[page 5 panels 4-5
Still at the McCoy family home, Xavier and the other X-Men welcome the Beast into their ranks.  Xavier erases the memories of Hank from everyone in the area.

MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #85, third story (flashback)
The Beast becomes enraged on realising the Xavier has erased his ex-girlfriend's memories of him.  The X-Men subdue him.

MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #88, second story (flashback)
Xavier supervises as the Beast trains in the Danger Room.

X-MEN vol 1 #1
The X-Men debut against Magneto.

Last revised: 26 March 2005