X-Men - 1963 and all that: Part 2

AS THE FOURTH ISSUE OF THE X-MEN HIT THE NEWSSTANDS, there was quite a shift in Stan and Jack's approach to the way the title would evolve.

Magneto's back ... and he now has friends to help him: Toad, Mastermind, Quicksilver and the Green(-ish) Witch. One of my favourite Marvel covers of the period, despite the colouring glitch.

The X-Men 4 (Mar 1964, on sale 3 Jan 1964) introduced us the The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, a kind of reverse version of the X-Men, led by defining arch-nemesis Magneto. This would have been the first - though certainly not the last - "mirror image" team of baddies in Stan and Jack's oeuvre. The Avengers wouldn't meet their evil counterparts for another four months, and the Fantastic Four would have to wait until their March 1965 issue to meet The Frightful Four.

Stan and Jack make a strong point by literally comparing the two groups side-by-side and leaving it to the readers to decide which bunch of people they'd rather hang out with.

The thing I'll take issue with here is Stan calling them the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants". It was established back in issue 1 that Magneto doesn't consider himself evil ... in his own way he's trying to protect mutantkind from the humans. We might not agree with his methods, but even at this early point, there could be an argument that Magneto is not evil, per se. And to be fair, nowhere does Magneto nor any of his confederates refer to themselves as "evil". Only Prof X uses that word to describe them (and Stan a couple of times in caption boxes). They are kind of unpleasant, though.

Both Mastermind and The Toad are pretty loathsome specimens, governed by their own self interests, tempered with a healthy dose of fear. Quicksilver only seems to be there to protect his sister. We'll find out shortly what keeps the Scarlet Witch with the group.

Stan and Jack give us a bit more info about Magneto's little playgroup before we get to move on to the meat of the story. The fault lines within Magneto's group are swiftly drawn, where we very quickly grasp that loyalty is a rare commodity. Each seems only out for himself, though they follow Magneto's lead reluctantly. Only siblings Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch have each other's backs.

I particularly like the colouring choices here. Quicksilver, despite his name, is coloured green for "Go", and Scarlet Witch is coloured red for "Danger", or even "Stop", because her powers do seem to stop stuff happening. And colouring the slightly lacklustre Toad and Mastermind in subdued tones of brown kind of fits with their bland personas.

The cover glitch was explained by Stan on the X-Men 7 letters page by claiming, "sometimes we change a costume's color on the cover to balance the design a bit." Or you could just own up to the error on Stan G's part, Stan.

This is pretty important stuff (though it only gets four panels), as we find out why two relatively decent people have aligned themselves with Magneto's megalomanic plans. And of course it foreshadows the big changes in store for The Avengers a couple of years later.

Once we have the background details of Magneto's group out of the way, we can get on with the masterplan to take control of a small South American nation to use as a base of operations against Home Sapiens.

Between Magneto's armed freighter and Mastermind's illusionary army, the Bad Mutants seize control of the South American republic of Santo Marco, though no convincing reason is given for what they need their own country for. 

Quite why ol' Maggie wants to take over a small country isn't really made clear. "... As a test of our power!" is the only reason on offer, but there's no thought given to what happens next. Do they just hang out on the beach? Build a luxury hotel and casino to attract rich customers and make loads of money? Or perhaps the country occupies a vital strategic location?

With that accomplished, Magneto doesn't seem to have much to do except to wait for The X-Men to show up. Which, of course, they do. But here's where I start to have a problem with the storytelling. At the time I first read this story I was about eleven years old, so I didn't spot the one glaring error with the plotting.

If Kirby was indeed plotting even these early issues of The X-Men, then this was definitely something Lee couldn't have fixed in the dialogue. Individually, their powers are no match of Magneto's ... so why try to tackle him that way?

Over the intervening years, Jack Kirby made much of the claim that he did all the plotting, but if I were Jack, I wouldn't have been in too much of a hurry to claim this one. Because after establishing the idea that The X-Men train hard to blend their individual skills into one unbeatable team, how do they plan to attack Magneto's stronghold? Why, by approaching singly and from different directions.

The opening forays of the final battle inside Magneto's fortress are action-packed, to be sure, but it does all seem a bit random, with too much tactics and not enough strategy.

Needless to say, that poorly thought-out plan doesn't work out so well, with two of the five X-Men unconscious at the hands of the Meany Mutants. Fortunately, they manage to meet up inside the stronghold and come up with a better idea - attack as a team.

Stan's early take on the characters isn't quite defined yet. Here, Prof X "senses" that the wall of flame is an illusion ... but this isn't in keeping with what I imagine telepathic powers to be - the reading of human minds. A better take might have been, "Mastermind's illusions have no effect on my mind."

Once they figure that out, the X-Men manage to get off the back foot and barring one minor glitch where they don't recognise an advancing wall of flame as an illusion cast by, you know, Magneto's illusion-casting henchman, they start to gain the upper hand.

The final twist is that the earlier, minor explosion has apparently robbed Professor Xavier of his mental powers, but I'm not convinced that will be a permanent situation.

The final stages of the battle end with Magneto and his henchpersons fleeing the scene, but not before setting a couple of boobytraps designed to blow Xavier and his X-Men (and presumably the innocent citizens of Santo Marco) from the face of the map. The plan is only thwarted when Quicksilver, unable to stomach the thought of cold-blooded murder, defuses the bomb before himself escaping with Magneto and the others. But they would be back.

Even though The Scarlet Witch is fairly well-established by this time, Sam Goldberg is still colouring her green on the cover of The X-Men 5, which is odd, because wouldn't he also be the one colouring her costume red for the interior art? Note the change of art in the Marvel corner box.

We only had to wait two months for the return of Magneto and his nasty whatchamacallems, in The X-Men 5 (May 1964, on sale 3 Mar). More a continuation of the story from X-Men 4 than a sequel, this time the Evil Ones manage to capture The Angel to force him to reveal the location of their HQ.

The unexpected arrival of Jean Gray's parents at the mansion sparks a frantic cover-up, in which Stan and Jack get to explain the team's powers for the benefit of any late-comers.

Still dealing with the loss of Prof X's mental abilities, the X-Men face a minor emergency when Jean Grey's parents make an unexpected visit to the Academy. Then, Magneto baits a traps by luring the X-Men to a meeting with a newly-discovered athletic mutant. A battle ensues, but Magneto makes off to his orbiting satellite with the captured Angel, leaving the "bait" mutant - in reality, The Toad - in the hands of the X-Men. The dazed Toad is able to summon a magna-ship to return him to Magneto's sky island, and the X-Men hitch a ride, setting the scene for the final battle, high above the Earth.

Some examples of the new-look Hank McCoy from X-Men 5 ... you might be forgiven for wondering who that is breathing down the neck of the mystery mutant. It's The Beast. Jack just drew him wearing gauntlets.

There are some notable evolutionary changes in this issue. First, the transformation of The Beast continues, as he is depicted as even more of a scholar than previously.

"Big Words" from an unknown episode of Simon and Kirby's Newsboy Legion feature, which ran in Star-Spangled Comics 7 (Apr 1942) to 64 (Jan 1947).

It's hard to know who to attribute this change to. Jack (or possibly Stan) added pair of spectacles to Hank McCoy's civilian appearance in X-Men 4, though it was just in a couple of panels, so you may have missed it. There was a character in Simon and Kirby's Newsboy Legion, nick-named "Big Words", because he used - you know - big words. He wore spectacles, too. So it might have been Jack re-using an old idea, as he often would. Or it may have been Stan's continuing efforts to make The X-Men's Beast different from the Fantastic Four's Thing.

I suppose if you're ten years old, then this is a bit of a surprise twist. But reading this decades later, it seems like a bit of an unnecessary and cruel prank to play on a group of youngsters.

The issue closes with the revelation that Prof X never really lost his powers, he just pretended to so he could judge how well the team had absorbed their training to be able to function as an independent unit without his direction. Effectively, the second part of a two issue story.

Though this issue headlines Prince Namor, if you look really closely you can see Magneto and his screaming whatnots lurking in the background. I see the Marvel corner box illustration has gone back to the original version.

X-Men 6 (July 1964, on sale 5 May 1964) took us off in a slightly different direction - though I'd question the rationale behind the story, other than shoehorning a big ticket villain into a fledgling Marvel title.

The first four pages act as a reminder of who the main players in this series are, contrasting Professor X and his group against the far more unpleasant social structure of Magneto's band. While this is unfolding, both Xavier and Magneto are both pondering that The Sub-Mariner may be a mutant and that they should recruit him to their respective causes. What are the odds, eh?

We all know that Professor X has astounding mental powers ... but since when was Magneto able to duplicate Xavier's psychic feats?

Professor X is able to detach his astral self from his physical body and go searching for Namor - but weirdly, Magneto does exactly the same thing. I don't recall later Magneto being able to do this kind of thing, so I'll put this down to (most probably Jack) just adding and subtracting abilities as the plot required.

The Scarlet Witch as property? An unfortunate sign of the times is that Magneto figured he could secure Namor's allegiance by using Wanda in a honey-trap. Over the next couple of years, Marvel would become a little more sensitive to the kind of crap women were putting up with in the real world.

It's not long before Namor, intrigued by the idea he might be a mutant and by Magneto's offer of an alliance, arrives at the obscure island HQ of the evil mutants for what appears to be a job interview. But before we can figure out who's interviewing who, The X-Men show up and it's a three-way free-for-all - with Namor very much on his own side.

Magneto's efforts to defeat The X-Men quickly descend into chaos once again, and the Meanie Mutant is forced to flee the scene, leaving his reluctant allies - Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Namor - behind.

Predictably, The Sub-Mariner decides that all humans are idiots, even mutants, and paddles off back to Atlantis. Magneto and his syncopating sycophants row off into the sunset, leaving Professor X's merry band marooned on Magnetic Island, at least until next issue. We never do find out exactly how they were able to escape the island.

It's an okay-ish issue, bit it still feels a bit directionless. As though Stan still hasn't really got a handle on this and is leaving Jack to deal with the plot details - which I don't think he was doing very successfully. Arbitrarily giving Magneto mental abilities comparable to Professor X just seems like lazy plotting. And this is the third appearance of the Evil Mutants and nothing is moving on in that dynamic. Why are Wanda and Pietro still hanging around with this loser, given how downright rude he is?

On the plus side, the art is quite a bit better. I much prefer Chic Stone's polished finishes over the scratchy style of Paul "Inky" Reinman that we got in the first five issues. Stone would stick around for the next year or so, until he got tired of inking and departed to concentrate more on his pencilling work for ACG.

Well, at least the Scarlet Witch's costume is actually scarlet this time ... and  guess what? The "new" Marvel corner box art is back again ... and it'll stick for the next three years or so.

Funnily enough, the plot of X-Men 7 (Sep 1964, on sale 2 July) is pretty much the same as the previous issue. Magneto scouts around for further recruits to his band, and chances to discover The Blob (remember him from X-Men 3?)

Once more, Stan and Jack reinforce the contrast between the two bands of mutants. On Professor X's watch, all is kindness and mutual respect. Over on Magneto's side, sexual harrassment in the workplace seems like standard operational procedure.

The first seven pages take care of the housekeeping. The X-Men graduate their college, Professor X makes Cyclops the group leader, while elsewhere Mastermind thinks he has a chance at dating the Scarlet Witch. That low-level Lothario aspect to his character would be pivotal during the Chris Claremont run on the X-Men more than a decade later.

Stan and Jack seemed obsessed with carnivals, which turn up in quite a few early Marvel Tales. Note the shout of "Hey Rube!", an old-school carnie battlecry used when local townsfolk would try to drive the carnival off with cudgels ... a signal for roustabouts to drop what they were doing and rally to defend their comrades.

Then we finally get to the meat of it, with Magneto scouting a fairground in search of The Blob. But when The Blob initially rebuffs Magneto's advances, Magneto and his malignant ban are beset by an army of roustabouts and carnie performers. In the ensuing carnage, The Blob is hurled against a carnival wagon by Magneto's magnetic power (despite the fact that people aren't magnetic). The impact jars loose Professor X's mental block, and The Blob remembers that The X-Men are his enemies. Which sets us up for the next battle, this time between Magneto's extended troupe of mutants and our heroes.

Flying torpedoes everywhere. When all else fails, Magneto launches aerial dooblebombs at the X-Men. Fortunately it's the near-indestructible Bob that takes the brunt ... leading the chubby mutant to realise that everyone is just using him for their own ends.

At first, Magneto stands back and uses The Blob as his first line of defence. Even though the combined efforts of Angel, The Beast and Marvel Girl fail to subdue The Blob, Magneto launches a barrage of flying torpedos into the melee (boy, Magneto really loves an explosive, doesn't he?), which the X-Men tackle each in their own unique way. It only takes the fleeting interference of Quicksilver to bring the X-Men together in a battle formation lineup for Magneto to direct his magnetically-controlled torpedoes to bear on the group. Even the fact that The Blob is also in the line of fire doesn't sway Magneto from his strategy ... but when the flying bombs explode, it's The Blob that takes the brunt.

Once again, Magneto has failed and, despite the protests of the Scarlet Witch, he orders his band into a handy Magna-car and the Evil Ones escape, leaving The Blob to take the rap.

I strongly doubt that Mjolnir could be affected by magnetism, not even Magneto's. Why didn't Magneto "test" his power against Iron Man? That would have been far more interesting. The Strange Tales story is more of a sub-plot, focussing on Pietro and Wanda wanting to split with Magneto and seeking help from the FF.

And that's the last we'd see of Magneto for quite a while. I can't say I'm sorry. I always felt that Magneto had a bigger dominance over all around him than his powers warranted. And Jack would often show him doing stuff that was impossible by magnetism alone. And though he wouldn't be back in the X-Men title for another eight months (X-Men 11, May 1965), he would make a couple of appearances in other titles - Journey into Mystery 109 (Oct 1964), where he was seriously outmatched by Thor, and a cameo in Strange Tales 128 (Jan 1965), where The Torch and the Thing battle Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch because of, you guessed it, a misunderstanding.

And that's all I have room for this time. But we'll be back soon with a look at the next few issues of the formative X-Men title, discovering more mutants, an epic battle with The Avengers and the reintroduction of a character from the very dawn of Marvel.

Next: More Mutant Mayhem