The X-Men are one of Marvel's best-known and most popular properties - but that didn't stop the company from attempting to eliminate them all in a misguided bid to replace them with the Inhumans. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe is home to plenty of superheroes and super-teams, it is notably not home to mutants of any kind, thanks to a deal with 20th Century Fox in the 90s that saw Marvel sell film rights to key properties during a period of economic uncertainty for the company. Thus, in the early 2010s, Marvel hatched a plan to use the Inhumans in place of the X-Men - and, if necessary, pit the two groups against each other in battle.
On the surface, the Inhumans and X-Men are somewhat similar: both are born ordinary but obtain powers later in life which set them apart from normal society. But while the X-Men are mutants - and thus obtain powers through what amounts to a genetic roll of the dice - the Inhumans obtain their abilities through exposure to the Terrigen Mists: vapor produced by exposing Terrigen Crystals to water. Once exposed to the Mists (a process called Terrigenesis), an Inhuman obtains their power. The Mists only affect Inhumans - until a late 2010s event involving the X-Men.
In the 2016 Death of X event, written by Jeff Lemire & Charles Soule with art by Aaron Kuder and colors by Morry Hollowell, the story begins as the X-Men investigate a distress signal coming from Multiple Man. Cyclops, Emma Frost, Goldballs and others come across a massive green cloud of Terrigen, and the mutants begin to feel ill. At the same time, they come across a valley of Multiple Man's duplicates - all dead. The original Multiple Man, with sickly boils covering his skin, finds his rescuers and can only say "We...we figured it out way too late. The Terrigen Mists did this."
The Terrigen Mists are now toxic and ultimately deadly to mutants - something that has never happened before in comic continuity. What's more, Cyclops theorizes the Mists will eventually become deadly to humans as well (though without any evidence), and announces to the world that the X-Men will save humanity from the "lies" of the Inhumans. This entire moment serves to paint Cyclops and the X-Men in a terribly negative light, and the intention behind this is clear. Marvel wanted to pit the Inhumans against the X-Men and cast the X-Men as the villains in the conflict - even though Inhumans can live perfectly normal lives without Terrigen exposure, whereas mutants will die if they come into contact with the Mists.
Fans saw Death of X as a very transparent attempt to cast the Inhumans as the new group that represented marginalized and persecuted peoples (a title formerly held by the X-Men), and were concerned the Terrigen Mists would be used as a plot device to outright kill all mutants. Fortunately, that didn't happen - and now that Disney owns the rights to the mutants once again, an X-Men film in the MCU is a likely prospect. Still, Death of X is a reminder that as well-rounded as the Inhumans may be, they can't hold a candle to Marvel's astonishingly popular X-Men.
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