As of this moment... the X-Men no longer exist as a team!
Roy Thomas left the X-Men in 1968. He'd be back in less than a year.
It's safe to say that his immediate successor, Gary Friedrich, was probably only a fill-in. Thomas plotted the first arc, which was concluded in a crossover with his own title, Avengers. Friedrich only wrote one of his four issues independently. #47 was co-written with Arnold Drake, who then took over for the remaining six issues until Thomas's return. Stan Lee was still credited first.
The art team for the eleven issues was more consistent. Issues 44-49, and 52, were all laid out by Don Heck and penciled by Werner Roth. 50-51 were done by the famous Jim Steranko, 53 by Barry Smith (who would later, as Barry Windsor-Smith, do some unforgettable work on Thomas's Conan the Barbarian title I mentioned last time) and 54 by Don Heck by his lonesome. Iceman's and Beast's respective origin arcs in the back-ups of issues 43-46 and 51-53 were drawn by George Tuska and Werner Roth respectively.
Now, Heck and Roth did a fine job overall, but Steranko really stole the show with his two issues. They were tangibly better. His art was a bit more detailed in general, and the odd-angled shots, powerfully dynamic poses and really well done dramatic close-ups made talking heads as weighty as fight scenes. Steranko's energy effects were out of this world. It's a pity he couldn't stay on the title for longer.
Even so, Steranko made one very important contribution to the X-Men. The legend goes that he apparently disliked the title logo so much that he refused to do work on the book unless he was allowed to redesign it. The new blocky logo was indeed much more striking than the original. Although it first appeared on the cover of X-Men #43, it only officially stuck from #50 onwards. Variants of the core design, differently angled and proportioned and otherwise modified to fit other titles have adorned the main X-books ever since, at least most of the time. I've added a comparison of the original logo (from the cover of X-Men #49), Steranko's redesign (X-Men #50) and a modern variant (Uncanny X-Men #520), published over forty years later.
I should point out that for issues 44-48, the book's title was actually “The X-Men featuring:”, announcing us the character or event that had the spotlight for that issue.
The story begun by Roy Thomas in #43 continued on through issues 44-45 and finally concluded in Avengers #53. (This was, I believe, X-Men's first actual crossover storyline. Other heroes had guest-starred on several occasions before, but this was the first time the story directly continued in another book.)
The plot is rather uninspired. Magneto and Toad, with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch once again unwillingly serving alongside them, want to get revenge on the X-Men for previous battles. They capture the team. Toad strongly advocates killing them, but Magneto – naturally – disagrees, declaring “I must have the time to savor the sweet nectar of victory!” Of course, Angel manages to escape and call in the Avengers to help. Throughout the story, Toad is almost pathologically subservient to Magneto, but the latter treats him in a frankly incredibly abusive matter. Seriously, Darth Vader would tell him to lay off his minions. This is all a bit difficult to reconcile with future characterizations. Eventually, after the big fight scene, Toad snaps and sends Magneto “to his death” by crashing his getaway plane on some jagged rocks in the ocean.
Of course, in future appearances, both parties will have completely forgotten all this. Toad will continue to serve obediently and Magneto won't much care about the assassination attempt.
The story also includes an interesting historical artifact: Quicksilver mentions that Magneto wants to create a separate nation for mutants. Sound familiar? It should. The mutant nation Genosha would later be a pretty big deal in the franchise, particularly in the 90s, and the X-books at the time of this writing are revolving on another take on this concept. I guess Gary Friedrich was a hell of a visionary.
This arc also included one very incongruous subplot (or perhaps “distraction” would be a better term). On his way to the mainland from Magneto's island fortress, Angel comes across an island rising from the sea. There he meets Red Raven, a minor Golden Age character, the only remaining member of a “supreme race of birdmen”. Red Raven tells Angel his story and reveals that he's keeping his people in suspended animation so they wouldn't invade the rest of the world. When Angel suggests there might be another way, Red Raven basically throws him out, then renews the suspension process and disappears back under the sea.
This was all filler, a waste of time from start to finish. The stupidest thing about it was how irrelevant Angel's presence was. He never did anything except listen to exposition, then get evicted and continue on as if nothing had happened. Red Raven would have a few insignificant appearances throughout the years, but his people never did wake up and launch their invasion – and this I am torn about. I think it might have been nice to spruce up Atlantean oceanic monsters invading the surface world with occasional attacks by highly advanced birdmen. Maybe that's just me.
The next issue, #46, was problematic in its own ways. I can't take too much issue with how the X-Men mourning Xavier was handled (decently), but the conflict with Juggernaut flat out sucked. Last time we saw him, the Juggernaut had been banished to another dimension. He now reappears in the real world because Professor Xavier preprogrammed some machinery, and then disappears because Professor Xavier preprogrammed some machinery. The X-Men's involvement is limited to getting beaten up and failing to convince him that Xavier is really dead. Who could have thought this was a good idea? Not only do the heroes end up looking like ineffectual chumps, the reader is robbed the chance of seeing Marko's potentially interesting reaction to his step-brother's death. All we get is bland denial and a Deus Ex Machina victory.
Once all this is over, the X-Men are confronted by Agent Duncan of the FBI, an associate of Xavier's who'd made a few very brief appearances, and who throws the team a curve ball – they have to disband!
Apparently, the X-Men would be too vulnerable to their enemies without Professor Xavier, and they could do more good if they were distributed over the whole nation. The team's reaction to this is to shrug and comply. I don't have to tell you that this makes no sense whatsoever, do I? Beast mentions that Duncan has no authority to order the X-Men anything, and later muses about the fact that they should only be easier to defeat one by one, but everyone figures they should try it out anyway. Besides, the team had already operated without Professor X for a while, remember?
Was this big shake-up thought up to revitalize the series' sagging sales? That seems like the obvious conclusion, but if that was the case, it must not have been very successful. The new status quo lasted exactly TWO issues.
#47 deals with Hank and Bobby going on a date with their girlfriends (even though they were said to be operating out of California?) and coming upon Warlock, whom the team fought a while back. The ancient wizard is now calling himself Maha Yogi and brainwashing people while pretending to be an innocuous mystic.
#48 is about Jean and Scott, now working in New York as a model and radio correspondent respectively. (It's not made clear whether Jean broke off her college education.) They stumble upon a robbery by Cybertrons and follow them back to their leader Computo. Unfortunately, neither Transformers nor Brainiac 5 are involved. It turns out the robots are actually controlled by a totally different living computer by the name of Quasimodo, who was built by the Mad Thinker.
This was one of those stories you forget while you're still in the process of reading them. Just about the only interesting thing in this issue is that it features the first ever instance of fan service in the X-Men title so far: four pages of girls in bikinis, taking part of a photo shoot.
Was the disbanding of the X-Men an attempt to find a break-out character to carry the book? Was it a move to deal with neglected characterization by giving the cast members individual focus? Or was it just a case of throwing things at a wall to see if they'd stick? And why did they break the whole thing off? Alas, I can only speculate. The end of 48 promises us: “The heat is really on Beast and Iceman next ish... when they face the fury of Metoxo the Lava Man!” That's not remotely what the following issue was about, however. Something obviously went very wrong. Perhaps backlash from the readers was to blame...
In any case, the team gets back together without much fanfare in issue 49, when Cerebro them warns them of a large number of latent mutants gathering in San Fransisco.
The man behind this is mysterious gathering is Mesmero, a pupil of Magneto's, who has an army of Demi-Men (generic robots) at his command. Interestingly, he used a device constructed by Magneto to boost his poorly-defined hypnotic powers to the point where he was able to affect mutants across the entire nation. This was more like the modern conception of Cerebro than Cerebro itself was at the time.
It's not long until Magneto himself pops back up (oh, I guess he wasn't dead after all) to take charge of his followers. In fact, Magneto's previous story was essentially the last appearance of the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (excepting Mastermind) – and it wasn't even called by name. Magneto himself wouldn't even be involved in future incarnations of the team, though he would eventually form a group called Magneto's Acolytes who served a similar function. Mesmero's group was essentially a precursor to the Acolytes.
Magneto and Mesmero's plan was to lure in Lorna Dane, a young mutant with the power of green hair (and magnetism). They reveal to her that she is Magneto's daughter and heir, and awaken her magnetic powers. Apparently, a blood relationship is enough to make Lorna loyal and devoted to a total stranger who happens to be an insane terrorist. His actions are against her better judgment, but he's her FATHER, so she has to obey. Okay, whatever. By this point, the X-Men had already befriended her and Iceman had become instantly smitten, at least to the point of a healthy argument between Scott and Bobby about whether or not there would be a conflict of interests if the latter had to fight her.
In the end, Cyclops infiltrates Magneto's operation under the guise of Eric the Red and the team succeeds in thrashing Magneto's men with a little help from Lorna. This is after Bobby has revealed to her that she isn't really Magneto's daughter, that it was all an elaborate ploy to get him a minion with magnetic powers.
Lorna would later join the X-Men as Polaris – though for various reasons, her tenure has been amazingly checkered in some ways. For one, the issue of whether Magneto really is her father was NOT put to rest with this story. Writers would keep on flip-flopping on this for decades to come. Bobby and Lorna would be involved in a long-standing romantic triangle. The identity of Eric the Red would go on to make a few surprise reappearances down the line... but not as Scott's alter ego anymore. No, that would have made far too much sense.
The issue after this arc, #53, features a fairly nondescript battle against the Fantastic Four villain Blastaar, who seemingly dies after being brought to Earth from the Negative Zone by one of Professor Xavier's “mind machines”. As I recall from the Fantastic Four, Reed Richard's portal to the Negative Zone was highly advanced technology, which he kept closely guarded to prevent an invasion from the Zone. And yet Xavier, a second-string genius and a Ph.D in Genetics and Psychology, was able to construct a machine that could access it by “transmuting matter into radio energy”? I find that hard to believe.
#54 is where things get interesting again. We're introduced to another big character and future X-Man Havok: Cyclops's brother, Alex Summers. Cyclops has a brother? Why, yes he does, he just “kept him secret”. My gut instinct would be to call this a cop-out, but like I've pointed out, not much attention has been paid to the X-Men's personal lives so far, so it's not entirely unbelievable that Cyclops could have a brother (his backstory of running away from an orphanage doesn't directly contradict this idea) and I actually like the idea.
The story also introduces the supposedly immortal villain the Living Pharaoh, who kidnaps Alex (who is also a mutant) for some nefarious purpose. The issue ends with Cyclops framed for the Pharaoh's murder. The arc continues on in the following issues, so I'll have more to say about it next time.
This stretch of issues also include the origins of Iceman and Beast told as backup stories in certain issues.
In Iceman's story (in 44-46), Bobby reveals his mutant powers by fighting off some bullies. His parents are unable to protect him from a racist lynch mob, but Bobby manages to get himself arrested, believing he'll be found innocent in a court of law. That's when Cyclops arrives to rescue him on Professor Xavier's orders. Bobby claims escaping would make him look guilty, so Cyclops basically ends up kidnapping him and making him look even worse with a public fight. This was all rather unreasonable, but Xavier fixes everything with brainwashing.
Beast's story (in 51-53) deals with his parents getting kidnapped by a costumed terrorist calling himself El Conquistador, who forces him to steal an experimental nuclear reactor from the military (they're quite small, apparently). El Conquistador wants to continue the blackmailing indefinitely, but Hank defeats him with the help of the X-Men and Xavier fixes everything with brainwashing.
Angel's story starts in 54, but continues on in 55-56. Interestingly, Jean never got her own story – probably because we already know how she joined the team; we saw it happen in the first issue. However, the backstory later conceived for her was arguably the most interesting of the lot.
The Origins stories, though very brief, were actually pretty decent. In recent years, several of the bigger X-Men have had their backstories published in one-shots under the banner of X-Men Origins. Both Beast's and Iceman's were somewhat faithfully updated retellings of these stories. In comparison, the Cyclops one-shot focused more on his childhood, framed from a minor scene in issue #7. That whole business with Jack O'Diamonds from his actual origin was ignored.
So, overall, what can be said about this period of X-Men? Not much. Friedrich and Drake mainly continue what Roy Thomas had been doing – there's no obvious shift in tone – but they do it worse. There's much more obviously bad material in the stories than so far. The Mesmero arc was decent enough to be the highlight, owing at least partly to Steranko's art. However, the break-up and reformation of the team made the book look messy and inconsistent. This period was marked by a significant loss of readers.
Index of Happenings:
Deaths: 2. Magneto seemingly drowns in Avengers #53.
(Magneto: 1 death.)
Resurrections: 1. ...and returns within months.
(Magneto: 1 resurrection.)
Summers clan: 2. Scott and Alex.
Team: five. Lorna and Alex don't become members yet.
Overall: seven.
Writers: 4.
Artists: 11.
Next time: we'll be back to Roy Thomas, covering the last stretch of issues before the series went on hiatus, X-Men #55-66.
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