In X-Men: First Class, moviegoers learn that Professor Xavier, leader of the X-Men, lost the use of his legs when Magneto deflected a bullet and caused it to accidentally sever his spine. Xavier would go on to regain the use of his legs thanks to a serum in X-Men: Days of Future Past, but lost his telepathic abilities in the process, requiring him to accept his paralysis in order to lead the X-Men.
In the comics, however, Xavier’s paralysis has a much sadder story. Not only did Xavier become wheelchair bound at a relatively young age, he regularly regained the use of his legs – only for new accidents to destroy his legs once again. Such constant cruel twists of fate would crush the spirit of most men, and yet Xavier somehow managed to find hope even in these regular injuries!
Xavier originally lost the use of his legs in The Uncanny X-Men #20, during a story set before he founded the X-Men. Prior to this point, he was a very gifted athlete and even compared his dancing prowess to Gene Kelly. While traveling through the Himalayas, Xavier meets an alien called Lucifer who is conducting reconnaissance for an upcoming alien invasion. Although Xavier stops Lucifer’s plans, the alien drops a giant stone block on Xavier, damaging his legs. Xavier is able to get help, but becomes (apparently) permanently wheelchair-bound.
Several years later, however, the X-Men end up fighting another alien race called the Brood who reproduce by implanting their eggs in living beings and taking them over from the inside out. Xavier gets a Brood egg implanted in him and becomes the new Brood Queen. Fortunately, the X-Men manage to take down the new Brood Queen, but with Xavier’s body now destroyed, they decide to clone a new, younger body for him and transfer Xavier’s “essence” from the Brood Queen into the cloned body. This has the additional benefit of providing Xavier with healthy legs. However, because Xavier’s mind initially refused to believe he could walk, it took a long time for his mind to make his new legs function. Eventually, he makes a full recovery and even takes up sports again while leading the X-Men in the field. Soon, however, he returns to a more professorial role to train the New Mutants.
For a long time, Xavier enjoys being able to walk and decides to join other teams, including the planet-hopping team the Starjammers, and even reconnects with his alien Shi’ar lover Lilandra. However, the good times were not to last. After reuniting with the X-Men, Xavier fought the psychic villain the Shadow King and had his spine shattered, returning him to his paralyzed state. Although medical tests showed that he would never walk again, Xavier remained optimistic, pointing out that impossible things happened all the time with the X-Men, and that he no longer believes in “never.” Xavier’s optimism would prove to be somewhat accurate when a mutant named Xorn used his healing powers to restore Xavier’s legs once again. However, Xorn turned out to be a disguised Magneto who had just used “nano-Sentinels” to reconstruct Xavier. He ends up reversing the process and Xavier loses the ability to walk just a few issues later.
Later, however, Xavier had yet another opportunity to walk thanks to a cosmic-level event when the Scarlet Witch used her magic to depower the majority of the world’s mutants in the Decimation event. One of these mutants turned out to be Xavier – however, in the process, the Scarlet Witch also gave Xavier back the use of his legs so he could feel the pain of being denied his mutant senses despite being physically able bodied. Xavier would regain his lost telepathy after being thrown into the Shi’ar M’Kraan Crystal, however.
Despite these miraculous recoveries, Xavier continued to be plagued by terrible injuries. He got shot in the head by Bishop, causing him to fall into a coma and awaken partially amnesic. He recovered from these injuries, only to die in a battle with Cyclops during the Avengers vs. X-Men storyline. Even after this, his body continued to be horribly abused, particularly when his brain was removed and fused to the Red Skull.
Naturally, death proved to be barely an inconvenience for Xavier – who survived in an astral form within the grip of the Shadow King. He escapes from this prison and gets a new body – not a cloned one this time, but the body of a man named Fantomex. Although Xavier (now calling himself “X”) seemingly gets killed again by the Shadow King, he simply pulls himself back together. Taking to wearing a Cerebro helmet (and apparently recovering his regular body), Xavier goes on to lead mutants on the sovereign nation state of Krakoa, until a team of assassins drops in and assassinates him.
Fortunately, Xavier’s latest death occurred at a fortunate time since mutants had just discovered the secret to immortality via Cerebro units and cloning and he came back to life a few issues later. Later issues actually revealed Xavier wanted to be assassinated to unify the mutant race. Yet, while he’s currently free of his paralysis, history suggests he’ll eventually lose the use of his legs somewhere down the line. The original image of Xavier – as a man with a powerful mind in a disabled body – is too iconic for comic book creators to stray away from for too long. Nevertheless, it is interesting that when Xavier does regain the use of his legs, he gets to enjoy them for extended periods of time. This is in sharp contrast to other “disabled” heroes, such as Daredevil, who get to recover lost senses and sensations for much briefer periods, often just a single issue.
Even in other media, Xavier gets to have his legs restored fairly regularly. In the popular X-Men: The Animated Series of the 1990s, Xavier and Magneto traveled through the Savage Land and became victims to an inhibitor field that blocked their powers but somehow restored Xavier’s ability to walk. Likewise, in the short-lived Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon series, Xavier goes into a years-long coma and awakens in an alternate future where he’s able to obtain a powerful exoskeleton that allows him to walk and even run.
Given all this, it seems that Xavier may be one of the rare characters in Marvel Comics who has two status quos – one where he’s the elderly professor guiding his students with the power of his mind, and another where he’s a physically capable fighter and X-Men field leader with a literally younger body. It’s a strange mix, but one that seems to also be reflected in live action as audiences have no problem accepting Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy as different sides of Professor X.