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Gen13 is a superhero team and comic book series originally written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi and illustrated by J. Scott Campbell. It was published by WildStorm under the Image Comics banner, which went on to become an imprint for DC Comics, who continued publishing the Gen13 title. The comic features a loosely organized team of super-powered beings composed of five teenagers and their mentor.

==Development== thumb|left|Ad for the book under its original planned title of Gen X prior to Marvel Comics' trademark of Generation X which forced a retitle to Gen13. In the early 1990s, colleagues and childhood friends Brandon Choi and Jim Lee were discussing the various superhero team comic book across the various publishers, with both realizing that a team book prominently featuring a group of teenagers had not been published since The New Mutants (a decade prior). Lee had just read DC Comics' Legionnaires which served as the impetus for the direction Lee wanted to take as he felt focusing on more youthful group of heroes would differentiate itself from grimmer and more cynical material of the time such as Wildcats and Youngblood. Choi began working on Lee's character designs with J. Scott Campbell who had been with Lee's studio for two weeks after being hired through a talent search. Another point to add differentiation from other books of the time was to make Caitlin Fairchild the lead character which at the time was considered a gamble due to a mindset within the toy and comics industry that female characters were not marketable or sellable to the core audience which the robust sales for the series managed to counter. While Campbell acknowledged the presence of tropes like shadowy government conspiracies in the initial Gen13 miniseries, the team's intention going forward in keeping with their desired approach would be more adventure based taking thematic and tonal inspiration from the works of George Lucas of Steven Spielberg. Initially, the book was intended to be called Gen X with the team featuring that name in their first appearance in the Valiant Comics and Image Comics Crossover limited series Deathmate, but due to Marvel Comics having trademarked the name Generation X for their upcoming book of the same name, the intended August 1993 release was cancelled and the series and team rebranded as Gen13, in reference to Generation X being the 13th born in the United States since the American Revolution.