Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #4

X-MEN #34-40

There’s a lot to get to, so let’s just plunge in!

The first issue in this set involves Mole Man.  No, not Hans Moleman from THE SIMPSONS, but rather Mole Man, one of Spider-Man’s foes, or perhaps not just yet, because in this appearance he’s apparently better known for a struggle with fellow underground denizen Tyrannus, a struggle that brings the Roberts boys back into the picture.  Ralph, as you may recall, became the Cobalt Man a few issues back, while Ted is Jean Grey’s college love interest.  Well, Ralph has reformed from his evil ways, but that doesn’t stop Tyrannus from kidnapping him in the hopes of using cobalt to cover his giant robot warrior, his answer to the giant robot warrior Mole Man has crafted out of diamond.  (It seems before the fictional adamantium, Marvel was equally obsessed with other things incredibly hard to penetrate.)  Needless to say, the X-Men must rescue Ralph and also thwart the generic plot of taking over the world, this time by Tyrannus.  Mole Man is surprisingly uninterested in that ambition, by the way.

#35 is a guest appearance by Spider-Man that teases the forthcoming revelation of just what Factor Three is and what it aims to accomplish.  It was probably conceived as a means to make the X-Men more popular, because otherwise it really makes no sense, and actually makes Spider-Man the good guy and the X-Men exactly the bumbling idiots he considers them to be!

#36 features yet another would-be supervillain with some metallic aide fighting the team, this time Mekano, a college kid looking to rebel against his perception of fatherly neglect.  Technically, since last issue we’ve been making great strides toward resolving the Factor Three arc.  Technically.

The next three issues are the epic clash with Factor Three.  These issues are more significant than they may seem.  They are essentially the basis for X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, featuring a band of evil mutants threatening nuclear holocaust during the Cold War.  Instead of the Hellfire Club, though, we get the Mutant Master, the Changeling, and a band of foes the X-Men defeated in its earliest adventures, including the Blob.  Everyone’s being manipulated by the Mutant Master, or so the Mutant Master believes, until the X-Men succeed in exposing him for what he really is, and it turns out to not be a mutant at all!  He’s actually an alien, which actually presages later preoccupations with aliens by other X-Men writers (even though this makes no sense, because the X-Men are theoretically all about mutants and mutant persecution).  This was Roy Thomas’ big story, the league of evil mutants that was inspired by the first Brotherhood but was arguably more significant, and is the only story so far that has anything to do with mutants and what Professor X was trying to accomplish in the first place.

That point is emphasized in a series of backup features that begins in #38, in which the team’s origins are explored.  Charles Xavier is portrayed as a recluse following the tragic fate of his brother Cain Marko (the Juggernaut), until he hears of public panic caused by Scott Summers, whom he seeks out to try and help, lest he be hounded and become the very menace humans already believe mutants to be.  Scott first has to elude the manipulations of Jack Winters, who “becomes a mutant” in the same kind of accident that gives other heroes their powers, developing diamond hands and thus calling himself Jack o’ Diamonds, until Xavier intervenes.

Combined, these backup features and the Factor Three epic are easily the best stories so far in the collection, fulfilling the potential and the periodic angst sprinkled in with all the character antics that fill in the pages between fairly generic battles that all seem to fit the pattern of, “villain seems to best the team, the team rallies.”  It’s especially significant that Magneto actually has nothing to do with Factor Three, nor any other major foe, and for some, that’s reason enough to assume it doesn’t mean anything historically.  That it’s a direct threat to mutantkind as well as mankind says differently, as does the fact that it so directly parallels the events of FIRST CLASS, despite widespread differences. 

Well, and then #40 has Thomas repeating the Merlin trick he pulled earlier, trying to assimilate Frankenstein’s Monster into the mythology, and pointedly again featuring aliens (and again, why???).  Many, many X-Men writers have failed to understand what the X-Men are actually about (just one of the many reasons why X-MEN 2099 remains for me one of the best X-Men experiences I’ve ever had, because it does not make that mistake), while even Chris Clarement had perhaps his most lucid moment playing with the future rather than the present.

It should also be noted that a new set of individualized costumes is introduced at the end of the Factor Three saga, and that my favorite artist so far is featured in #34, and his name is Dan Adkins.  He becomes an inker the next issue, and seems to have been employed mostly as a cover artist.  But now you have my opinion.

But the collection continues!