Roy Thomas's first stint on X-Men lasted from 1966 to 1968, covering issues #20-43. He was accompanied along the way by six different artists, the foremost among them being Werner Roth, who drew issues 20-29, 31-33 and 35, and who dropped the pseudonym “Jay Gavin” after #22. The other pencillers were Jack Sparling (30), Dan Adkins (34) and Ross Andru (36-42). Don Heck took over for five issues (38-42), but relinquished the final one (43) to fill-in George Tuska. Roth also pencilled the five-issue “Origins of the X-Men” back-up storyline from #38-42.
It is important to note that since Jack Kirby practically defined the artistic direction of Marvel at the time [citation needed], there's no obvious shift in style between the artists and it's ultimately quite difficult to tell the difference between them. The art is quite decent all along the way, particularly Werner Roth's, who possibly even outdid Kirby's work on this particular book. Ross Andru stands out for being especially bad, which is surprising.
Interestingly, Stan Lee always received foremost credit as the editor throughout the entire 24 issues, even ahead of the writer and artist. In essence, he retained top billing on a book he wasn't writing.
Now, while everyone ought to know who Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were, you might be forgiven for being ignorant of Roy Thomas. Thomas was a former English teacher who quit his job to write comic books and eventually rose in the ranks of Marvel Comics to become, for all intents and purposes, Stan Lee's right hand man. He succeeded Lee as the Editor in Chief, and as the writer of a number of high profile books when the latter left them. His work on the Avengers is regarded as perhaps the definitive run on the title. He also wrote Marvel's famous Conan the Barbarian series and did some notable work in DC, which included creating Infinity Inc. and the All-Star Squadron. Over the decades, Thomas has gathered a reputation for his preoccupation with continuity.
His role in shaping the early days of the X-Men was considerable as well.
Thomas starts off his run on the X-Men with a bit of a cop-out. His first issue starts off with Unus and the Blob framing the team for a bank robbery, and there's an immediate public backlash. Great, I thought, looks like he's actually taking the “hated and feared” aspect to heart! Even better, the X-Men are blamed for some general weird shit in New York City soon after in issue 22. There's an interesting scene where Jean takes a cab to investigate this, and the cab driver warns her of X-Men creeping about. A very nice and believable touch, I felt. And keep in mind, these issues were never resolved. How could they have been? Constantly flip-flopping the public's perception of the X-Men based on their latest actions would have looked quite stupid in the long run.
But alas, beyond these brief touches, the “mutant menance” was hardly addressed at all.
Of course, it's hard to say how much racism is not enough and how much is too much. Even Claremont took quite a while before he cut back on the space adventures and started asking the hard questions. Striking the right balance between addressing social issues and superhero adventures is an important aspect of the franchise. Not everybody has gotten it right over the years, and the worst thing Thomas could have done was stick it chock-full of anti-mutant sentiment. Still, I wish he'd made more of a consistent effort. Obviously, it would be best if the racism was a constant subtle undercurrent that occasionally comes to a head.
On the other hand, Thomas probably did a better job than Lee at characterization (and that's no small feat). Under his hand, their personalities feel much more solid.
Warren gets to drive around in a fancy car and acts a bit more like the rich playboy in training as he's supposed to be. Also He manages to remain shockingly useful in battle, despite only being able to fly. Perhaps the fact that he spends a few issues waylaid due to injuries reflects the writer's silent acknowledgement that he isn't up to par with the others power-wise. Once the power levels start to creep up in coming years, Warren will go through some... changes to keep him relevant.
Beast and Iceman are established to be pretty good buddies. Even though they're the oldest and youngest of the team respectively, they're also the ones who get along best. They're both the most quip-oriented members, so it makes sense. But to be fair, they get a fair amount of page time, but not really the development to go along with it. They're just there for the most part.
Even Xavier gets a fair bit of attention. There's scenes of pathos about his crippled legs, as well as his brother Cain Marko, the Juggernaut. On one occasion, Cyclops muses about how hard it must be for the Professor to be responsible for them all. To be honest, all this feels very thrown in, but I appreciate the effort. Surprisingly enough, Xavier gets mechanical augmentations for his legs for a short while, essentially allowing him to walk. However, Thomas was smart enough to realize that Xavier's disability was a big part of his character, and that letting someone with his powers become too active wouldn't work. Thus, the harness breaks down, Xavier says something about the prototype needing more work, and the matter is then discarded, never to be brought up again.
Thomas continues the trend of focusing more on Cyclops than any of the others. As the deputy leader of the team, it's natural that he would be at the center of most major happenings. We spend a lot of time getting a look at his thoughts and feelings. He's also basically the star of the back-up arc chronicling how Xavier formed the team. This is where it is made clear that Scott was the first to be recruited. Although his spotlight has occasionally come under fire by other, more popular mutants, Cyclops has always been THE X-Man.
All the while, he is presented as perhaps a bit more believably as a loner. There are scenes where he comes off as genuinely burdened. On the other hand, there are also scenes where his angst over his eyebeams comes off as melodramatic whining. But this will fade in time, once mutants in much more unfortunate conditions will start getting introduced.
His eyebeams are portrayed rather inconsistently, actually. Considering they're supposed to be shooting out of his eyes at all times, it seems a bit weird that he can drain his power by overuse. Wouldn't he not need the ruby quartz glasses if he just blasted away occasionally and kept his batteries empty? There's also a lot of wrangling about whether or not he has subconscious control of them – and believe me, this aspect is going to have a major impact on future characterizations of Scott Summers.
I was pleasantly surprised by the attention paid to Jean Grey. She sorely needed development to get out of the rut of being the token female on the team and nothing else, and Thomas did a rather good job with her all around. Although her personality remained rather generic, she was at least established to BE someone. By separating her from the others to some extent, she was allowed to be a bit more individual. She even seemed to become Professor Xavier's private confidante, privy to information not given to the others.
This isolation was achieved in part by having Marvel Girl's parents transfer her over to another school, Metro College in NYC. In theory, this meant that she left the team. She was out of action for a few issues, then in action inconsistently for a bit more, but towards the latter half of the Thomas run, the issue mysteriously becomes moot. Jean apparently just commutes to Westchester off-screen. Still, her team-mates' reactions to her leaving and her brief absence were all pretty interesting.
Best of all, Jean wasn't useless! She played an active role in action; her telekinetic powers were used as vital parts of X-Men battle tactics more than once. Even when she was mind-controlled by an ancient wizard who wanted to turn her into his bride, Jean wasn't a complete damsel in distress. She snaps out of it when Scott's life is placed in mortal danger and saves him. At the end of the run, she even casually develops the power of telepathy. The reason for this will become obvious soon. Telepathy eventually becomes a critical part of the character's backstory.
The Warren-Jean-Scott love triangle was kicked into overdrive. They get a lot of interaction in these pages, and very little of it isn't punctuated with thought bubbles such as “Why doesn't she look at me like she looks at Scott?”, “Why is he being so cold? Doesn't he care for me at all?!” and “She could never love someone like me – someone whose eyes hold a deadly danger!” You know, stuff like that.
There's one scene in particular that stands out in the whole conflict. During a battle, Angel gets in the crossfire of Scott's eyebeams and is seriously injured. In his delirium, Warren accuses Cyclops of deliberately trying to kill him, causing the latter to wonder whether he really subconsciously wanted to eliminate his rival. There's even some worrying whether Angel will ever be able to fly again, and Cyclops asks to be relieved of command as the team's field leader. The others' reactions were all very well played as well.
Unfortunately, the conclusion of the love triangle was extremely underplayed. Warren decides to respectfully step down, and it happens so abruptly that you could miss it entirely on a casual reading. Oh, well.
All along, it was pretty clear who we were supposed to root for. If the readers cared one way or another, they were probably mostly hoping for Scott and Jean to just put their feelings out in the open. The frustration caused by the whole thing was occasionally evidenced in the letter columns. Readers demanded Marvel to either break them up or let them get together. And it was one of those romances where everyone around the characters but themselves realized that they had feelings for each other, but they just couldn't spit it out. It got to the point where even Xavier tried to play the matchmaker for them once.
Part of Thomas's efforts with characterization was the increased attention on the team's personal lives. In fact, one of my favorite scenes from these issues took place in #32, where the team is celebrating a birthday party at a coffee shock when suddenly BIKERS ATTACK and the X-Men have to take them out in their civilian identities, without anyone realizing that they're mutants. It was a nice action sequence and an interesting reflection on middle-class fears all at once. A good chunk of issue 29 is taken up by the team going ice-skating and the various hi-jinx that result from it. That's good.
Thomas noticed something important about the book's dynamic: Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters isolated the main cast and cut them off from potential supporting characters. Moving Jean over to Metro College opened up some totally new avenues. For one, it brought about the introduction of Ted Roberts, one of her new university buddies. He was probably technically supposed to be a love interest as well, but that didn't play out in any significant manner. Roberts also got involved with the X-Men when they fought his supervillainous brother and was strongly implied to have figured out that Jean was Marvel Girl.
Thomas also got a lot of mileage out of Vera and Zelda, two generic love interests introduced in the Stan Lee days. They were at least on friendly terms with the rest of the team, but were most often seen going on double dates with Bobby and Hank, which also helped solidify Beast and Iceman's bromance. Their Peter Parker-esque troubles of explaining their mysterious absences to the girls felt rather hollow, but it was a step in the right direction.
In return for giving up Jean, Warren gets childhood friend Candy Sothern as consolation prize. Yes, she was called “Sothern” in the early days, not“Southern”. They were both rich kids and ended up in a pretty long-lasting relationship. The way this relationship ended was... not pretty. But I guess we'll see, won't we?
Moving on.
Remember how I made the point that while most of Lee's villains have maintained a continuing presence in the franchise throughout the decades, the X-Men picked up many of the most important foes in later periods? Well, Roy Thomas's tenure was not one of these periods. The bad guys he created, and the ones he picked up from other stories, were each more insignificant than the last. That's not to say that the stories themselves were no good – it's just that the antagonists failed to make a longer-lasting impact.
I suppose the best place to start would be Factor Three. The organization of international terrorists called Factor Three (which was named as it is supposed to be the third global power between the East and West, in case you're wondering) was a pretty big deal in these days, but was eventually pretty much forgotten. The storyline came to a conclusive end, and it was never picked up again (though we'll be seeing some dangling plot threads from it later on). It has some historical significance as an early case of a long, loosely connected story arc.
The leader of Factor Three, the Mutant Master, turned out to be an alien subversive from Sirius, on a mission to defeat the planet Earth by causing a world war and nuclear annihilation. This was actually an interesting swerve. I myself was rather convinced that the Mutant Master's quest for mutant superiority was genuine and that he would turn out to be Magneto in disguise. Incidentally, the alien's true form looked pretty much like a giant, green octopus, which I thought was pretty cool.
The Mutant Master's second in command was the shapeshifting Changeling, who ends up playing a vital role in defeating his boss and foiling Factor Three's plans. His change of heart was a massively important plot point that would pay off in an unexpected way a few years later. Almost three decades after that, the character would also go on to make a surprise comeback. Well, sort of.
Factor Three also recruited some familiar faces to its cause. Vanisher, Unus the Untouchable, Blob and Mastermind all join up, and subsequently all side with the X-Men when it's revealed that the Mutant Master's goal was the destruction of all life on Earth. Rounding up the selection of mooks was another new character: the Ogre. Now there's an interesting story. The Ogre was the odd one out in his organization. Apparently a baseline human mercenary, he fought for mutant supremacy with some fancy gadgets. The guy appeared in exactly two issues and then faded away into comic book limbo, seemingly destined for obscurity. But not so! Thirty two years later, in 1999, he reappeared in Kurt Busiek's Thunderbolts, where his plotline would bizarrely interconnect with another semi-leftover from the X-Men. But that's a tale for another time...
This storyline also brought with it a landmark for the fledgling series – the first mutant who was neither an X-Man nor a bad guy. Banshee, who would later become an important supporting character and at various times even serve with the team, was originally introduced as an unwilling operative of Factor Three. The Ogre kept him under control with the old exploding headpiece trick. Once the team frees him, Banshee immediately goes ahead and gets himself recaptured while investigating Factor Three in Europe. Smooth work for a character who would later be established as an experienced Interpol agent. Still, he proves crucial in defeating the Mutant Master in the climactic battle. His sonic powers were actually among the most interesting introduced up to that point. By screaming, he was able to render others unconscious, create powerful vibrations and, somehow, fly. Civilians affected by him were apparently later frightened by loud noises, which is one of those invaluable little touches.
The Factor Three Saga was good. The first clashes with the organization's operatives did a very decent job at setting up an upcoming menace and building up to a totally satisfying conclusion. The story's climax was quite effectively dramatic. The Mutant Master's ultimate plan was to assassinate top Soviet leaders while simultaneously taking over an American military base and launching missiles. To prevent a nuclear confrontation, the X-Men have to split up and fight their mutant counterparts while also dealing with hostile Soviet and US troops along the way. Once they get back to Factor Three's hideout and the truth is revealed, Vanisher, Unus the Untouchable, Blob and Mastermind, Changeling and Banshee all team up with the X-Men to duke it out with the Mutant Master and his robots. Ultimately, the disgraced alien kills itself (“the first interplanetary suicide!”) and Professor X makes a poignant speech about good and evil mutants working together. Considering the franchise's penchant for redeeming villains, I found this quite interesting.
Aside from the four mentioned above, the Juggernaut also appears for another confrontation. Quicksilver (on loan from the Avengers and briefly a “villain” again) and Magneto make an appearance in the final issue, but Thomas's departure leaves the story for his successor to finish. Mimic has a relatively big role, but we'll get to that in a moment. Lucifer gets a small storyarc (20-21) where he teams up with Unus and the Blob, then tries to take over the world by the use of the brainwashing alien supercomputer Dominus. We also get a flashback detailing his first confrontation with Professor X, and how the latter was crippled. (Lucifer dropped a large block slab on him, basically. Yeah, it's kind of lame.)
Aside from those, Thomas brought in a lot of bad guys from other Marvel titles at the time. Like I said, the man was very continuity-oriented, so some incidental villain who appeared once in whatever title a few years ago was fair game to him.
The Avengers and Iron Man villain Count Nefaria appears for an arc (22-23). This was several years before he got superpowers himself; he's just a crime lord at this point. His gang included five members, each of whom happened to be rather unfortunately named: the recurring Iron Man foe the Uniforn, as well as the “freelancers” (by which I mean villains who aren't really tied down to any one hero) Scarecrow, Porcupine, Eel and Plantman. Count Nefaria would go on to make another appearance in the title a few years down the line, which was a much bigger deal. As for the others, well, they aren't very notable. Plantman also pops up in Thunderbolts eventually, where he is actually made into a pretty decent character. The Eel is killed and succeeded by someone else in the eighties. The Unicorn eventually goes insane and commits suicide, possibly because he chose the least threatening name for a supervillain ever, and is also replaced.
Other guest star villains included the mind-controlling Puppet Master from the pages of the Fantastic Four, who briefly mentally subjugates the Mimic, the Super-Adaptoid, with all the powers of the weakest roster of the Avengers, Warlock, an ancient magician who'd previously fought Thor (another, more well-known Warlock would go on to join the New Mutants in the 80s), as well as Tyrannus and the Mole Man, subterranean baddies of the Hulk and the F4 respectively.
The brand new villains included the aforementioned alien computer Dominus, the mad scientist and enlarger of insects, Locust, the San Rican adventurer known as El Tigre, who becomes the avatar of the Mayan deity Kukulcan, Xorak the Outcast, a prisoner of the Juggernaut's Crimson Ruby of Cyttorak, Cobalt Man, slightly insane engineer brother of Ted Roberts jealous of Iron Man's success, Mekano, the son of a neglectful librarian who turns to gadget-oriented vandalism to win his father's attention (you just can't make stuff like this up), Frankenstein's monsters – yes, THE Frankenstein's monster – who turns out to be an alien android, Jack O'Diamond, who appears in Cyclops's origin story and who has the power of, um, diamonds, and finally Grotesk, the insane prince of an extinct underground civilization.
At this point, I'd like to express my affection this sort of comic book wackiness. Don't you just love it?
In any case, none of these villains mattered in the least. The lucky ones had one or two other appearances over the years. Some of them are so irrelevant, they don't even have Wikipedia articles. Interestingly, Cobalt Man and the Locust, whose stories seem to end with them learning their lessons and giving up villainy, still reappear as bad guys later on, in differing capacities. The bottom line: Thomas's villains didn't exactly shine.
The one outstanding rogue, of all people, Mimic, the guy with the powers of the X-Men introduced during Lee's run. Thomas reintroduces him (cured from his amnesia) and has him join the team. His tenure only lasted three issues (#27-29), but it made him seem like a decently interesting character. Calvin has some identity issues stemming from him lacking his own powers, and although he's an asshole (an arrogant, disobedient asshole), he's also strongly opposed to killing. Ultimately, it seems like he would have been viable as a permanent member, if he'd been retooled to be a bit less powerful (he was as strong as the rest of the team combined, after all) and a bit less noticeable (the dynamic of everyone hating him would have gotten old soon). It's interesting to think about how things would have gone if he's stayed.
Mimic actually made X-Men history by being the first member to be booted off the team. Professor X just gets tired of his extreme douchiness, basically.
Out of revenge, Calvin almost joins the Super-Adaptoid, but changes his mind when he realizes this means killing people as the Adaptoid's mindless puppet. He redeems himself by heroically fighting off the robot and saving the world, sacrificing his mimicking powers and learning a valuable lesson about friendship (somehow) in the process. This is very similar to Calvin's send-off in his first appearance. Mimic has been neutralized as a threat, is a good guy now, and goes off on his merry way, so everything is fine! Yeah, right. It didn't stick the first time around, nor will it now. He'll be back as a villain, and his change of heart will be more than meaningless.
Over all the character's future appearances, someone along the way decided to introduce the idea that Calvin Rankin was bipolar. This makes a certain amount of sense, considering his early mood swings.
Roy Thomas's run also saw the team get new costumes, which is actually a pretty big deal if you think about it. Most big comics characters always stick to one look throughout their existences. If they do change their outfits, it's usually only a matter of time before they get back their most iconic costumes. The Fantastic Four have always worn blue jumpsuits, and they always will. The changes they've made – like giving the Human Torch a red uniform or dressing the Invisible Woman up like a stripper – have never lasted long. John Byrne's dark blue and white designs lasted for quite a bit, but ultimately still faded away. At the time of this writing, they're wearing sleeveless and gloved versions of their default costumes.
But the X-Men are different in this regard. They change costumes periodically. Most of them have had several different iconic looks over the years. Some of them are quite hard to peg down to any specific appearance. And if Thomas hadn't taken the first step here and made the original change here, perhaps they'd have stuck to the blue and yellow designs forever.
The actual new uniforms were preceded by smaller modifications. For the guys on the team, there weren't many big differences. The yellow tunics were cut off so the fabric didn't cover their sides, and everybody got red belts. Marvel Girl, however, lost the mask covering her face, leaving her hair free and lowering her neckline, albeit not far enough for any cleavage. She replaced it with an, um, Wolverine-esque, two-pronged mask
A few issues after that, the Professor decides to prize the team for their accomplishments by allowing them individual uniforms. Taking a cue from the Avengers, it was the Jean who designed some, even though she doesn't have a background as a fashion designer like the Wasp on that team, so yeah.
Aside from Iceman, who's usually just iced up anyway, it was Cyclops and Beast whose costumes changed the least. Cyclops basically only got smaller gloves and boots, and lost the yellow tunic over his torso. This gave him a classic superhero “underpants on the outside” look. Cyclops kept this look for a long, long time. Beast's tunic grew to cover his shoulders, and the whole thing was changed from yellow to red.
Angel got the worst of it. His new costume was yellow, with red pants and suspenders, and a blue mask that left his hair free. Words cannot express how awful this looked. Jean's new outfit looked quite good, but also completely unfitting for a superhero. It was something she should have worn to evenings in the disco, not in battle. It was basically just a green dress with a very short skirt, that left both her legs and shoulders bare. She kept the new mask, but in yellow rather than black, to match her boots. The one feature everyone shared were black belts with red X symbols on the buckles.
There's two other things of note that happen during the Thomas run.
Firstly, he wrote a five-part story describing the origin of the X-Men, which ran in the backup sections of issues 38-42. Considering that X-Men #1 started with the team already mostly complete, I can see why the readers would want a more complete picture. However, the story isn't terribly exciting. Xavier talks to the FBI about the mutant problem, while a young Scott Summers is on the run from the law after accidentally revealing his powers in public. After he gets in trouble with a fellow mutant, a thug named Jack O'Diamonds who wants to blow up a nuclear plant, Xavier finds him and together they defeat O'Diamonds. The end.
It's a decent story and all, but it didn't really need to be told. All it succeeds in doing is stressing just how much more iconic and noteworthy the origins of other superheroes are. Peter Parker made a mistake that would haunt him for his whole life and learned a powerful lesson about responsibility. Steve Rogers's wish to fight for justice resulted in him becoming a literal Ubermensch. Bruce Banner's thoughtless work creating weapons resulted in him becoming a monster. But the X-Men... are just a bunch of people who got together to do good. It's a concept ripe with possibilities, but only if you look hard for them. On the surface, the idea is boring as hell.
And secondly, Professor Xavier died.
It all starts when a scientist builds a “nuclear oscillotron”, a device capable of creating powerful earthquakes, and is then shocked – SHOCKED – that his colleagues don't understand that this machine would be used only for the benefit of mankind! The device is then promptly hijacked by an insane subterranean prince, Grotesk, who plans to destroy the Earth with it. Xavier, later revealed to have been suffering from a terminal illness, personally goes to stop him. With Jean's help, he manages to stop the oscillotron, but loses his life in the process. Curtain.
Was that the end of it? Hah ha, no. Stay tuned to find out what “really” happened.
So, at the end of the day, how good is X-Men during Roy Thomas's (first) tenure?
It's quite good. To be honest, his work is probably better than Stan Lee's. The character work feels crisp and enhanced (I realize how indistinct this sounds), and the stories are mostly fun and exciting, even if they suffer from the lack of strong antagonists. The Factor Three Saga is probably the best the title has been so far. Unfortunately, not much of it is remembered nowadays, neither by fans nor writers. The All-New, All-Different X-Men had such a strong impact on the series that everything up to that point came to be regarded as the era of “Before Claremont”. People remember that Stan Lee created them, but they don't remember much else and are likely to bunch the whole first 66 issues together and credit them to Lee.
This is another reason why I'm doing these write-ups. Remembering.
Index of Happenings:
Deaths: 1. Charles Xavier killed by Grotesk.
(Professor X: 1 death.)
Resurrections: 0.
Anti-heroes: 1. Mimic is the first anti-hero on the team. He certainly won't be the last.
Orphans: 1. Cyclops is revealed to be an orphan. This will prove to be incredibly ironic, trust me on this one.
Reformed villains: 3. Mimic again, but it won't last. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch “off-page” (in another title). I'm only counting big recurring characters here.
Team: six.
Overall: seven. Mimic gets to be a member for three issues and becomes the first to be asked to leave.
Writers: 2.
Artists: 9.
Next time: we'll be taking a look at the interim period before Roy Thomas's return to the title, X-Men #44-54.
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