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Post by dbutler69 on Feb 21, 2018 14:44:45 GMT -5
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. Maybe because girls shouldn't fight big, scary supervillains? Or maybe the Professor is still in love with her?
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Post by dbutler69 on Feb 21, 2018 14:53:28 GMT -5
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! Prof X reads a sentinel's mind? He can do that? I guess I never realized before that he could read a robot's mind.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 14:58:08 GMT -5
Prof X reads a sentinel's mind? He can do that? I guess I never realized before that he could read a robot's mind. In these early stories, everyone's abilities are pretty much infinite when the plot demands it. Magneto has the powers of mind control and astral projection. Professor Xavier makes a "mental shield" to save himself when his convertible tumbles down a cliff. Magneto can make force fields to block Cyclops' "Opti-Ray." And so on. Some of these abilities are more from Lee's dialogue than Kirby's pictures, though.
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Post by MDG on Feb 21, 2018 15:27:23 GMT -5
Hey, was that the only comic that Toth did during the "Marvel Age?" I believe so. Certainly the only superhero story (there may be a war, romance, or western in there). Just as well--I can't see him being happy a) working over Kirby layouts or b) doing stories "Marvel method" and having Stan change things in the dialog. Surprisingly, Toth and Kurtzman both had good memories of the few stories Toth did in the EC war books (and they look great), but I bet that wouldn't have been true if he was there longer. (I think he went into the army.)
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 18:18:00 GMT -5
X-Men #15 'Prisoner of the Mysterious Master Mold' Lee/Kirby/Galvin(Roth)/Simek * The Sentinels have a sentinel-sized control room where they sit at sentinel-sized workstations and pull sentinel-sized levers. Similarly, the ray cannons have to be manned by actual Sentinels. Wouldn't they just control their base electronically? * Lee vs Lee: On page 7, Trask tells a Sentinel that he created Master Mold, who in turn created the Sentinels. But then the Sentinels take Trask to Master Mold, saying "You shall help him create more Sentinels!" and Master Mold elaborates, "Though you have given me the power, I do not possess the knowledge to create other sentinels! You shall do it for me!" Leaving aside the nonsense distinction between "the power to create sentinels" and "the knowledge to create sentinels," who is right here? Trask or Master Mold? I think Lee forgot the story and couldn't make up a plausible reason (in the 30 seconds he had to devote to it amidst everything else he was doing) for Master Mold to keep Trask around. * I always thought it was weird that the device that creates Sentinels is itself shaped like a giant Sentinel rather than a factory, and I can't get out of my head the supposition Master Mold he excretes new Sentinels through his robo-butt, since he certainly doesn't do so through any part of him that we can see, seated as he is on his robo-throne. His helmet is another riff on Kirby's Toltec-type headresses. * "Mental psycho-probe" seems redundant. Is there another kind? Anyway, Master Mold forces Trask to interrogate Hank with this device, getting such useful information as "I am an X-Man; we protect humans from evil mutants." That's some really actionable intel there! * Beast regales Trask with his biography. He's already been to college (as a scholarship football player no less), so getting a prep school diploma from Xavier more recently doesn't count for much. But it does confirm how much older Hank is than Bobby. Hank too has great, supportive parents. * Jean is again (p.11) shown levitating herself. You go, girl! She hasn't had her cat mask for a couple of issues, though. * Another cliffhanger! The story is getting quite serialized, and between Lee and Kirby, they have figured out the rhythm needed to keep the story rolling on into another issue.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 18:34:07 GMT -5
X-Men #16 'Supreme Sacrifice' Lee/Kirby/Roth -- Much like the Magneto fight, I felt like the team were made out to be kinda incompetent here * I though the team had a reasonable plan. Having established that they couldn't escape their prison, they prepared themselves for the moment that the Sentinels opened it up to put Beast inside with them, and they sprang into action immediately. Now, did they do a whole lot after that? Xavier's giant crystal ended up saving the day, along with Trask's unseen sacrifice. Jean does use TK to unlock a door, which was smart. * I am disappointed to see that Master Mold has a separate machine that makes Sentinels in batches of eight, rather than birthing them individually out of his robo-butt. * When Scott, Jean, and Warren encounter a wall of fire, their solution is for Scott to try to vault over it while Warren carries Jean. What happened to Jean being able to TK herself into the air? I think Warren just wanted an excuse to carry her rather than Scott. * Lee's editorial moral at the end is awesome: Beware the fanatic! Too often his cure is deadlier by far than the evil he denounces!
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 21:09:14 GMT -5
X-Men #17 '..and None Shall Survive' Lee/Kirby/Roth -- So not only has another foe been defeated by an outside source, but the X-Men are punked by Magneto again... do these guys ever win? If this was wrestling, they'd be the 'jobber' that doesn't get an entrance that gets paid to lose to the real stars every week. This time at least they were able to steal the credit from the deceased hero, since dead men tell no tales. * It takes Scott and Xavier an hour to "race" from the hospital to the mansion by car, but Jean and Hank go on foot. * Ugh, Magneto again? I was really hoping that being kidnapped to another planet would keep him busy for a few years, not a few weeks.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 21:30:14 GMT -5
Lee/Gavin/Ayers X-Men #18 'If Iceman should fail..!" Credits Note: Rather than the usual superlatives, the credits are all bland (Fair Story by... Adequate Art, etc... except for Letter Artie Simek, who is 'Marvel's Birthday Boy of the Month'... I love that stuff!) Overall, a very disappointing return for Magneto... the story was pretty much nonsense from start to finish. Rating: D- * "Adequate Art by Jay Gavin" sums up this issue nicely. It was nice for Iceman to get a focus story, and the jeopardy to Warren's parents gave the story a more personal threat than usual, but other than that, I was mainly wishing for a story that wasn't about Magneto again.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 21:50:20 GMT -5
'Lo! Now Shall Appear-- The Mimic' Lee/Gavin/Ayers We get his origin.. apparently, his father tried to make his power permanent, but the townspepople stormed his hideaway and accidently buried it, and killed his dad. He's hoping the X-Men will come running, so he can use their powers to find his dad's power gizmo, and become the X-Men's verison of the Super Skrull (or Amazo, if you prefer). The plan works perfectly, but, sadly for Calvin, the machine removed his powers... which Xavier knew about all along. Whew! Grade: C * The biblical issue title cracks me up with its pretensions. Was it written by Thor? * The X-Men are granted another "vacation" by Xavier. Bobby and Hank once again use it to go to Manhattan, this time to the main library branch. A 22 year old who keeps going on double dates with a 16 year old... I dunno. * Mimic isn't a mutant; page 15 gives him the old "face full of chemicals" origin (see also Flash, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Joker, etc.). His power works even on non-mutants like the school boxing champion. * Good thing Mimic knew how to make Cyclops-type glasses both for his mask and a regular spectacle version! * Gavin's art and Lee's dialogue fit together pretty well. Does that mean that Lee had to give him more detailed scripts than Kirby got?
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 21, 2018 22:02:04 GMT -5
* Gavin's art and Lee's dialogue fit together pretty well. Does that mean that Lee had to give him more detailed scripts than Kirby got? Almost certainly, although to call what Stan provided his artists a "script" is less than accurate. By that time, his collaboration with Kirby consisted of a (usually) in person story conference with little, if anything, committed to writing. With Werner Roth, who was still adjusting to working "Marvel method," Stan probably typed up a one- or two-paragraph synopsis. Cei-U! I summon the informed speculation!
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 22:12:19 GMT -5
X-Men #20 'I, Lucifer' The chaos on the cover pretty nicely encapuslates the issue... boy is this one packed! * This was Roy Thomas' first issue credited as writer, and I can imagine a few ways this issue could have gotten its bizarre structure. The simplest is that this issue was cobbled together from two different issues-in-progress: one featuring a retread of Unus and Blob, and one featuring a retread of Lucifer. Lucifer is in a few panels in the first half of the book, but really his story begins on the bottom half of page 11. * I like how Xavier's brain amplifier on page 12 has a dongle that presses up against his forehead, sort of like a periscope presses against your eyes. It makes sense! * Gavin emphasizes Lucifer's alien nature not just by the Skrull wrinkles on his chin but also by giving him weird shaped eyes that look more like )O( instead of (O), if that ASCII art makes sense. Check them out in close up on page 19, both for Lucifer and his boss. It's a nice detail. * The X-Men get their first black jet, instead of a helicopter. We're told it's good at short runway takeoffs and landings, a hint of Blackbirds to come.
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Post by rberman on Feb 21, 2018 22:32:48 GMT -5
I agree.. not a good issue at all. I generally love Roy Thomas, but this is not his best start to a title by far. X-Men #21 'From When Comes.. Dominus' The X-Men head off to find Lucifer, and do so after hiding from a couple robots...they get a mental message from the Prof. telling them not to damage the Dominus (which, I guess is the whole thing? I thought it was a giant robot, but whatever). Angel wants to just start breaking stuff, but Cyclops actually shoots him to stop him... while Iceman takes a shot at Cyclops, thinking Lucifer made the Professor tell him that. -- There's a panel on page 3 where it appears a word bubble got mis-directed, and they make a joke of it. Iceman uses some big words while standing next to Beast, and Hank says 'you sound like me', in a word balloon that goes outside the panel to the gutter of the page. * Bobby doesn't use that big a word; he just accused Warren of being materialistic, which is probably true. But this does bring up something I noticed more in Thomas' issues so far: The dialogue is a lot more crowded. It seems like whenever there's a group shot, he feels the need to give every character something to say in every panel. Thumbing back through some Stan/Jack issues, it seems like that happens some, but not as much. * The first five pages are a separate adventure with the team fighting off some cowboys from a dude ranch. It would have been nice for that plot element to circle back to some payoff at the end of the story. * The Professor told Cyclops not to let the X-Men attack Dominus; and Cyclops obeys to the point of assaulting Angel rather than let him try. But then it turns out that all that would have happened if they tried to attack Dominus was that their attacks would be repulsed. Xavier should have given a clearer instruction like "You can't hurt the computer, so focus on the robots." * Lucifer's freaky eyes from last issue are gone now. Pity. You can't even see the skin around his eyes any more, so they must be huge! * Lucifer's alien boss banishes him for losing all his robots. Weren't they even going to try to trigger the Dominus device, the focus of all their efforts for so many years?
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Post by Rob Allen on Feb 22, 2018 13:36:05 GMT -5
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 22, 2018 22:32:01 GMT -5
Hey, was that the only comic that Toth did during the "Marvel Age?" According to Wikipedia, yes.. unless you could a Rawhide Kid issue. IIRC, one of our resident experts (probably Cei-U or Slam, but I'm too lazy to scroll through the thread and look), said Toth was mad at being re-touched or something and refused to do any other Marvel work.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 22, 2018 22:44:45 GMT -5
Some comments on rberman's excellent commentary:
- I didn't think about the helmet in context that way, but you are right on with that... seems alot more logical as a message sender..almost like Stan tried to figure it out, but later realized it and didn't bother to go back and fix it.
- I totally agree the interconnectedness is fun and really adds to things. Thats one thing that DC at this time didn't do as well.. they had guest spots, sure, but they always felt more random and less important.
- The whole 'how did an anthropologist build a killer robot' thing makes no sense, but fits just find with Marvel science. In the silver age Marvel Universe, if you are a scientist, you can pretty much do anything at all that requires brain power... like Tony Stark doing biology or Hank Pym doing engineering, or even Professor X building complex electronics.
- While I get what you're saying about the Sentinels gear and Master Mold... I'm happy to sacrifice the logic there, because it's all pretty darn cool. Kirby draws some fun tech!
- I get where you're coming from being tired of Magneto, but the other villains at this point were alot worse, so I didn't mind the repetition.
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