X-MEN #2 (November 1963)

“NOTHING CAN STOP THE VANISHER“

FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE VANISHER, natch.

SUMMARY: The X-Men face off against The Vanisher, a mutant teleporter who takes advantage of retarded cops and retarded gangsters in his quest for… ten million dollars.

I’m going to go ahead and call this the worst comic book I’ve ever read.  The villain is flat and uninteresting.  The plotting is impossibly retarded.  Plus, the script features more exposition than the entire Cliff’s Notes library.

This issue (and a few I’ve read since) has me wondering if Stan Lee is a little like the George Lucas of comic books.  He gave us a unique universe and the outlines for great characters, but he’s a weak writer whose creations only truly come to life when other writers get a hold of them.  Of course, he was still a young buck when he created the X-Men, and comics weren’t the sophisticated media that they are today, but I find sequences like the one that follows painful from any narrative standard:

The number of things that are completely illogical here are mind-boggling.  Nobody in any of these panels acts like a reasonable human being.  It’s like the set-up for a bad joke: A mutant with a gay hoodie enters a bank.  Two cops approach …

Still, this brazen crime is enough for The Vanisher to collect a gang of thugs who accompany him to the White House for a face off with the X-Men.  At this point Lee introduces a rather disappointing plot device that I’m hoping doesn’t become a crutch: Professor Xavier as deus ex machina.  The X-Men are unable to compete with The Vanisher’s teleporting, so Xavier just wipes the his memory clean.  It raises a frustrating question of why he doesn’t just do that to every villain who ever makes an appearance in the magazine.  No truly satisfactory explanation is given.

Here, let me Xplain what I'm doing.

With The Vanisher out of the picture, this leaves the X-Men to clean up his collection of hoods in one of the slowest action scenes of all time.  Every move is explained ad nauseum.  It’s as if the artists weren’t confident that their illustrations would explain themselves, so every manuever had to be explained by the hero doing them, the villains on the receiving end, or the occasional caption box.  At this point, I’m I’m curious when the concept of pacing will find it’s way into the X-Men books.  It’s certainly not there yet.

X-MEN #1 (September 1963)

Where it all begins

FIRST APPEARANCES OF PROFESSOR X, CYCLOPS, JEAN GREY, THE BEAST, ANGEL, ICE MAN AND MAGNETO

SUMMARY: After the necessary exposition introducing the X-Men and their powers through Danger Room exercises, the X-Men confront Magneto as he attempts to use the United States’ nuclear arsenal to achieve something thing called World Domination.

True story.  I once bought a special edition reprint (the ones with the silver border on the cover), because I thought it would be worth money some day.  I was ten.

The first issue of X-Men is very much a product of its time.  While I found it infinitely more readable than the first several dozen issues of Iron Man (ugh), it’s blunt narratives and shallow characterizations are almost laughable compared to the complexities of today’s graphic novels.  It’s a similar experience to watching the fascinating racial/social commentary of The Wire and then going back and watching the “very special” race episode of MacGyver.  It was poignant and dramatic at the time (MacGyver didn’t smile during the closing credits, so you know it was grave), but it’s shamefully simplistic considering everything we’ve seen and read in the past few years.

These early issues read in a special kind of gee-whiz vernacular that constantly reminds you of just who these books were written for: kids. The X-Men were teenagers and so were there readers. I don’t know how many people my age were reading comics in the 1960’s, but they were definitely not the target demographic.

What’s most interesting about reading issue uno after over 500 issues have followed it (including lord knows how many spin-offs), is seeing how far each of these characters have come.  In issue one:

CYCLOPS has not yet taken the reigns as leader of the pack, but it’s clear he’s the resident redass of the bunch.  No humor.  No smiling.  All business.  He’s the most like his modern day counterpart.

THE BEAST isn’t blue; that’s the most apparent difference from the start.  He’s also written as a bit of a dull brute, going so far as to lay a big wet one on Jean Grey when she’s introduced to the team.  Granted all of the guys are written as horny teenagers, but this is an incredibly long way from the dazzling intellect Beast is known for these days.

Not The Beast I know

ANGEL hasn’t had his Apocalypse make-over.  He’s got the natural wings as well as the natural charisma and ego that comes with his family history (though that’s not yet been mentioned here).  He has a way of rubbing his fellow classmates the wrong way.

ICE MAN looks like a snow man.  He even goes so far as to dress up like one, putting a carrot and coal on his face (don’t ask me where he got those in the Danger Room).  He’s easily the most ridiculous looking of all the X-Men, especially when you consider his incredible modern design.

JEAN GREY is apparently just eye candy for all the guys to drool over.  Kirby often draws her in pin-up poses to accentuate her femininity. Her treatment as a character is one of the first incidences I noticed of some surprisingly overt sexism in these early issues.  Aside from the sexualizing of Jean Grey, there are also frequent reminders that she’s much weaker than the rest of the boys. We’re a long way from Phoenix.

Seriously. It's like... planet big.

Aside from the fact that he’s often used as play-by-play man for the battles, explaining who’s doing what and why, PROFESSOR X is easily the slightest of the characters so far.  But what Stan Lee missed in depth, Kirby made up for in cranium. His head is enormous. No, not his head.  From the eyebrows up. He looks like a hot air balloon. I don’t know if Kirby felt he had to find some visual codifier for Xavier’s power, but DAMN that’s a big melon.

MAGNETO, you’ve come a long way, baby.  As the Dark Knight proved last summer, comics can often be weighed by the quality of the antagonist.  At the start, Magneto is pretty weak.  He’s powerful, yes.  In fact, he arguably has one of the best powers in the Marvel U.  But at this point he’s your standard megalomaniac.  His philosophy regarding homo sapiens and homo superiors hasn’t been filled out, so he’s disappointingly flat for a guy who eventually rips Wolverine’s skeleton out.

By far the most interesting thing about reading this issue is seeing how Stan Lee treats his reality.  Comics today get much of their richness from their relevance, dealing with issues like terrorism that plague everyone’s subconscious.  The X-Men #1, while coming just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis clearly inhabits a comic book world.  After Magneto gains control of a military base, the X-Men show up and with virtually no argument from the military, get to work on their rival.  Let me summarize it another way:

A bizarre costumed figure with incredible powers dismantles the security at a military base.  Not long after, a group of teenagers in spandex show up – one with weird glasses, one with wings, and one… uh snowman – and offer their services.  To which the Army says “Sure. Go right ahead. It’s not like I we’ve had any problem with that before.”

I love the Marvel Universe.