X-Men: Part 1

BACK IN THE EARLY 1960s there was no "woke" agenda. There wasn't even much call for fairness, equality and general decency. But there was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Though it didn't overtly start out that way, The X-Men very quickly became a metaphor for the struggle for equal rights that was going on in the United States at the time.

It was 1963, and the fledgling Marvel Comics was enjoying sudden and unexpected success, largely due to the efforts of editor/scripter Stan Lee and legendary - though temporarily down on his luck - artist Jack Kirby.

The ascension of Marvel began when, at a request from owner/publisher Martin Goodman in 1961, Stan was tasked with coming up with a superhero team book. Working with his lead artist Kirby, Lee based the four team members on the classic elements of earth, air, fire and water, putting a revised Human Torch in the fire role, presumably to please Goodman who considered the Torch his "lucky charm". Fantastic Four 1 (Nov 1961, on sale August) was quite quickly followed by The Incredible Hulk 1 (May 1962, on sale March), when Stan realised that the earth character from the FF, The Thing, was the most popular and, indeed, the early Hulk talked a lot like Ben Grimm. Three months later, Lee and Kirby's take on Superman, The Mighty Thor, made his debut in the fantasy anthology title Journey into Mystery 83 (Aug, 1962, on sale June), the same month that The Amazing Spider-man made his debut in the Steve Ditko vehicle Amazing (Adult) Fantasy 15. Two months after that, the FF's Human Torch was awarded his own series in Strange Tales 101 (Oct 1962, on sale July), the same month that Ant-Man made his return in the anthology title Tales to Astonish 35. That's a pretty aggressive expansion for just a single year, but both Goodman and Lee must have been encouraged by the burgeoning sales of Fantastic Four, which went monthly as Strange Tales 101 and Tales to Astonish 35 went on the stands.

Marvel unleashed a flurry of superhero books, starting at the tail end of 1961 and continuing through the whole of 1962.

The following year continued the trend of Marvel's incursion into the superhero field, though only at a slightly slower pace. Spider-Man was awarded his own title after Goodman got past his notion that the public didn't like spiders, debuting with issue 1 (Mar 1963, on sale December 1962). That same month saw the first appearance of Iron Man in Tales of Suspense 39. We'd then have to wait until the late summer of 1963, when Stan dropped on us, in quick succession: The Strange Tales Annual 2 (Sep 1963, on sale June), featuring the first Human Torch / Spider-Man teamup; the Fantastic Four Annual 1 (Sep 1963, on sale July); then two more team books - The Avengers 1 (on sale July), matching The Hulk (whose book had recently been cancelled), Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp and the newly-hatched Iron Man - and The X-Men 1 (on sale June) which featured an entirely new group of heroes, termed "mutants". (Daredevil 1 was also supposed to be part of that Sept 1963 drop, but Bill Everett's inability to deliver the artwork pushed the publication date back to April 1964, on sale February.)

The cascade of super-characters continued into 1963, with Stan adding Iron Man, teaming up his anthology book heroes in The Avengers and unleashing a different kind of hero book, The X-Men. (Lurking in there somewhere is Doctor Strange's first appearance in Strange Tales 110 (Jul 1963, on sale April).

Stan has told the story many times and in many slightly different versions how The X-Men came to be created. In his biography Excelsior, Stan mused, "Why couldn't I create a group of teenagers who had simply mutated and therefore gained some varied and extraordinary powers? No further explanation was needed and I could introduce as many as I wanted because Nature never set a limit on such things. The title would be simplicity itself. I'd call our new group, The Mutants. Martin liked the concept but hated the title. He said our readers wouldn't know what a mutant was. I wasn't prepared to hassle with him over a title selection, so I tried to dream up another name. And then it hit me. They were heroes with extra powers. I had even named their adult mentor Professor Xavier. So why not call them The X-Men? This time Martin okayed the title although I never understood his logic. If our readers wouldn't know what a mutant was how would they know what an X-Man was?"

In the notorious Comic Journal 134 interview in 1990, Jack disputed that Stan created anything and made a curious claim. "Stan didn’t know what a mutation was. I was studying that kind of stuff all the time. I would spot it in the newspapers and science magazines."

I'm going to call Jack out there, because in a recent entry in this blog, where I was looking at alleged "prototypes" for later Silver Age Marvel characters in the pre-hero Marvel books, I covered a couple of examples of super-human mutants in old Lee-scripted fantasy tales.

I won't rehash that in detail here, but you can go back and take a look at the entry for Amazing Adult Fantasy 14 (Jul 1962), where Lee and Ditko serve up a story in which a young lad discovers he's a mutant and is forced into hiding because of other humans' instant and irrational hatred of his mutant nature.

And there's the Carl Wessler/Jack Kirby story in Strange Tales 69 (June 1959), where a bald, wheelchair-bound man, Vermeer, insists on chartering a ship to explore a certain part of the ocean. The story is credited by some as a prototype for Professor X, but I don't think Lee or Kirby took anything other than Vermeer's superficial appearance for the X-Men character.

Then there's a Lee-plotted, Larry Leiber-scripted story, drawn by Joe Sinnott, in Tales of Suspense 6 (Nov 1959), "The Mutants and Me", in which a sceptical man scoffs at the idea of superhuman mutants until he discovers he himself is one.

So, no, Jack. I think Stan knew full well what a mutant is.

WHAT LIES BENEATH

Though The X-Men didn't start off as a metaphor for the racial intolerance that persisted in some parts of the United States during the opening years of the 1960s, the seeds for that were in-built from issue one.

I've seen other sources claiming that the idea of human prejudice against mutants didn't show up in the comic until issue 8, but as you can see ... not true.

After Professor X has introduced all the team members to each other (and to us) he gives a little information about his own background. We're told that the professor had experienced the distrust of humans earlier in his life, and for that reason he believes that keeping mutants' existence a secret is the safest way to go, at least for the moment. So human prejudice is mentioned right there in the first issue, even though we haven't seen it happen yet. That would change.

Great idea, Magneto ... you should definitely set yourself up as the leader of a master race that will overwhelm and rule over all other races on Earth. That's bound to end well.

So that's the good mutants. But of course ... there has to be bad mutants, doesn't there? And here comes one now, the shape of Magneto, a character driven by his resentment of the emnity he and his fellow "Homo Superior" experienced from regular humans, "Homo Sapiens". And again, that concept of "them and us" is right there in the first issue of X-Men.

There has been speculation from various quarters that Charles Xavier was inspired by Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, while Magneto's darker approach to the issues facing mutants was more in line with Menachem Begin. Later in the 1960s, others compared Xavier to Martin Luther King and Magneto to Malcolm X. But neither of these theories particularly convinces me.

Throughout his presidency, Roosevelt avoided being pictured in a wheelchair, and the media of the period were happy to go along with that.

My theory is that Xavier was more likely inspired by Franklin Roosevelt, who served an unprecedented four terms as President of the United States from 1932 to 1945 ... from a wheelchair. Roosevelt was president when both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby served in the US Army during the Second World War and so, in their minds, would have been the principal opposer of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Magneto's helmet wasn't originally conceived as protection against mental attacks, and you can see here that it didn't shield him terribly well against Xavier's psychic onslaught in X-Men 1.

This would naturally cast Magneto in the Hitler role - not too much of stretch when you consider all his talk of Homo Superior (mutants) being destined to dominate Homo Sapiens.

But it wasn't just some sort of political nostalgia that underpinned the fundamental premise of Stan and Jack's new X-Men comic.

CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING

Given the era in which Stan Lee was co-creating and scripting the first wave of Marvel superheroes since the 1940s, it was inevitable that the liberal-leaning Lee would incorporate the injustices of the real world into the comic book characters he presided over during those formative year of the early 1960s.

Right: Rosa Parks, circa 1955. Centre: The Greenboro Four at that same Woolworth's lunch counter in Greenboro, North Carolina, Feb 1960. Right: Martin Luther King gives his historic "I have a dream" speech at the nation's capital in 1963.

Lee couldn't have failed to notice the growing civil rights movement that had begun in the mid-1950s with Rosa Parks' refusal to sit at the back of the bus with the other black folks - which resulted in a boycott that left the Montgomery, Alabama transit system crippled - to the extra-ordinary bravery of the four black college students who sat at a segregated lunch counter in a Woolworth store, and the march on Washington in August 1963, culminating in Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech.

It's also important to note that both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came from jewish backgrounds and while Stan never publicly mentioned his jewish heritage nor experiencing any prejudice in his life, Jack Kirby did say of his youth in his Comics Journal interview (134, Feb 1990), there was "a lot of [anti-Semitism]. They were confrontational days when people of different backgrounds had to live together. And it hasn’t changed. There’s anti-Semitism today."

AAANND ... BACK TO THE PLOT

The X-Men 1 suffers the same flaws that many first issues do. The creative team have to establish the main characters and the world they inhabit first ... and that invariably gets in the way of the action. Pretty much the first half of the book is taken up with introductions and scene-setting. It's not until page 12 that the story gets under way with villain Magneto (it really is Mag-neet-oh, not Mag-nett-oh), trying to take over a US Army missile base, quite topical for a story published just a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

All thing's considered, the structure of the plot does mean that we get 11 pages of non-stop action in the back half of the book, without the good guys (or the bad guy) pausing every other panel to explain what they're doing and how their powers work.

With the Army helpless before Magneto's extraordinary magnetic powers, The X-Men show up and take on the terrorist/aggressor, using their unique abilities and teamwork to drive him off ... at least for the present.

It's not often that a first issue establishes the hero's / heroes' principle nemesis. I'm hard-pressed to think of another Marvel Silver Age debut where the antagonist was every bit as defining at the protagonist. Magneto would go on to be almost as important as Professor Xavier in X-Men canon and, post-SilverAge, even be retro-conned as a more noble, if morally ambiguous, figure.

Yes, he's an alien not a mutant, but The Metal Master makes for a more convincing prototype for Magneto than anything else in Marvel Comics around the same time period.

Another thing I remembered as I'm typing these words. There had been another metal-manipulating super-villain just months before X-Men 1 in another Marvel Comic. In his final, non-Kirby, issue The Incredible Hulk had battled an alien menace who could manipulate the molecules of any metal object. In his page-long explanation of his power, the Metal Master very clearly says that he can control the molecules of metals so that they change shape at his command. Which he does ... a bit. But being able to control the molecules doesn't explain how he can levitate and fling lumps of metal at The Hulk. 

... and here's Magneto actually hurling lumps of metal at the X-Men. He doesn't do it much in this first appearance, but he does do it.

That ability is much more like Magneto's powers ... just a case, I think, of Stan re-using an idea from six months earlier under the pressure of impending deadlines.

The first eight issues of The X-Men would ring-fence the stories in a hidden mutant world where all their battles would be against other mutants, meaning it would be over a year before the team branched out and began to tackle non-mutant menaces. And the main characters would evolve quite a bit over those few issues.

The villain in X-Men 2 was another mutant. The Vanisher didn't seem quite as terrifying as Magneto, as his power was more defensive than aggressive and so was, in the end, a bit forgettable.

The second issue (Nov 1963) went on sale on 3 September, exactly two calendar months after X-Men 1. I'm really not sure what Stan and Jack's intention was with The Vanisher's costume. It looks decidedly reptilian, with a collar that looks like it was inspired by a frilled lizard and a scaley pattern on the fabric. The back of the collar has a diamond motif, like a diamondback snake, and then there's the squiggly snake motif running from the neckline to the waistline. But I don't understand what the reptile motif has to do with vanishing.

Does anybody want to offer a theory as to why The Vanisher's costume looks like a cross between a snake and a lizard? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It seems pointless to speculate, except to note that the Thor villain The Human Cobra debuted the same month in Journey into Mystery 98, so maybe Stan thought two reptile villains in the same month was one too many and changed the intention in the scripting.

I think the would-be henchmen haven't thought this through, properly. The Vanisher can save himself from capture by, well, vanishing. But how do they expect he's going to save them? Don't they just get left behind to face the music?

Another thing that doesn't make a great deal of sense about The Vanisher ... after his exploits are reported in the newspapers, the scum of the underworld flock to join him as his henchmen. No mention is made of how the criminals find The Vanisher's lair ... unless the newspapers reported the location of that, too.

Wuxtree, wutree ... read all about it. Super-secret X-Men defeated by Vanisher. Star Bulletin reveals location of secret lair.

And my final gripe about the storytelling here is that I'm pretty sure Professor X made a big thing about keeping the existence of the X-Men a secret in the previous issue. Yet by issue 2, their exploits are being reported in the papers and the general public are bemoaning the fact that even the X-Men can't save them from The Vanisher.

Of course, it was early days for the title, and it's plain that Stan and Jack were winging it, and trying to nail down the concept as they went along, so it's inevitable that some contradictions would creep in.

In the end, it's Professor X who defeats The Vanisher by telepathically wiping his memory so he has no idea of who he is or how to teleport away to safety, leaving the X-Men to mop up the mob of wannabe henchmen.

That's right, Hank. How could anyone ever figure out that Charles Xavier is the leader of the X-Men?

And, with menace of the Vanisher squared away, it just remains for the X-Men and their leader to return to their Westchester home to await the next mutant menace to threaten the world.

Reprints are generally less highly-prized than the originals, but Fantastic was an essential purchase for me, as the original Marvel Comics were very hard to come by in the area of London where I was brought up.

Though I think this is the weakest of the first few issues of The X-Men, for some reason it stuck with me over the years. And though I'd bought the British reprint comic Fantastic from the first issue, it is issue 3, with its reprint of the Vanisher story, that seems the most familiar to me.

Fred Dukes is what used to be referred to as a "circus freak" ... an unusual human who earned a living being gawped at by the "rubes". Think Elephant Man (1980). But Dukes is no ordinary carnival performer. He's a mutant ... and a fairly unpleasant one at that.

The X-Men 3 (Jan 1964) was on sale for 5 November 1963, and featured another mutant foe, but this one was not the typical costumed baddie. 

Danny Fingeroth, author of Stan Lee: A Marvellous Life, mentions a news item from the letters page of Fantastic Four 23 (Feb 1964) - this was before there were Bullpen Bulletins - "We needed a name for the villain in X-Men 3 and Stan and Jack were kicking a few around when a boy delivering sandwiches walked in and jokingly said, 'He looks like a big blob. Call him The Blob' ... Stan and Jack looked at each other sand said, 'Why not?'"

Whether it's true or not (unlikely that Stan and Jack were in the office at the same time, or that a delivery boy would be able to walk into Stan's office and overhear the conversation - wouldn't Flo Steinberg have taken any sandwiches in to Stan and Jack?), its a better story than the the more likely explanation that Stan just lifted the name from the sci-fiction movie of the same name. Stan's cover line even quotes the theme song of The Blob (1958), for goodness sake.

The theme song from the 1958 science fiction monster movie was a minor hit in the singles charts that same year. And a catchy little ditty it is, too.

Fred Dukes, a sideshow performer known as "The Blob", is detected by Professor Xavier's psychic abilities and the X-Men are despatched to find him and bring him to the Westchester mansion, where he'll be invited to join the team. But things don't go to plan as Dukes' boorish behaviour ruffles the feathers of Prof X's students and the meeting deteriorates into a brawl, ending with The Blob escaping into the sewage tunnels.

Ten pages of Kirby action has the X-Men struggle to hold their own against The Blob and his circus henchmen, eventually turning the tables by following Professor X's tactical advice.

With Dukes on his way back to the carnival, the Professor has to find a way to bring him physically close enough that his memory can be wiped. To further complicate matters, Dukes is sure to tell his fellow performers about the X-Men's headquarters, and the Professor cannot allow that. So while The X-Men keep Dukes and his carnival gang busy in an epic ten-page battle, Xavier rushes to finish a device that will enable him to wipe not just Dukes' memory but all the carny folk's, as well.

When we first meet Hank McCoy, he seems to be just another variation on the early Hulk/Thing prototype, with the tone of voice of a truck driver.

As might be expected, there are some changes in tone in The X-Men 3, when compared to the preceding issues. The first is there's a noticeable transformation in Henry McCoy's personality. In the first issue, he's a bit of a bruiser, fitting his assigned code-name, The Beast.

Just two issues later, Hank's starting to sound like the scientist character he would eventually morph into, as Stan began to find a characterisation for him.

But by issue 3, he's starting to talk a bit like William "Johnny" Littlejohn, from the Doc Savage pulps, using more sophisticated phrasing, like the educated man that he is.

In issue 1 of The X-Men, it was the heroes who behaved like insensitive clods. Just four months later, that sort of thing was left to the bad guys.

And in issue 1, while it was Hank behaving like an self-unaware oaf towards Jean Grey, in X-Men 3 it was the villain behaving in that manner. So, my guess is that Stan wanted to move Hank away from being just another Ben (The Thing) Grimm type and contrast his personality with the "Beast" label.

I had always presumed Xavier was supposed to be about 40. Jean grey is 17 or 18, here? But despite the age difference, he's her teacher. Even as a kid, I thought that was a bit off.

Another noticeable development in X-Men 3 was the start of Charles Xavier's slightly creepy infatuation with Jean Grey. It goes on for a little while, but then Stan - quite rightly - later abandons the idea. Maybe it was just a sign of the times, but it doesn't play very well today. Fortunately, Xavier's attraction to Jean wasn't mentioned again directly and by X-Men 11, Stan had shifted the focus to Scott's unrequited romantic feelings for Jean.

The next issue would see the return of an old enemy (not that there's many to choose from at this stage), and the introduction of some new characters who would become key to Marvel Comics canon. But that can wait till next time, as I feel I may have already outstayed my welcome for this particular edition.

Next: Mutants ... hordes of them