Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #6

X-MEN #s 46-53

The final issues in this volume are pretty random but they have a few treasures buried in them!  But first, we have another pretty meaningless visit from Juggernaut, in the midst of Foggy Nelson reading the last will and testament of Charles Xavier and F.B.I. agent Amos Duncan requesting for their own safety that the X-Men break up!

That’s from Gary Friedrich, completing his final solo adventure before helping Arnold Drake establish himself with another pretty random Merlin adventure, where the one-time Warlock becomes the Maha Yogi in order to brainwash some worthless support in his continuing plans for world domination, with Beast and Iceman able to take care of him.  Cyclops and Marvel Girl are featured in Drake’s first solo adventure, featuring another random historical legacy in Quasimodo.

Lorna Dane, the eventual Polaris, makes her first appearance in #49, part of a wave of formerly dormant, newly activated mutants Angel gets tangled with, part of a larger plot on the part of Magneto in his continuing hapless quest to do something meaningful, though he does manage to bring the X-Men back together after an absurdly brief period made all the more melodramatic in Jean Grey’s typical thought balloons, wondering what will happen to her budding relationship with Scott Summers a few issues earlier, even though they were still paired together…

Anyway, so Lorna Dane is tricked into believing that she’s Magneto’s daughter, which really only entitles her to being cut into the megalomaniac’s plans as an equal partner (something only Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were privy to earlier…is that why someone figured out they might as well be revealed as his kids?), until the X-Men convince her that Magneto is crazy.  Which isn’t hard, because in this incarnation he is!  The fiftieth issue sports art from Jim Steranko, by the way!

The story drags on with a meaningless inclusion of some villain named Erik the Red, and then another pretty random threat named Blastaar in #53, featuring art from Barry Windsor-Smith, which looks suspiciously like Jack Kirby.  It should be noted that the origins backup tales continue, but they’re increasingly worthless.  Beast is depicted as having been the product of his father’s accident with radiation!

It’s a shame that the series is treated so frivolously, with one creator caring very little for what the creator before him was doing.  Whatever happened to Ted Roberts, for instance, or Jean Grey’s college education?  She becomes a bikini model during the team’s brief exile.  I kid you not.  I suppose it’s not so different from how most X-Men creators in most eras not written by Chris Claremont or Grant Morrison or featuring Hope tend to be, random and meaningless and having nothing to do with the “mutant problem” so much as villains with generic goals and defeated less by the X-Men than by themselves.  It’s not a surprise that the book wasn’t popular, because it featured a bunch of outsiders desperate to be cool even though they weren’t (the one with the biggest personality was a total square, after all).  I seriously want someone to rewrite these adventures knowing exactly what they were.  That’s what reading something like this demands.  Vindication!  But it was certainly interesting, informative, enlightening.  But exciting?  Only in the most exacerbated sense!

Excelsior!

Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #5

X-MEN #s 41-45

AVENGERS #53

Lots of things change in these issues.  Roy Thomas concludes his run with a two-part story involving an encounter with the Subhuman (another subterranean character; it shows that Marvel is obsessed with New York) and then transitioning with Gary Friedrich, before resurfacing in the conclusion of the Magneto story that follows as writer of AVENGERS #53.

The big news is that Professor X “dies” in #42.  I say “dies” because that’s how it’s got to be.  Clearly in the context of the series to that point, he really did die, although he came back at some point.  The sophistication of the writing at the time really did not allow for a lot of subtlety concerning the subsequent appearance and significance of Magneto, but there’s not much to say about that, except that’s the way it was. 

Starting with #42, actually, the covers start supplanting the team’s logo in place of character titles that suggests the series was in pretty rough shape, trying to keep afloat in whatever way it could keep a semblance of relevance, which is probably why the Avengers play such a key role in these issues, even though the team that appears by the end of it is bereft of any major members (though Black Panther has apparently just joined).

The loss of Xavier pushes the team to rely on itself and its own abilities more than ever, something he tries to push them toward in his final appearances (though “final appearances” should be taken with a further grain of salt, because he is still featured in the new origins backup features that so far as added Cyclops and an incredibly dubious Iceman to Professor X’s side).

It should also be noted that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch factor into Magneto’s plot.  They’re coming off a stint as Avengers, but have been coerced to side with their fellow mutants.  Though they are brother and sister, they have not yet become Magneto’s offspring.  We do get Toad, who was featured in the X-Men movies, as Magneto’s hapless stooge.  Magneto is supposed to be the team’s most dangerous opponent, but instead of actually fighting them, he initiates the first war between the X-Men and the Avengers, and then pretty much slips and falls into the sea, disappearing without actually doing anything.

One thing I want to point out, is how apparently “Tiger” is a term Marvel used to use pretty loosely.  I associate it today as Mary Jane’s pet name for Peter Parker, but back then it was used by everyone, including editor Stan Lee, which just seems weird (and, quite frankly, disturbing).  It’s not the only slang present, either.  Wrestling fans who might believe Zack Ryder came up with “You know it!” will be dismayed to hear it used with some frequency in these pages, forty years before anyone actually thought “Woo woo woo!” was acceptable catchphrase material.

Anyway, I’ve got only a few Gary Friedrich issues left, and only eight issues overall, and I’ll have concluded this crazy collection.  You know it!

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! 

Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #3

X-MEN #32-33

I was hoping, when I flipped through this, that the issues featuring Juggernaut (not to mention the indication of the cover of the collection) were his firs appearances.  Turns out that was wrong.  These issues were a return engagement, but also an expansion on the mythology of the character.

Still, they solve one of the mysteries in the volume, the big secret Professor X has kept in his lab and has been working on for several issues now.  Juggernaut, Cain Marko, is Xavier’s step-brother, a fact anyone who watched the classics 1990s cartoon knew already (but a fact that didn’t factor in X-MEN 3: THE LAST STAND), and so his personal interest shouldn’t be surprising, but the fact that Juggernaut is otherwise just another villain that the team is defeated by and later defeats should count as a little disappointing, but indicative of the storytelling of the time.

Roy Thomas continues to have fun with pop culture, referencing several hip things even readers in the 21^st Century will recognize, but whether or not writers in the Marvel Bullpen actually cared about any of it is a matter for debate, more like window-dressing is how it comes off, even in the story itself, trying to make the young characters seem relevant to young readers who would’ve needed such excuses.  (Curiously, and pointedly, no movie based on a Marvel character so far has made any such efforts.)

Scott is still anguishing over telling Jean that he loves her, and keeps postponing it, even though they’re now spending a considerable amount of time together, and having jettisoned Warren successfully from the love-triangle (having now been replaced simply by Scott’s anguish and general angst).  You’d think a romance so protracted would have longer ramifications to later stories, but Jean was killed off permanently years ago (unless she returns in AvX), and few writers seem interested in memorializing either the relationship or Jean (which again, is just baffling), leaving it to the past as if it’s no longer relevant.

Oh, and Juggernaut is put back into deep freeze at the end of this two-part story, but not before apparently an apparent connection to another long-standing recurring element, the threat of Factor Three, is made.  If anyone wanted to rewrite history, they’d rename Factor Three X-Factor.  And give Jean Grey her due.

Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #2

X-MEN #s 29-31

What is the fate of Cal Rankin, the Mimic?  In the first of these issues, he seems to have adjusted into the arrogant outsider as a member of the X-Men that anyone could have seen coming.  The rest of the team is enjoying a little relaxation (figure skating, another sure sign that these comics were originally created in an entirely different era, referencing the fairly obscure Carol Heiss of all figures), though Scott Summers beggars off, trying to cope with the anxiety of figuring out how to control his powers, unwittingly awakening the Super-Adaptoid, apparently the Marvel version of Amazo (with far less longevity).

Mimic decides to quit the team and actually deludes himself into believing the Adaptoid will prove a better fit for his abilities (on the surface, yes), until figuring out how wrong he was, and helps the X-Men prevail, before once again seeming to lose all his borrowed abilities and returning to a normal life.  It’s about as average an issue for the team as possible, but shows off exactly the right elements.

The next one resurrects Merlin, renaming him for some reason Warlock, and apparently a sinister personality bent on world domination.  Long story short, it doesn’t work.  What’s more interesting, or perhaps perfectly obvious, is that Marvel Girl, Jean Grey, is dragged once more into the center of the plot as Warlock’s intended bride (everyone has the hots for her, possibly because she’s the only regular female character in the book). 

The final issue in this trilogy of aborted villains features Cobalt Man, who is more likely an Iron Man villain, considering his whole story revolves around Iron Man (much as Warlock had a hard-on for Thor; this kind of inter-continuity probably played a large part in making Marvel in very short order become the preferred comic book publisher, since there was a near-instant sense of familiarity with a bunch of characters who had really only just come into existence).  But Cobalt Man is also the brother of Ted Roberts, the college campus love interest of Jean Grey, solving one of the riddles in this collection, the angst of the otherwise perfect Ted Roberts, always fretting over comparisons to his brother.  Turns out his brother is just as nutty as every other egghead in Marvel, as likely to make bad decisions without really learning from them.  But once again, it’s a story revolving around Jean Grey, who perhaps is not coincidentally codenamed “Marvel Girl.”  Could it be that in some alternate version of Marvel history, she was meant to be the star of the book, and perhaps a central character in the publisher’s lineup?  No wonder that “The Dark Phoenix Saga” eventually made her one of the most memorable figures in Marvel lore.  If the company ever actually rebooted, it would be a tough argument not to make her a star again.

Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2 #1

Part of the reason I tried to quit reading new comics last year was because I had a series of burgled packages from Midtown.com (which in itself might have been prevented had the postal service actually been performing competently).  The one way the apartment tenants seemed to atone for this was in the random appearance of ESSENTIAL CLASSIC X-MEN VOL. 2 in one of the periodic we’re-moving-out pile of boxes to be scavenged by anyone helping to thin out unwanted possessions.  I must repeat, this discovery was pretty random, because when I first moved into those apartments, it was a pre-retirement community, and only gradually became something else (less trustworthy).

Anyway, so I got my hands on one of those thick black-and-white reprint volumes that serve as an inexpensive window into other comic book eras, and even though I don’t read X-Men comics with anything close to regularity, I was pretty happy.  The only real question was when I was going to actually start reading it (a regular concern for me, because I have more reading material than I can keep up with).  Well, that day has finally come.

I’ll be providing regular commentary as I make my way through it.  Part of what makes ESSENTIAL CLASSIC X-MEN VOL. 2 is that it represents the era that almost killed the franchise, collecting X-MEN #25-53, from the late 1960s.  The X-Men were unpopular, but they were liked enough for Marvel to keep around for the cult audience that grooved to a bunch of merry mutants.  The stories in this collection are written by Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, and Arnold Drake, names that don’t exactly resound with quite the same significance as Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, and Grant Morrison (Thomas comes the closest).

So far I’ve read:

X-MEN #s 25-28

This is still within the formative development of the team, and so features the classic, original looks (in fact, Beast looks definitively human throughout the collection), even though within these few issues alone new costumes are already introduced.  It shows that Marvel survived on romance comics before the big superhero boom at the start of the decade, because one of the central storylines to be found is the love triangle between Jean Grey (“Marvel Girl”), Cyclops, and Angel.  Jean has in fact recently gone off to college, and is pining after some bloke named Ted Roberts, and Mimic (probably the archetype for the character of Morph from the classic 1990s cartoon) happens to be on campus as well, biding his time for another run at the team, though the circumstances that rapidly bring him into conflict with it quickly transition him into an unlikely new “deputy leader.”  None of the villains in these issues make a lasting impact, though Banshee debuts as yet another Marvel character to start out as an antagonist, only to join the good guys (seriously, how many have there been?).

It should be noted that the team consists of Professor X, Jean, Cyclops, Angel, Beast, and Iceman, and that Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and Thor (in reference) make appearances.