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Post by rberman on Feb 19, 2018 22:33:45 GMT -5
Back at the mansion, the new graduates plan a trip to town, but the professor (to only Scott's shock) picks Cyclops as his replacement, and shows him Cerebro. Scott takes up residence in the Prof's office, and refuses to go have fun. We also get a little angst, as he's still whining about being a mutant. Jean is sad he won't come, of course... Magneto visits the carnival, and finds the Blob. He tries to recruit him, but the carnies try to run him off before he can chat, so it's carnies vs. the Brotherhood! The brotherhood fares far better than the X-Men do (no elephant, I guess), but the Blob is still not interested.. until he attacks Magneto and gets conked on the head. He suddently remembers all about the X-Men trying to recruit him, and agrees to join Magneto.... -- Professor X tells Bobby and the others they all get a 'Prep School' diploma... what the heck is that? Is it just intentionally vague, or is it a 60s thing? -- So the X-men (with Scott, in charge, mind you) have to sign a log book to see where they've gone... even though they don't live there? Or maybe Stan forgot the commuting montages a couple issues ago? It's great that Angel has a car radio Scott can call... and good thing he was sitting in the car waiting for that call, instead of hanging in the club with his girl.. that makes sense. * A diploma from a "prep school" (a high school which specifically prepared students to go on to college) was more prestigious in an era where far fewer high school graduates went to college. * The jazz/beat club scene seems anachronistic; by early 1964 (when this issue was being written and drawn), the beats had been eclipsed by girl groups and surf rock, and then Beatlemania, hadn't it? * It seems that Lee and Kirby realized that Professor X cramps the team's style by being so much more powerful, so sending him away is a good idea. Unfortunately, we don't get any new characters, just a new permutation of existing characters: "Brotherhood plus Blob." * When Jean tries to pick up Blob, it's established that he can't be separated from the earth against his will. Yet both Magneto and Beast knock him off his feet.
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Post by rberman on Feb 19, 2018 22:58:40 GMT -5
X-Men #8 'The Uncanny Threat of Unus the Untouchable' -- Slight change to the X-Men box.. Bobby's shooting ice instead of snow..he also shifts to the more streamlined, icy look we're all used to... apparently, it was all about practice. Calling him 'Sue Storm' when Cyke mentioned you could almost see through him (which isn't true, but whatever) was a cool little shout out... but no editor's note! -- A bit of recycling with the wrestling angle... which seems to get used quite a bit in the MU... where's Crusher? Would have been a nice touch to show Unus beating him. * It was a nice change of pace to have an issue focusing on a particular X-Man. It was also weird that a guy with Hank's erudition chose to make a living as a pro wrestler, but I guess it was the path of least resistance. Apparently there was a lot of pageantry surrounding wrestling even in those days; Beast's entourage includes white guys dressed in Sikh turbans with a drum, a rifle, and cymbals, as well as a hot girl in a safari suit and another guy or two pulling him in a cage. * If people really hate mutants, then I don't understand why Unus was allowed to wrestle long enough to be crowned "unbeatable champion" when he obviously has super powers. * Do Lee and Kirby now hold that Bobby's body turns to ice rather than being merely encased in ice? That's the only way that he could "turn invisible" as depicted. * Unus' inability to touch things apparently does not extend to the floor under his feet.
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Post by rberman on Feb 19, 2018 23:47:23 GMT -5
X-Men #9 'Enter: The Avengers' -- This is one of the worst random superguy fights I've scene.... there was no reason in the world Cyclops could have just told the Avengers there was a bomb with a dead man switch, but Professor X was handling it. Instead, the Prof. insists on pointless secrecy, and we get a fight. -- It's never clear why Lucifer has a giant bomb, or, more importantly, why the X-Men just let him leave. He goes on to get defeated by less and less powerful foes (first the X-Men, then Iron Man, later Falcon), until he sits in limbo for a while.. popping up here and there. -- Most importantly, why the heck is Professor X using a gun? He used his powers on him eventually.. why didn't he start with that? There's no explanation, and it makes no sense whatsover... and he's willing to kill purely out of revenge. * Two passengers on the ship are an old couple named Samuel and Matilda. That's got to be a reference to something. *Hatred of mutants rears its head in the form of Bobby's comment that "There'd be a panic on board if folks knew the X-Men were among them!" * The Xavier plot makes so little sense it hurts. The world's greatest telepath goes physically down a deep hole, riding a motorized tread-chair whose functioning requires that the cave tunnel be at least six feet wide and smooth. And indeed the underground complex has no rough-hewn cave walls; it's all machines and maybe intricate carvings. Honestly, the whole thing (the "telepath" using a gun is the dead giveaway) makes me suspect that some of the art was repurposed from some leftover Journey into Mystery monster story, just like happened with FF#1. * Along those lines: The dialogue claims that the Kirby Device is a "Giant Thermal Bomb! Large Enough to blow up a continent!" Yet the art (pages 8-9) shows Lucifer triggering the device three panels later, and the result is a beam of energy (Lucifer calls it a "destructive ionic ray") falling from the heavens, scattering the X-Men. On pages 18-19, the dialogue says that the "bomb" beneath the Balkans is "aimed at the heart of Antartica," which is absurd. Kirby's art tells a different tale: a beam of energy striking the earth (3 o clock on the first panel of page 19), melting the ice, creating tsunamis, and sending huge icebergs to sink ships in oceans everywhere. (Just like the single iceberg established as a danger at the beginning of the issue!) This fits with the extra-terrestrial appearance of Lucifer on the cover, but he's been colored Caucasian in the interior art. I wonder what sort of alien menace Kirby originally intended him to be. I don't think Kirby ever envisioned a deadman switch connected to the villain's heart, or for the X-Men to let this world-threatening menace go free just because "We X-Men are pledged never to cause injury to a human being... no matter what the provocation!" I wonder what Kirby's intended rationale for the "villain turns away" last panel was. * In the obligatory "Everybody change into costume and then describe your powers while using them" sequence (p10), Jean is shown almost falling into a hole, which she avoids by moving a log to half cover the hole instead of just floating over it. This again suggest that she can't use her power to lift herself. * In the second panel on page 11, the colorist gave Thor flesh-colored leggings, and he looks as silly as Colossus looks in human form. Ha, ha! * Xavier seems really worried that the Avengers will kill Lucifer. Sure enough, Thor repeatedly talks about "the one we must destroy." What's up with this guy? Never mind; once Xavier telepathically talks to Thor, Thor decides just to pack up and go home before the villain is even defeated, let alone destroyed. * I love it that Wasp calls Jean a "Titian-haired tigress" in the middle of the battle. So poetic, our Janet! * Xavier's inner monologue reveals that his telepathic mind control runs a huge risk of stopping the victim's heart. He's been taking some pretty big risks with civilians in the series so far, apparently!
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Post by rberman on Feb 20, 2018 0:28:20 GMT -5
X-Men #10 'The Coming of Ka-Zar' Plot: The usual Training montage and romantic angst is interrupted by a news cast of a Sabertooth Tiger ramaging through an antarctic Expedition. The team, thinking a mutant might be involved, rush to tell Professor X about it. He's sure there's no mutant, since he didn't sense anything, but lets them go anyway since they have had any missions 'for several weeks' -- The same with the Savage Land... it's underground here (ala the Lost World), rather than a freak island. * Is it a coincidence that this South Pole adventure comes right after the Lucifer caper that Kirby apparently envisioned with a death ray aimed at Antarctica from outer space? * The TV broadcaster mentions the Telstar satellite, which was a big deal in the early 60s, even spawning a surf rock instrumental bearing its name. Note that Professor X has a black and white TV. Color broadcasts had begun in the mid-50s, but adoption was slow, and ten years later some programming was still in B&W. * Some color weirdness again. Warren has Bobby's brown hair at the end of page 2, and Scott has reddish hair throughout page 3. * Warren's main job continues to be drawing fire from enemies, in this case pterodactyls. What fun! * Lee's dialogue describes the group going deep underground, but Kirby's art is more consistent with a tunnel to a mountain-ringed valley. Page 7 depicts blue skies with clouds, and ground covered in lush jungle vegetation. Similarly, Lee claims the X-Men are attacked by "primitive warriors," but Kirby draws soldiers in safari vests with pockets, wearing boots with treads, riding Chocobos (or something like that) on page 8. The "Swamp Men" do look substantially more primitive when we see them again on pages 13-14, though. One of the natives is dressed as a giant lizard, presaging the coming sacrifice of Jean and Warren to a T. Rex that lives in a truncated pyramid.
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 20, 2018 14:23:33 GMT -5
* The jazz/beat club scene seems anachronistic; by early 1964 (when this issue was being written and drawn), the beats had been eclipsed by girl groups and surf rock, and then Beatlemania, hadn't it? In early 1964, Beatlemania was brand new and seemed like just the latest teen fad, while the "beatnik" image had been around long enough to be familiar to everyone (see: Krebs, Maynard G.)
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 20, 2018 22:16:36 GMT -5
* A diploma from a "prep school" (a high school which specifically prepared students to go on to college) was more prestigious in an era where far fewer high school graduates went to college. * The jazz/beat club scene seems anachronistic; by early 1964 (when this issue was being written and drawn), the beats had been eclipsed by girl groups and surf rock, and then Beatlemania, hadn't it? * It seems that Lee and Kirby realized that Professor X cramps the team's style by being so much more powerful, so sending him away is a good idea. Unfortunately, we don't get any new characters, just a new permutation of existing characters: "Brotherhood plus Blob." * When Jean tries to pick up Blob, it's established that he can't be separated from the earth against his will. Yet both Magneto and Beast knock him off his feet. Yeah, the Beatles did arrive in 1964, but I'm sure there was still jazz clubs.. the early Beatles had mostly female fans, I think. I think the Professor just has to be used right.. he can be a Deus ex Machine at times, and others he can be a creepy old man. When he's a teacher and role model, he's pretty good. I kinda thought the Blob was just trash talking, not describing his powers, but maybe. * If people really hate mutants, then I don't understand why Unus was allowed to wrestle long enough to be crowned "unbeatable champion" when he obviously has super powers. * Do Lee and Kirby now hold that Bobby's body turns to ice rather than being merely encased in ice? That's the only way that he could "turn invisible" as depicted. * Unus' inability to touch things apparently does not extend to the floor under his feet. From what I've seen/read of 60s wrestling.. they were just starting to do some of that sort of pagentry, so I think Beast's into made sense. I think Unus' powers were probably assumed to be 'kayfabe' by fans, rather than a mutant power. I love your art insights... I bet you nailed it on the Lucifer story being reworked art from an old monster story.. that makes alot more sense that what we got! Maybe Stan figured we wouldn't notice if he tossed the Avengers in.
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Post by rberman on Feb 20, 2018 23:13:03 GMT -5
I kinda thought the Blob was just trash talking, not describing his powers, but maybe. There's actually a panel where Jean tries to pick up the Blob, and he sorta rises a little bit, but the earth sticks to his feet and pulls him back down.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 0:15:42 GMT -5
'The Triumph of Magneto' X-Men #11 Historic Significance: B+ (1st Stranger, last Original Brotherhood) * I'm more than a little glad to see the Brotherhood departing the stage, and also surprised they left so definitively. "Kidnapped by omnipotent alien" is kinda hard to recover from! * How was Cerebro able to detect the Stranger, if he's an alien, not a mutant? * I like the Stranger better in his Colonel Sanders civvies than in the preposterous orange and greek Kirby Kilt (really, a wrestling suit with a long loincloth) in which we more commonly see him later. He's also sort of a dry run for the Beyonder, coming to earth to get baffled by our customs and screw with our heroes and villains.
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 21, 2018 8:11:06 GMT -5
'The Triumph of Magneto' X-Men #11 Historic Significance: B+ (1st Stranger, last Original Brotherhood) * I'm more than a little glad to see the Brotherhood departing the stage, and also surprised they left so definitively. "Kidnapped by omnipotent alien" is kinda hard to recover from! * How was Cerebro able to detect the Stranger, if he's an alien, not a mutant? * I like the Stranger better in his Colonel Sanders civvies than in the preposterous orange and greek Kirby Kilt (really, a wrestling suit with a long loincloth) in which we more commonly see him later. He's also sort of a dry run for the Beyonder, coming to earth to get baffled by our customs and screw with our heroes and villains. That "Kirby Kilt" is actually a "Kane Kilt." It was designed by Gil Kane and first appeared in Tales to Astonish #91's "Hulk" episode. Cei-U! I summon the fashion tip!
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 21, 2018 8:45:15 GMT -5
.. and Cebrebro last issues was used like the little men in black memory wipe thing. But if you go back a bit, it actually had specific lights for each known mutant as if it was a GPS or something... really it just depends on the plot... I think we're a ways off from it being the super mutant tracker that needs a telepath to run it that we get later.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 10:06:14 GMT -5
X-Men #12 'The Origin of Professor X' Plot: Cerebro is going crazy, and the X-Men quickly go outside and build some defenses. When the finish, the Professors tells a the story of his youth... how his father died in a atomic test, and his mother married his co-worker Dr. Marko. We meet his bully step brother, Cain, who causing the accident that cost Xavier his new step father, then later a car crash that I suspect was supposed to be the reason he lost his legs, until someone remembered they already blamed Lucifer for that. Finally, we see the temple in Korea where that brother found the Gem of Cytorrak, which turned him into the unstoppable Juggernaut attacking the mansion. The man himself bursts into the mansion as the Prof. concludes his story... to be continued! Story: B+ History: A (origin of Prof. X, 1st Juggernaut) * The story is entitled "The Origin of Professor X!" but that's actually a very short tale. "My parents were subjected to nuclear radiation before I was born, and so I developed mental powers as I got older. The end." The more interesting part is the origin of the Juggernaut, and his fractious relationship with his younger step-brother Xavier. * I can surmise that maybe Cain wasn't wearing the Cytorrak jewel at first, and then he put his helmet on, which is why Cerebro started screaming so loudly all of a sudden. * This is a more ambitious storytelling structure than we've seen before in X-Men. There's a frame story about Cain easily overcoming the stacked defenses of the mansion, intercut with Xavier's flashback to his own (and Cain's) origins. Lee and Kirby manage to stretch the big reveal out until the very last panel, when we finally get to see what Juggernaut looks like, and we get a real cliffhanger ending for the first time. * Xavier's dad must have been born into money. Xavier actually benefits when Cain starts an accidental fire that kills Dr. Marko. Did Xavier's mom remarry again? As a rich kid with some college training, I would have expected Xavier to be an officer in the Korean War, not the field grunts he appears to be. Cain however has been kicked out of school. * It's weird to think that Xavier was not only a mega-brain inventor but also a track star and the quarterback of the football team. Quite the Silver Age Mary Sue he is! * The flashback to "Cain drives Xavier off a cliff" is an odd aside. In Lee's dialogue, it was just another example of Cain being a callous jerk. I wonder whether Kirby had intended that accident to be the episode that cost Xavier his legs, but Lee had already written in a previous issue that Lucifer was somehow responsible for Xavier's paralysis, an important moment that appears only in dialogue and thus may have bee another "Lee vs Kirby" moment.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 10:34:41 GMT -5
X-Men #13 'Where Walks the Juggernaut' Plot: Picking up RIGHT after last issue, the Juggernaut has scattered the X-Men, and the Professor is ready to make a stand.. he does his thing he does... and it doesn't work. Jean and Scott quickly spring into action, with Jean picking Jugs up long enough for Scott to did a really deep hole to drop him in. The Professor runs off to his lab to build a Mento Helmet to amplify his power, and and the rest of the team (except for Jean, who he keeps hanging out with him for no particular reason) to keep Juggernaut busy. They do so in shifts, not really hurting him, but keeping him busy... with Beast even activating the Danger Room to slow him down. The professor tests his gizmo, and sends out a mental wave all throughout NY, which contacts Daredevil (whose too busy in court) and Human Torch (who thinks it's a trick). The Professor realizes that he could use the help, and stops to call the Torch again, who comes by to lend a hand. After the Mento Helmet is done maximizing the Professor's power, he has the Torch blind Juggernaut, then Angel take his helmet (after Beast 'loosened' it), and then is able to mind zap him for the win. Ever concerned with his secret identity as a weird old guy who teaches in a mutant school, and NOT a mutant at all, he mind wipes the Torch before he goes (such gratitude). Finally, we're treated to a scene with the boys all in the infirmary with Nurse Jean helping them out... the end! Rating: 5/5 - I bit nonsensical in parts, but still awesome story telling * I definitely get a "Lee vs Kirby" vibe from some moments in the story. Just from the art: on page 3, Xavier's mental blast is not strong enough to stop Juggernaut, who (if we believe Lee's dialogue) is protected by a "psionic helmet" he got from Cyttorak in addition to the jewel. Jean then wheels Xavier to the lab, where (p.4) he builds a helmet and uses it to send a mental signal across the New York skyline. Where was the signal going? On page 7, we see some teens huddled around a fancy radio receiver. We then get one panel of Matt Murdock in a courtroom, then we're back with Xavier, talking into the microphone on the side of his helmet. The implication is that he's communicating with the radio kids (and maybe somehow with Murdock?), who are no help. Then (page 9) he speaks into Johnny Storm's head, but Johnny blocks him out. Xavier pounds the desk in frustration. Xavier reaches out to Johnny Storm again (p15), who is now driving a more normal-looking car than the futuristic one he was hopping into previously. Xavier takes off his helmet. Torch arrives and makes a bright light that blinds Juggernaut for maybe five seconds. (This is Torch's only contribution to the battle. Disappointing!) Angel rips off Cain's helmet, and Xavier fells Cain with a psi-blast right in the kisser. How does Lee interpret these scenes? He first claims (p.4) that helmet is charging up Xavier's brain so that he'll have enough mental energy to defeat Cain. But the very next panel has Xavier saying, "My mental power is already so highly charged, that I must unleash some energy... I'll send mental waves out over the heart of the city... releasing them will act like a safety valve to me!" Yet Xavier keeps wearing his helmet long after he's allegedly over-charged his brain with energy from it. This is nonsense. Clearly Kirby envisioned the helmet simply as allowing Xavier to broadcast mental messages as radio waves to call for help. That's why it has a microphone on the side, and a window on the forehead that shows electrical waves pulsing up and down, and antennae on the earpieces. That's why Xavier sends his signal "out over the heart of the city" where all the heroes live. In the end, the helmet makes no difference in powering Xavier up; all that's needed is for Angel to steal Cain's protective helmet, and then Xavier can use his usual mental power to switch Cain's brain off. * Given the way that Torch's car changes without explanation, I wonder whether some of these panels were lifted from some other story, or whether this was an example of Lee forcing Kirby to redraw pages without having the original pages around to reference. * Is this the first appearance of the word "psionic" in X-Men? It apparently dates from 1952 in popular culture as a portmanteau of "psychology" and "electronics." Some people claimed they could use the power of their minds to influence eletronic devices. * I really enjoy the world-building of these early Marvel comics. All the characters appear in each other's stories all the time, even if it's just a one-panel cameo like Murdock here. This reinforces the shared world very nicely.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 11:59:18 GMT -5
X-Men#14 'Among us Stalk...Sentinels' Lee/Kirby/Gavin(Roth)/Coletta Plot: The team is recovering from the battle with Juggernaut, when the Professor announce they all deserve a vacation. He stays behind, of course. The newspaper comes, and we get an editorial on 'the mutant menace'. The Professor is furious, and challenges the writer (Dr. Trask) immediately to a televised debate... which, of course, is immediately accepted. Trask shows the world his Sentinels, which are completely under his control and will save the world from mutants. They, of course, immediately go rogue. Professor X immediately works to save everyone on the sly and called the X-Men mentally. The Sentinels kidnap Trask and leave. One stays behind to fight the X-Men, and keels over, as if from a heart attack, which is kinda baffling. Professor X reads it's mind to find their hide out.. and they arrive to find some well hidden automatic defenses... to be continued! -- More power weirdness. Xavier is far LESS powerful than usual.. seems like he could have in the past just knocked out the studio audience, here he's struggling to keep them calm. Cyclops is totally worn out with one optic blast. OTOH, Jean nabs Warren from mid air and pins him to the roof of a moving train, then at the same time levitates herself out the door to said roof. She says she's been practicing... no kidding! * The X-Men's vacation apparently consists of going home wounded to their families. Lee goes out of his way to emphasize what a great relationship Warren has with his doting parents, which is unusual for a comic book character. Bobby and Hank don't go on vacation at all. They just have dinner at a beat club in Greenwich Village. We have no idea how Scott was spending his vacation. On page 5 he's walking out the gates of the mansion (in a suit and bowtie, as usual), and on page 13 he's in a cab careening around corners to carry him to the TV station. Jean didn't get the memo about killer robots, and she's still on a train headed home, long after Warren has gone home, had dinner with his parents, flown to the TV studio, and chased Sentinels out into the countryside. * The whole "Xavier can barely keep the studio audience in check" thing was Lee's concoction. All Kirby's art shows is that Xavier sends out mental signals to alert the X-Men to the Sentinel attack on the TV station. * There are two mysteries in this issue besides "How did an anthropologist build even malfunctioning killer flying robots?" One is why the Sentinel in the TV station collapsed. Lee "lampshades" the mystery by having the characters discuss it without providing an answer. Whatever answer Kirby intended, Lee clearly was not informed. * The second mystery is on page 17, when Angel, in the midst of dodging ray blasts from half a dozen sentinels, falls to earth, landing atop a moving train, where he is held in place by some force. That force appears to be Jean, who flies out the train window after donning her X-suit. (This is the first time we see Jean levitate herself, I think.) Why did Jean hold Warren helpless against the train roof?
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Feb 21, 2018 13:39:08 GMT -5
Hey, was that the only comic that Toth did during the "Marvel Age?"
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Post by dbutler69 on Feb 21, 2018 14:25:28 GMT -5
-- This is one of the worst random superguy fights I've scene.... there was no reason in the world Cyclops could have just told the Avengers there was a bomb with a dead man switch, but Professor X was handling it. Instead, the Prof. insists on pointless secrecy, and we get a fight. The vast majority of Marvel superhero fights, especially in the Silver & Bronze Age, are pretty ridiculous. It's like anytime superheroes cross paths, the writer is required to come up with a reason to fight first.
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