keepsmagnetoaway
An X-Men A Day
Reading X-Men - like, all of it, in order - one issue a day, with a short post each day about it. Longer explantion of this nonsense in my pinned post.
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Amazing Spider-Man 92 (January 1971)
Stan Lee/Gil Kane & John Romita
We're continuing our swing (that's a Spider-Man joke) through the guest appearances of the cancelled-but-not-gone X-Men in the early 70s with this stunner of an issue. Its excellence has almost nothing to do with the fact that it somewhat incidentally features Iceman, but hey, it also does.
Incidentally, this issue (and Marvel in general) calls Spider-Man "Spider-Man", with the hyphen and capitalisation, but calls Iceman "Iceman", one word. This kind of thing annoys me. But anyway, Iceman here is intruding on the golden age of Spider-Man comics, with Stan Lee still writing the series and legendary artists Gil Kane and John Romita drawing it. This issue, 92, comes just after the storyling in which Gwen Stacy's dad dies, a foundational part of the series' mythology (recently re-examined in Across the Spiderverse), and just a few issues before a then-pioneering storyline about Harry Osborn and drug use. The art is jazzy and bright but also dynamic, and the writing is - as always with Lee - wordy but snappy.
There's also, as you can see, a political angle. In the wake of Captain Stacy's death, Peter is trying to throw Stacy off the scent after she starts to suspect that Peter is Spider-Man, so he decides to kidnap her and be really mean to her, since she "knows" Peter would never do such a thing. This is an absurd plan but whatever: Bobby Drake happens to be passing by and, believing Spider-Man to be behaving villainously (which, to be fair, he is), interrupts.
This is basically all prelude for the real, and really interesting, plot, wherein sleazy politician Sam Bullitt is trying to get elected as District Attorney, using Spider-Man to create a law-and-order panic. Of course, nobody does law-and-order panic about Spider-Man like J Jonah Jameson, who had been suporting Bullitt..until Bullitt's thugs tried to threaten Peter Parker for information about Spider-Man, whereupeon Jameson got angry about an attempt to intimidate one of his journalists and the Bugle abandoned Bullitt. I'm explaining this at greath length but that's because I really like this plot and it goes to a really, really interesting place when Jameson and his long-suffering deputy Robbie Robertson get a visit from Bullitt.
Holy shit! Actual politics! Robbie Robertson is, as you may know, one of the longest-established Black characters in Marvel comics, having been introduced in 1967, when he instantly became one of very, very few comics characters of colour to be depicted as anything other than a stereotype: instead he is and has always been a good guy journalist and ally of Peter's. And here we are with a villain throwing outright racial slurs and using hate groups and fascist tactics to get elected.
It's extremely ironic that this happens to be an issue with an X-Men character in it since these are the exact kind of issues X-Men is meant to be about - fear, prejudice, minorities, politics - and almost never has been so far: but here's a Spider-Man story doing it, and doing it well.
Eventually, of course, Peter and Bobby both realise what's up, and that they shouldn't have been fighting each other, and they team up, rescue Robbie, and expose Bullitt in the middle of a fancy fund-raising dinner.
And that's that. There's almost no reason for Iceman to be in this issue, and it's sort of frustrating, again, that he never says "as an X-Man, this kind of hateful rhetoric against other minorities is particularly disturbing to me" because, again, that's sort of meant to be the whole point of the X-Men, but X-Men stuff aside this is a banger of an issue. Shame I won't be reading more of these, I guess.
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Incredible Hulk (1968) 150 (April 1972)
Archie Goodwin/Herb Trimpe & John Severin
The Incredible Hulk? In my X-Men tumblr? It's more etc etc. We're now into the early 1970s wilderness period where the X-Men had no ongoing series of their own but still existed in the Marvel universe, getting puled in for guest appearances here and there, which means the next few weeks of posts will be weird one-offs and glimpses of other Marvel books of the era. Like this one, which is a Hulk comic that unexpectedly involved Lorna Dane and Alex Summers, mostly because Lorna has green hair, which makes Hulk horny.
I actually loved this issue. To be fair, Hulk is not just generically horny for green - he thinks Lorna is his alien princess lover Jarella, who also has green hair. This is after the opening sequence of poor Hulk being persecuted and hunted by the US army through the New Mexico desert again - this happens to Hulk constantly, obviously, and I think if I was reading his series regularly I'd be a bit bored of it, but it's fun for a while. I really do love Hulk: and, crucially, Hulk talk proper here.
I also love me some scary bikers - these are probably the ones who attacked the X-Men in Coffee-a-Go-Go way back when, now taking a trip through the desert. Lorna is doing the same, in her case because she's looking for her love, Alex, who self-exiled late in the ongoing X-Men series after almost killing Bobby in a fight over Lorna.
I also really like Alex and Lorna - they've always felt like an interesting pair, more emotionally complex than the mainline X-Men and a really important addition, proof that the series can have - and, indeed, needs - recurring supporting characters. So this issue combines all that with some enjoyable desert landscapes.
There's also, of course, an unnecessary but inevitable showdown between Alex and Hulk, which is quite well-done, with their powers and the landscape giving us some striking visual effects.
The end result is that Alex decides he can, in fact, return to society and use his powers for good - though obviously given the current publication situation I have no idea where he will be using those powers. But as a little character story with some fun Hulk stuff, this was really good, and a hopefully good indication of the possibilities these guest-star issues provide.
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X-Men: First Class Finals 4 (July 2009)
Jeff Parker/Amilcar Pinna & Roger Cruz
This series is ending! Again! I did kind of a 180 on this four-issue miniseries last time and this one mostly continues to bear that out: it's actually, unlike the longer runs of First Class, a well-constructed piece of writing, bringing back some villains from previous issues through a device about Jean's fears and traumas, and this issue taking us to a showdown inside her mind, where things can be surreal and spectacular. There's even a genuinely funny line from Bobby when they arrive.
That said, this art. Look at the expressions on Bobby and Hank. Why do they look like this? Why?
Anyway, we get a whole cascade of callbacks to previous issues, with Hulk, Cyttorak, Monster Island, the Lizard, the whole shebang. It's not exactly making me nostalgic for the series but it's a fair way of wrapping it all up. I have a beef with the big double splash page that tries to pack them all in, though. It's set up like this...
And then it looks like this.
That's mostly empty sky! This isn't a "cool" "cinematic" angle when you're trying to sell a horde of monsters and they only take up the bottom 20% of the page! This is a bad layout! Anyway, through mastering her fears and embracing her powers, yadda yadda, Jean defeats all these phantasms and they get to graduate. Yay!
But then, of course...
So there we have it: the final page sets up the first issue of the 70s reboot, as they're about to go on the mission that the new team then have to rescue them from. That's a nice little link-up and means, I am fairly sure, that though there are more First Class titles, they deal with individual characters and later team members, and this really is the end of the "proper" First Class team line-up, which therefore manages to end on one of its rare strong issues. On the other hand, look at Jean's face in that final panel. Look at her absurd giant mask. I won't miss this.
Next up, as per my trusty reading guide, it's a whole bunch of guest issues: the X-Men continued to exist in the Marvel universe of the early 70s, and so without having their own book they would occasionally show up (usually one individual, sometimes the team) in other stories. Should be fun to read some scattered issues from the period and see lots of different characters and styles. See you there...
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X-Men: First Class Finals 3 (June 2009)
Jeff Parker/Amilcar Pinna & Roger Cruz
I think the people who draw this comic have some sort of bet with each other about how big they can make Jean's mask before anyone complains.
Technically this issue things get kind of ambitious and interesting, as Xavier shows back up and the gang get into a kind of inside-the-mind sequence using his powers in which they go back to an earlier conversation of their own and reobserve it from the outside. They're doing this because their various past foes seem to be recurring - the Juggernaut thing was apparently more a weird apparition than the real Juggernaut.
This is genuinely quite good and justifies some of the odd-seeming narrative decisions from the last couple of issues: there's also some quite worthwhile discussion of the future of the whole X-Men project. This situates this whole series properly and gives us some real insight into people's motivations, all the while using a visually interesting device.
So I sort of...like this? Huh. I mean I still think the art is ugly - both too dark and too garish in this issue, somehow - but maybe it's being cleverer than I was giving it credit for. Now it just has one last issue to stick the landing, as they apparently head inside Jean's mind...
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X-Men: First Class Finals 2 (May 2009)
Jeff Parker/Amilcar Pinna & Roger Cruz
Hey remember when the X-Men had the shits and Cyclops cynically killed a fellow mutant? He's back! He didn't die at all, so it's all fine, but also he's totally evil, and back in this issue for no good reason.
And then Juggernaut shows up, also out of nowhere, and knocks him out again, but it's ok, because he's totally dying anyway. This takes 10 pages.
That's half the issue! What fun! They're all remarkably casual about Juggernaut reappearing and then disappearing, and half-heartedly try to get Xavier back to talk to him about it (I forget wherew Xavier is supposed to be right now, and I think the writers do too). This ends up leading them back to the location of another of the worst issues of this bad book: we're consciously doing some kind of twisted greatest hits parade now.
All of which finally leaves us with a cliffhanging Magneto tease. I bet it's not really him, but also, I don't care.
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X-Men: First Class Finals 1 (April 2009)
Jeff Parker & Roger Cruz
Somehow, X-Men: First Class has returned.
I know, I'm not happy about this either. But after all the fun we've had with this series so far, we had to come back for some more, filling in more of the time between the original X-Men's cancellation and the start of the reboot. This time we get a four-issue miniserues called Finals which is the last First Class material for a while, although not, alas, the last ever. Anyway, welcome back to the same shitty 00s art, the same relentless bro-misogynist tone, the same everything.
This is a lengthy dream sequence inside Jean's head, hence the colours, and hence apparently all the male characters getting to talk at length while Jean is absent from her own consciousness.
Once Jean does show up for some Danger Room training, she's late even to that, because ladies be peeing and perioding, amirite fellas.
Who is this even for, at this point? This series kept getting cancelled and then kept getting resurrected: as mentioned, there are more weird revivals to come after this ostensibly final Finals, but why? Who wanted this? I know I don't.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 22 (September 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
Two momentous things happened in September 2001, and they both involved towers in New York.
That's right, it's the final issue of this series! And it's all about the Fantastic Fucking Four! I went into my complaints about this series last time and this final issue bears them all out, while also being a mess: it's pretty clear they got the cancellation news at a late stage and had to hurriedly rework parts of the comic accordingly. The Fantastic Fucking Four - who are presently a Fantastic Fucking Five, because they feature a guest Inhuman, to make me dislike them more - wrap up the whole "Magneto and Namor invade the surface world" in the first half of the book, while the X-Men are still underground trying to escape the Mole Man. Great storytelling!
Apparently in an attempt to hurriedly address all the themes this series has failed to address, the rest of this issue is plot threads being tied up while everyone philosophises about being a mutant. These three panels are from three completely different scenes and conversations, but they suddenly realise they have to hammer all this home.
I know what you're really wondering, though - does Xavier fuck the mom? Does he? Well...no.
This is bullshit! Justice for the mom! Justice - or at least casual sex - for Xavier! The only interesting plotline in the whole damn book fell through! What would have happened had the series not had to wrap up so hastily?! We'll never know!
Anyway, that's the end, with demonstrably hastily drawn art, as if Byrne and Palmer resented having to ever actually draw all the same characters in the same room at the same time. Hank, the oldest if the five, arbitrarily turns 20, meaning they're no longer an all-teen team, which is used as a punctuation point to stop the series. I mean...fine, I guess.
So, yeah, I didn't like this series. The storytelling was bad but actually the main problem was that the art was so, so dull. Often technically bad - look at Jean's face right there - but almost always just flat and unambitious, which only put more weight on the storytelling, which in turn couldn't take it. As I talked about at the start, Byrne is such a legend but I guess this just came along at a lowpoint both in his career and in the X-Men's popularity.
So that was X-Men: The Hidden Years. We come next to, guess what, more later infill with the original team in the shape of more First Class! Yes, First Class is somehow not done: it came back for a 4-issue mini series which I'l be reading next. I hope you're as excited as I am.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 21 (August 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
The penultimate issue of this series! I speculated last time about whether this would have a proper conclusion or whether it was an unexpected cancellation and it seems like it's the latter, with this issue throwing a bunch of stuff into the mix but very much not in a "setting the stage for the denouement" way: we instead get (yet again) very little actual X-Men, wo remain underground fighting the Mole Man and cut off from the main action, and lots of secondary plotlines: Magneto grandstanding, Angel and the woman from the mutant cult, Angel running into some Inhumans (boo, hiss) and being temporarily turned to stone for some fucking reason, Havok running around an Atlantean-occupied New York and, of course, the sex life of Charles Xavier.
Yeah, I'm bored with this book, and this issue once again demonstrates the problem it's had throughout: too many plotlines and not enough X-Men. There are maybe like 3 issues of this book where the full team of 5 fight a villain together, and that's absurd. It's obviously occasionally good to split them up, move the focus around and so on, but that should always be as a contrast to the baseline: the baseline of this series is the team divided and running around chasing different plotlines, with other characters hogging the spotlight. What could illustrate this more clearly than the very final tease of this issue?
Wow, I love the X-Men!
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 20 (July 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
We have - spoiler - only three more issues before this title is cancelled. Will Xavier and the hot mom whose daughter he mindwiped, and whose house he inexplicably lives in now, seal the deal? Let's find out! Or, no, wait, let's go to Atlantis for some fucking reason.
I'm not sure yet if this series comes to a proper end with the final issue, 22, or if they got cancelled mid-series, but it certainly does feel in this issue like things are ramping up to a finale: Magneto, who we last saw "drowning", shows up in Atlantis and persuades that old rascal Namor to invade the surface world yet again. This is announced on TV by the Fantastic Four, for some reason: Xavier's just watching it all unfold at the hot mom's house.
But, ok, are at least the other X-Men going to be involved? Absolutely not. Angel spends this issue on a weird jaunt with one of the cult members, who tries and fails to return to her old family while Angel angsts about his family, and the other X-Men spend the whole time underground fighting the monstrous minion of the Mole Man, who is also a Fantastic Four villain.
The series is called X-Men: The Hidden Years because the X-Men are hidden from the reader for most of it. Still, two issues left for Xavier to make it happen!
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 19 (June 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
Xavier and the mom update: still not quite fucking!
That's tragically all we see of them this issue, and it's basically all that's of interest this issue. Byrne has gone all in on this new cult thing and here moves it in a pulp sci-fi direction: the X-Men are briefly trapped in the underground vault where they've been sealed by the cult, and then escape into its background workings, which actually gives us one of the very few occasions of nice art in this series with the vast alien machinery looming over them, the shapes of it blending with the panel divisions to make near-abstract patterns.
The art in this series is so pedestrian and this is the first time in ages I've sat up and noticed it, and this really does work nicely.
The upshot all this, sadly, is that their escape puts them in the clutches of...the fucking Mole Man, Fantastic Four villain abd walking punchline. Oh great.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 18 (May 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
It's still happening! He's gonna bang the mom!
This is the only plotline I care about now, which is maybe a shame because it takes up only two pages of this issue. God, this series is boring. There's a new main plot: I don't think I mentioned it but for the past couple of issues Lorna has been talking to some creepy telepath in her head and this issue we finally get the reveal where they kidnap her and the rest of the team after a long fight between the X-Men and some illusory monsters ("chuck some illusory monsters at them" is always a clue that the story isn't very interesting).
The group are also mutants, but they have a radically different approach: they are going to put themselves and the X-Men into some kind of high-tech suspended animation for centuries and then reawaken when mutants rule the world. What?? How?? Doesn't matter, don't worry about it.
This is...dumb. Different mutant philosophies is interesting and something X-Men should always be exploring, but this one came out of nowhere and is going nowhere, although it's clearly going to be the main plot for a while now. We're also approaching the end of this series, and I'm really only excited to see if Xavier seals the deal or not.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 17 (April 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
He is! He's going to fuck the mom! That's where this is going!
This is the only aspect of this book I care about anymore. This issue, Kraven the Hunter shows up and, in his usual ludicrous way, sets up a hunt with Beast, the prize being the antidote for the poison he has given to Avia, the weird bird-lady who is still hanging around on the sidelines and who we're supposed to think is sexy. To be fair, I love Kraven, he's extremely silly and this issue knows it.
Anyway there's lots of this stuff, and Hank gets to do some classic angsting about whether he really is just a...beast.
This is all pretty classic stuff and I like it. Oh also there's another subplot, which I think is going to be a main plot next issue, about a cult (?) of ageless people (??) who abduct Lorna (???). But again, none of this matters when placed next to the "is Xavier going to bang the mom" subplot. We must know more!!
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 16 (March 2001)
John Byrne
Apparently Tom Palmer wasn't around for this issue, although the overall look and feel is pretty similar to the others: I don't really know what Palmer's role was on these since he and Byrne are always both listed as writers and artists but yeah, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that he was missing, although the tease for the next issue makes a big deal about him being back.
Anyway, possibly relatedly this is kind of a filler issue: not unlike last issue, this book has calmed down and is now mostly telling one story at a time. Unfortunately the story it tells this time sucks and features - sigh with me now - the Inhumans.
The fucking Inhumans. Anyway, Alex and Lorna went off on an unauthorised jaunt to the Himalayas after Cerebro detected a mutant there, and the rest of the gang followed them to get them back: it turns out that Cerebro made a mistake and had detected an Inhuman instead, specifically (and I don't care about the details here so I'm skipping them), the Yeti, who is an Inhuman, I guess.
"The X-Men fight a Yeti" ought to be more fun than this, but it ain't. Also at some point there's some Skrull stuff too, which I also hate, and then they all go home again. Great use of everybody's time!
Meanwhile, there are a couple of other plots here: first of all, where has Xavier been? Well, he's been hanging out with the hot mom of the child he mind-wiped, that's where he's been. He just lives at their house now. Is he going to bang the mom? This would be so appalling.
Oh and also Kraven the fucking Hunter broke into the mansion and that's next issue's problem. Maybe if Xavier was at home instead of mindwiping children and flirting with their moms this wouldn't happen!!
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 15 (February 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
With the sprawling plot of this not very good series finally under control, we have all the X-Men in one place at one time at last.
This issue indulges in a little domestic drama about Warren's family: his uncle, who is a supervillain, wants to marry his widowed mother. This is classic silly stuff and I think this is the strongest issue of this series (admittedly a low bar): everybody gets to stand around in formal clothing for a while looking funny for a while and then an enjoyably mad plot kicks in.
That mad plot, incidentally - and it basically is incidental - is that the uncle in question is also poisoning Warren's mother so that she'll die a few days after the wedding and he'll inherit everything: but he overdoes it and she dies before the wedding! Oh no! That's it, that's literally the plot, RIP Mrs Worthington. Angel gets big mad about this, understandably.
But although he beats his uncle half to death, and discovers that the treacherous family doctor was in on it too, there's simply nothing he can do. This is basically an episode of Dallas but with X-Men in it, and after the mad over-business of the rest of this series, I salute it.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 14 (January 2001)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
After the nastiness of last issue I feel pretty done with this book, and truthfully this book seems pretty done with itself too, with this being something of a reboot issue: it finally addresses its ongoing problem and, in a desperate rush, actualy gets all the X-Men back together and ties up all the far too many ongoing plot strands, something it announces right away on page one.
Thank goodness, basically. Wrapping up everything involves some totally brutal plotting, particularly the complete abandonment of Nancy Martin and her mother which, again, I consider pretty horrible, but we finally get to go back to panels like this which look boring but are literally the first time in a full year that the whole team has been in the same place at the same time (plus, in this instance, Candy Southern, who is presently Angel's girlfriend).
What they're talking about there, and the reason Candy is coming too, is the new plot, wherein Warren's mother, who is now a widow, is about to marry her dead husband's brother, Angels' uncle...but he's a baddie!
This is, remarkably, a continuation of an ancient plot strand from when Angel has a few solo appearances in back-up stories in Ka-Zar's late 60s comic, of all places: appearances so minor I have not bothered to read them (also I refuse to read anything with Ka-Zar on the cover). Hilariously, the uncle's villain name is Dazzler (he has light-manipulation powers), a brief appearance of a name that would then be taken on by a notoriously weird and totally unrelated X-Men character years after the initial appearance of this one (but years before this reappearance: we'll get to those stories one of these days).
This is a hilariously minor plot thread to pick up on but honestly I really like this: weird minor adventures with clever callbacks to old stuff that serve to expand on the characters' lives and personalities is the ideal terrain for this series. And the team is all back together. Maybe there's hope for this yet.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 13 (December 2000)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
This issue begins with Mastermind helping the Blob to try and rape Jean.
No point in any quipping here, this is vile. The obvious defence is "Oh but the Blob is meant to be vile," but, tough, find some other way to show that. This sucks.
Also in this issue, not on the same level of unpleasantness but pretty disturbing from a character and in-universe perspective, Xavier concludes that Ashley Martin, the 10 year old with developing mutant powers, is potentially too strong, and uses some kind of psychic surgery to sever her connection to her powers.
This is...horrible? And goes against everything that Xavier ostensibly believes in? And the writing is mostly designed to make us feel sorry for him?
This is a huge violation of a person, and coming right on the heels of the opening of this issue with Jean and the Blob it feels like it has to be intentional, but it...isn't. Xavier does the "right thing" here, supposedly. I broke my usual rules and read ahead to see if this ends up having any consequences and the answer is no: the depiction of the "severing" is softened slightly in a couple of subsequent issues where it's instead referred to as a mental block that Xavier has put in place until she's ready to learn how to use her powers responsibly, but that's it, and Ashley Martin never becomes a character in any other X-Men series, these are her only appearances. So...what the fuck?
There's a lot of other plot in this issue but I don't want to go into it: this feels like a really, viscerally unpleasant story. Oddly enough the plot in question is a kind of grotesquer horror story (Mastermind conjuring killer clowns) that's in theory quite good, but its occurrence here right next to the really grim stuff only makes for an ugly contrast. The confluence of rape attempt, the mindwipe and the horror style is so in-your-face that I imagine the authors thought they were writing an "edgy" issue but in practice this is just nasty on multiple levels. Ugh.
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X-Men: The Hidden Years 12 (November 2000)
John Byrne & Tom Palmer
This is a double-length "anniversary" issue: as far as I can tell, the anniversary in question is of this very book, rather than any bigger Marvel milestone, so it's just celebrating having got to issue 12 by doubling up in length. Is this a good thing? Unclear.
The whole issue does less than you might expect, but given the previously breakneck pace of everything that's maybe not a bad thing; most importantly, a few plotlines are finally tied up and joined together, stopping (for now!) the uncontrollable sprawl of this book: notably, a whole three of the five X-Men (plus Candy Southern) are now in the same place at the same time, that place being the clutches of the Blob.
I also can't not show you this totally irrelevant panel of the Blob and his sexy attendants.
There's also a whole bunch of Magneto in here, who has run-ins with Sauron and with Lorna, Alex and Ice-man, who are finally united. You can tell from dialogue and footnotes like this that the status of Magneto at the moment is...tricky.
Some great action pages, though:
This all ends rather weirdly: Magneto appears to die and is then picked out of the ocean by the suddenly-in-this-comic Namor, who apparently has to spirit Magneto away to fit him back into the existing Marvel timeline for an appearance with the Fantastic Four that I do not care about.
This is sort of silly as the issue has been bigging up Magneto the whole time, only for him to get taken off the board, but even sillier is Sauron deciding to just leave the story too: instead of fighting Bobby and co. he "realises" that killing them would only lead to the other X-Men hunting him down, so he mind-wipes them (??) and vanishes, leaving them with no memory of how they reunited.
This is all extremely dumb and this is objectively a bad issue but it is finally managing to wrestle this whole series into a manageable shape so I am at least optimistic about the next few issues. Surely I won't live to regret this.
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