Giant Size X-Men 1.

Giant-Size X-Men #1.

From the ashes of the past, there grow the fires of the future!

The early seventies were an important time for comics. While the X-Men were putting out reprints, the rest of the industry was changing rapidly. Stan Lee published a story about drugs in Amazing Spider-Man that proved to be the first nail in the coffin of the Comics Code Authority. A while later, Peter Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy took a a swan dive off the George Washington Bridge and died, leaving an indelible mark on the character's history and setting a dangerous precedent for future storytellers. Jack Kirby's creative differences with Marvel widened to the point where he decided to leave the company and start working for DC – and DC itself was finally catching up and starting to get good. The Silver Age ended and gave way to the Bronze Age.

Even the X-Men, despite their lack of an ongoing title, weren't forgotten. The team was still active, after all. Their untold adventures during the five year gap would later be covered in X-Men: The Hidden Years, a spin-off that started in 1999 and ran for 22 issues. Maybe I'll cover it someday. Some of the characters also drifted through other books at the time, and a few of the resulting stories are worth noting for posterity.


The most significant developments during the reprint period happened to Beast, who briefly took over the anthology title Amazing Adventures (vol. 2) starting in 1972. He was featured in issues #11-17, to be precise. Amazing Adventures saw Hank McCoy leaving the X-Men to pursue a career as a geneticist at the Brand Corporation. To stop a colleague's evil machinations, he's forced to use a chemical formula that mutates him further, into an animalistic monster. However, he is later unable to reverse the change.

This radical shift – which was apparently the idea of Roy Thomas himself – was one of the character's defining moments. Although Hank's actual beastly form would go through some changes over the years (his fur already changes from gray to black within a couple of issues) and he would even be turned back human for a while, Beast would largely be based on the duality between his primitive appearance and brilliant mind. Since this event was such a big deal, it's really kind of disappointing that it happened in such a minor sideline title as Amazing Adventures.

Over the succeeding issues, Hank deals with his mutation and comes into conflict with with Iron Man, members of the Brotherhood (Mastermind, the Blob and Unus), the human computer Quasimodo, a new villain called the Griffin, and even the Juggernaut, who gets out of the Crimson Cosmos where he'd been banished with the help of a copout, but eventually disappears again. The comic also features cameos by several Marvel writers, including Roy Thomas and his wife, as well as Patsy Walker, the star of an eponymous romance comic and later superhero. I know this is pretty irrelevant, but I would have felt bad mentioning one and not the other.

An important subplot during all this was Hank's romantic entanglements with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Vera and the new character Linda, who was actually a spy for the conspiratorial organization known as the Secret Empire. Aside from the first issue (by Gerry Conway), most of this was written by Steve Englehart and tied into a long-running storyline in Englehart's Captain America book at the time. Beast would jump around between titles a bit while this plotline was resolved, and then eventually join the Avengers (starting from Avengers #137). He would be part of the team for a long, long time, and his membership would go on to become as important or even more important to his character as being an X-Man.

Another notable story was told in the pages of the Defenders book. Due to the X-Men being otherwise engaged, Professor X summons the Defenders to assist him in a battle with Magneto and the Brotherhood – which is just the Blob and Mastermind at this point, and thus had to be bolstered with the inclusion of Unus the Untouchable and Lorelei, whose mutant powers had apparently been restored. Unless I am mistaken, this is in fact the final appearance of the original iteration of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Magneto had earlier fought and been defeated by the Avengers – who had then imprisoned him at the center of the earth (!). He'd come across remains of ancient civilizations underground, and somehow learned how to create the ultimate mutant from it. These poor extinct bastards must have been experts on evolution, or something. Magneto uses his creation, Alpha, to attack the United Nations building in New York. However, as Alpha's body and mind develop, he rebels against Magneto on ethical grounds. He transformers the Brotherhood into babies and then flies off into space. Although Alpha won't appear again, this (temporary) transformation ultimately had some longer-term influence in Magneto's case.

Angel had a stand-alone adventure spanning several different titles that had quite a bit of personal significance to him: it involved the murder of his father by the supervillain Dazzler. (“Dazzler” was an unfortunate moniker – it would later be completely ousted by the X-Man of the same name.) Dazzler turned out to be Warren's own embittered criminal uncle, Burt Worthington, who'd made the logical jump from smuggling diamonds to building giant diamond-powered death rays to take over the world. I have the feeling this story would have been more effective as a more personal tale without the outlandish supervillain elements. The incident also involved an attempt to brainwash Angel and the kidnapping of his girlfriend Candy Southern.

There were a few other events during this period that were sort of important. A Fantastic Four story introduced Jaime Madrox, the Multiple Man, who would spend the next twenty years doing absolutely nothing – and would then be made into an important fan favorite in the nineties. Alex and Lorna briefly met the Incredible Hulk during a time when the former had quit the team due to a conflict between him and Bobby. (The Hulk also had a confrontation with the Juggernaut, who would gradually even become part of the Hulk's rogues gallery.) The rest of the X-Men's appearances during this time period were just ordinary, run of the mill guest appearances and cameos to remind us that, yes, they did still exist.

And then, bam, everything changed.


In 1975, Marvel decided to give the X-Men another shot – the concept if not all of the characters. The title was revamped, and a new team was introduced in the one-shot Giant Size X-Men 1, written and edited by Len Wein and drawn by Dave Cockrum. Len Wein is probably more well-known as an editor than as a writer, and he has the unfortunate distinction of many of his creations being defined and popularized by later writers. Still, he's contributed a lot of content for both Marvel and DC, such as Lucius Fox for Batman's supporting cast. As for Dave Cockrum, he was basically great. He'd already done a hell of a job visually revamping the Legion of Super-Heroes during his run with the team. He would also bring a fair share of Legion influences along to the X-Men. He apparently had the lion's share of responsibility for the new new cast members.

The cover – with the new team bursting through the cover and the old members staring at them in amazement – has become fairly iconic. A few other X-Men covers throughout the years would homage it. The first page of the issue itself was a pin-up picture of a more “complete” version of the cover.

The story itself begins with Professor Xavier going around the world on a recruitment drive...

Nightcrawler: The Professor finds Kurt Wagner, the blue, devilish-looking mutant in the German village of Winzeldorf and saves him from a lynch mob who want to put a stake in his heart for being a “monster”. The scene is very effective, and thankfully not overplayed, though I have to wonder why Nightcrawler couldn't just have teleported away. Mention is made of Kurt's past as a “carnival freak”, which will become the basis of his backstory in coming years. It was Cockrum who added Nightcrawler to the team lineup. The concept was a leftover from Cockrum's previous work on the Legion of Super-Heroes. Nightcrawler would have been a new member of the Legion, but the idea never panned out, so Cockrum reused it for the X-Men.

Wolverine: In Quebec, Xavier arranges a meeting with Codename Weapon X with the man's superiors at the Canadian government, then recruits him from right under their noses. Wolverine resigns his commission, happy to not be bogged down by bureaucracy. (His motivation will evolve considerably over time.) His boss isn't pleased, and swears Wolverine hasn't heard the last of it, and indeed he won't have, even though it's later established that Xavier wiped the particulars of the incident from the memories of the base staff. The character was created a little while earlier. He first appeared in The Incredible Hulk 181 (), written by Len Wein himself at the time, as a one-shot enemy of the Hulk. This connection will blow over into a real rivalry between the two over the years. Also, while it'll be a while until Wolverine is even given a civilian name, the sound effect 'snikt' is already present in the book.

Banshee: Xavier tracks down the X-Men's old ally Banshee at the opera in Nashville, Tennessee. He explains his problem to him and Banshee is immediately on board. That's it, just two panels. Banshee probably didn't get more time devoted to him because he wasn't a new character, but in truth, he could have used a bit of extra development. He didn't even get a civilian name. And in case you're keeping track – none of Banshee's appearances so far have even mentioned his homeland. We only know he's Irish from his accent.

Storm: Ororo is found in Kenya, being worshiped by the locals as a goddess for her weather manipulation abilities. Storm's backstory is actually pretty interesting – it's varied without being convoluted like so many other X-Men's histories. We'll see more of it in future stories. She's also very... naked here. Frankly, I'm kind of shocked they managed to get away with portraying her with just a loincloth and long hair. I suspect the tribal motif had something to do with it. Xavier convinces her to come with him and face the “real world”.

Sunfire: After a conversation in Shiro Yamada's mansion in Osaka, Shiro agrees to help Professor Xavier. For some reason, he's a lot more cooperative at first glance than he'll turn out to be later. As with Banshee, Sunfire's introduction is basically just a short cameo. Like I said, this is probably because they're already established characters, but most of the people reading this issue wouldn't have been familiar with them anyway, so really, why not go the extra mile?

Colossus: Xavier next makes his way to the Ust-Ordynski collective in Soviet Russia, where Peter Rasputin's mutant powers have just manifested. It's really very convenient that his power happened to be a super-strong metal form which he could put to use to save his little sister from a runaway tractor. Xavier convinces Peter to put his power to use for the good of the world, and he says goodbye to his family. Peter's musings over whether he should use his powers for the benefit of the state, and his parents' acceptance of them, mean we get a full spectrum of reactions from mutant characters. I like that. In any case, Peter's as yet unnamed sister will eventually become a major character by her own right.

Thunderbird: Xavier finds the native American James Proudstar in Camp Verde, Arizona, wrestling bisons and ruminating on what “sad-eyes simpering squaws” the Apache have become. Like many indian comic book characters, he is a bit too focused on his heritage. Thunderbird is also the most aggressive and unpleasant of the new recruits. He calls Xavier a cripple and is overall not concerned about a white man's problems. Xavier has to goad him to join him by attacking his pride as an Apache.

You'll notice that this batch of X-Men is a lot more varied than the original one, which was just five white middle-class Americans, four male and one female. Cultural sensibilities in comics had evolved somewhat from 1963 to 1975, but it was still stuck on the level of tokenism (perhaps it still is). The first minority characters were only starting to appear.

The “All-New, All-Different X-Men” represented Caucasians from the United States, Ireland, Germany, Canada and the Soviet Union, and also featured a black woman from Kenya, an Asian man from Japan and an American Indian. (Professor X teaches them all English telepathically.) Furthermore, we finally get a mutant with distinctively inhuman features – Nightcrawler, who's aggressively discriminated against right from the beginning. Marvel had already earlier struck gold with the revolutionary idea of making monsters into heroes (the Hulk and the Thing); Nightcrawler was a character very much in the same vein. His literally “evil-looking” appearance made the reason for ordinary people hating and fearing him rather clear, and perhaps slightly understandable.

With all the new mutants gathered at the Mansion and given costumes and codenames, Xavier summons Cyclops to brief them. Scott explains that the X-Men (sans Beast) had gone to investigate a mysterious and powerful mutant presence on the Pacific island of Krakoa. The mission had gone catastrophically wrong, ending with most of the team missing in action and Cyclops, befuddled and temporarily powerless, forcibly sent back to civilization. Now the new team is to go back and rescue the others.

Now, in theory, Professor X could have just turned to the Avengers or the Fantastic Four for help instead of recruiting mostly inexperienced and possibly untrustworthy individuals. As mentioned above, Xavier had already turned to the Defenders for help once.. Thank goodness someone invented the concept of suspension of disbelief. This is all just something we readers have to go with to enjoy the story. Just assume all the other teams were busy at the time or something. However, it still bugs me that Xavier didn't at least turn to Beast. You'd think Hank have wanted to help his friends if at all possible.

Everybody's willing to go along with Cyclops except Sunfire, who originally balks at the idea of risking his life for people that he doesn't really know or care about, but then flies along the X-Men's jet and comes along anyway. This was probably meant to show that he had a good heart under his very thick veneer of dickishness, but since he'll leave the team in the next issue anyway, I'm really not sure what the point was.

Once on the island, the team splits up into pairs for no real reason other than to give the characters the chance to show off their individual powers fighting off Krakoa's wildlife, plantlife and terrain. This would also have been a nice opportunity to let the reader get to know them a bit as characters, but most of them didn't really have enough character yet to play off each other significantly. Eventually, all four teams make their way to an abandoned temple, where they find the captured X-Men.

It turns out that the island itself is a living being, a mutant hive mind, in fact, created by atomic testing. It feeds on “mutant energies” (which I find a little... inexplicable), and had intentionally freed Cyclops to lure more snacks back to it. All the X-Men team up to fight Krakoa, but have little success until Xavier contacts them with an idea almost as insane and convoluted as his plan for defeating the Z'Nox. At least he's consistent.


Xavier himself distracts Krakoa by engaging it in psychic combat, allowing Storm to gather up an electrical storm and charging Lorna with magnetism by striking her with lightning. Cyclops and Havok then also fire energy blasts at Lorna, which gives her the power (I guess) to sever Krakoa's connection to Earth's gravity and send it flying off to space. That it quite a stretch, comic, quite a stretch indeed. It somehow feels like the writing hadn't evolved very much from X-Men #65 five years ago, at least in this particular instance.

(Interesting point: Alex's anguish over Lorna's role in the battle causes him to snap at his brother briefly. This is the first glimpse we see of the strain that will ultimately come to define their relationship.)

The X-Men escape drowning in a raft created by Iceman and leave on their waterproof aircraft. The comic ends provocatively, asking the question “What now?” and suggesting we pick up the next issue.

Overall, Giant Size X-Men 1 was still very much an issue in the old X-Men style. It lacked most of the elements that ended up making the series a smash hit. But it did succeed very well at what it was supposed to do: making a splash. As a story, it had almost no reliance on the sixty six issues of continuity the X-Men had, so it was as fresh and clear as a spring breeze for new readers. The characters weren't particularly well developed yet, but they were visually engaging and, for the most part, had interesting powersets. The right materials were there, they just needed a bit of work. Artistically, however, the book was fantastic. Cockrum had a very striking, cinematic style that really made that really made the book stand out.

(The issue also included some reprints. Giant Size X-Men 2, published a short while later, was just a reprint of most of the second Sentinel storyline, which we covered last time. Not to be confused with King Size X-Men 1 and 2, which were older reprints that came out in 1971.)

Index of Happenings:

Costumes: A whole batch of outfits for the new members. Also, Cyclops's visor is modified, but that's not such a big deal.
(1) Banshee uses the same green and yellow outfit he's worn in all his appearances so far. It's really pretty generic; its only outstanding features are the douchey propped collar and the pretty stupid-looking striped wings under his arms.
(2) Colossus gets a red and yellow costume with huge similarly colored boots. The blue pants will already be gone for his next appearance (Peter likes to show some leg). He looks rather reminiscent of wrestlers, especially due to the very wide belt and raised shoulders. Peter will subsequently mostly wear variants of this iconic look.
(3) Nightcrawler keeps the black and red costume with white gloves for his hands and feet that he presumably wore as a circus performer. It's a rather simple design, but effective. It's just slightly garish enough to suggest the melodrama of a circus.
(4) Storm gets a shiny black leotard and cloak with yellow lining. Since Ororo flies by soaring on wind currents, the cape actually makes a lot of sense. She also keeps her distinctive “goddess” headpiece. The getup looks decently majestic, despite the bared stomach and single link connecting to her shortpants. Yeah, I'm really not really a fan of those elements.
(5) Sunfire also uses the same costume he wore his appearance. It's mostly red, with stylized flame patterns on his arms, legs and head. His butterfly-like mask looks awkward, but it's not totally hideous either. It's really something more suited for a villain, so it also fits Sunfire's not-really-heroic-at-all nature well. Most interestingly, the red circle on his abdomen and the lines crossing his chest evoke the rising sun symbol from the flag of the Japanese Navy. He sure took his father's dying words about not living for the past to heart...
(6) Thunderbird gets a dark blue bodysuit with a streak of red that grows into a stylized bird symbol on his chest, and a golden belt with another bird. Since he's an Indian, his costume has to include tassels on the sleeves and boots, a bandana and even fricking feathers on his head. Thunderbird also wears something like a domino mask, which is odd. Most of the others don't hide their identities at all, and James would probably care about that the least.
(7) Wolverine retains the yellow and blue costume with black stripes he was introduced in in the Hulk's magazine. The only real difference is the distinctive mask has been raised (creating Logan's iconic look). This is basically an early version of THE Wolverine costume. He's occasionally exchanged it for variants, like the brown and gold version or the black and gray wetworks suit, and a rare alternative or two, but he always returns to this basic design.

Deaths: 4.
Resurrections: 3.
Missing parents: 3. Cyclops's mother and father, and now Angel's father.
Revamps: 1. The big one.

Team: fourteen. A whole slew of new additions join up – Banshee, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Sunfire, Thunderbird and Wolverine. Beast has left the team in the meanwhile.
Overall: sixteen.

Writers: 6.
Artists: 13.

Final word: Lorna still doesn't have a codename.

Next time: Chris Claremont.