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Post by wildfire2099 on May 27, 2015 21:33:08 GMT -5
X-Men: First Class #2 Parker/Cruz/Smith  The Professor take the team on a promised vacation to the Worthington Beach house in Florida... he just stops in and visits his friend Dr. Curt Connors first. Turns out Dr. Connors is rampaging through the Everglades, again, so Beast and Angel try to find him, while the rest of the team chills. Beast feels responsible, since he's a biologist too, while Angel promised Mrs. Connors. Turns out, they needed Iceman to bring his body temperature down. Meanwhile, Jean and Scott have quality alone time at the beach. --- While there's not a whole lot to summarize, this is a great comic. Really good, on target character moments, a fun story, the works. Rating: 5/5 Historical Notes: -- I think I'd place this between X-Men #4 and #5... there's some down time mentioned there. It has to be before #7, since the X-Copter used here gets blown up then.. and after #3, since they refer to fighting the Vanisher. It could also pretty logically be between #3 - #4, since they DON'T mention Magneto or the brotherhood at all. Both are after Spidey #6 (which is also referred to). -- While the moment where Prof. X mentally gets rid of Iceman to get Scott and Jean alone time is hilarious and awesome, it's rather contradictory... Jean was sorta dating Warren at the time, and didn't start pining for Scott until he was officially put in charge. This (and a couple other moments in the book), imply that the Professor is able to essential know exactly what anyone is doing at any time, which is not only kinda creepy, but WAY more powerful than he usually is portrayed. -- I didn't really notice before, but Beast is far more 'human' looking than he should be... he's drawn more like a football players who doesn't like shoes than anything.. in the original, he's far more squat and, well, mutant looking. -- No sign on any modern technology here, but Jean does where a Bikini with a thong.. seems like if it was stil 1964 that probably wouldn't happen... nor would letting her alone with Scott (and Bobby). |
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Post by Rob Allen on May 28, 2015 12:58:38 GMT -5
-- No sign on any modern technology here, but Jean does where a Bikini with a thong.. seems like if it was stil 1964 that probably wouldn't happen... nor would letting her alone with Scott (and Bobby). That's similar to something that bothered me in the First Class movie - most of it takes place in 1962, but the women were wearing miniskirts. The miniskirt was introduced in London in 1964 and wasn't common until several years after that. Bikinis are actually older - they were introduced in Paris in 1946 and started catching on in the US in the late 50s. The song "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" was a hit in 1960. So a bikini in 1964 would have been normal, but not a thong. I'm not going to research the history of thongs while I'm at work, though. My employer's filter blocked some of the bikini history sites I tried. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 28, 2015 13:14:10 GMT -5
That's probably a good plan... I was going to check, but I was a bit afraid of what I'd find. There was also every indication that the school itself had a pretty conservative atmosphere... the boys all wore suits to lunch in issue...5 was it? While the 'wild' crowd surely had bikinis in the 60s, I'm not sure Jean would have been one of them.
Still, though, the first issue made it seem they were modernizing anyway (Bobby talks about X-Box in one scene), so it wasn't the end of the world, just sorta striking to me... it almost felt like anime-style fan service, to be honest.
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Post by berkley on May 28, 2015 18:13:51 GMT -5
I remember being impressed with that Juggernaut story too. Looks like it was reprinted in X-Men #67 in 1970, which sounds about right.
For a 2nd or more likely 3rd-tier series, the X-Men seem to have featured a few stories that stand out in my memory. Maybe they just picked the few good ones to reprint.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2015 8:22:13 GMT -5
But I liked the Juggernaut! (Although I liked him better when he ditched his incredibly short shorts.) Really good build-up of tension by having him barely shown until the big reveal at the end. Most of the X-men villains to the point were more goofy than credible threats, but Juggernaut felt like a major, deadly antagonist. Juggernaut is one of the most imposing X-Men character ever. He is totally unstoppable with an attitude that causes havoc whenever he goes. Antagonist at best. |
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Post by paulie on May 29, 2015 9:30:31 GMT -5
 X-Men #12 Lee/Kirby/Toth/Colletta '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) --- -- I didn't realize Cerebro was a secret. In fact, I was ready to call hogwash, but I looked back, and it seems that perhaps it was... except for Scott, who got to see it while he was in charge. -- The drama here was great, even if it's a little bit ridiculous for the Professor to be telling a story while they were, in fact, under attack. -- Also filed under the 'What the--? file, why is the Juggernaut massively more powerful (according to the machine) than the Stranger, or even Magneto? Sometimes the 60s hype in comics just gets a little too much. -- One does wonder if they can assemble such high grade defenses in 'exactly 5 minutes', why they never did so before... like when the carnies attacked... sure would have been useful there. -- Check another in the column of early Cerebro only sensing power or energy, there's nothing in this origin that makes Cain Marko a mutant. -- If fact, they imply that Xavier isn't a mutant, but rather got his powers from the atomic test.... he was show as a kid of, oh, I'd say 10-12 at the time of the accident where his father was killed. Or, if getting your powers from an atomic accident makes you a mutant, then that would make most of the Marvel Heroes mutants, including Hulk and the FF. I'm pretty sure that gets retconned later when someone realizes it. -- This is one of those 'time stamp' origins, where they put Xavier in the Korean war. IIRC, the later tellings of the story make him and Marko archeologists, rather than soliders in the war. Anyone have any thoughts about the Toth contribution to this issue. We have him drawing over Kirby layouts and then Colletta did the finishes. It leaves me wondering why Stan gave him the assignment in the first place. |
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Post by Cei-U! on May 29, 2015 12:06:35 GMT -5
Toth was so angry at Colletta's evisceration of his pencils that he swore he would never work for Stan Lee or Marvel again and, to the best of my knowledge, he never did.
Cei-U!
I summon the butcher's block!
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Post by Nowhere Man on May 29, 2015 12:47:34 GMT -5
Those issues were a HUGE waste of Toth's immense talents. Even without Colletta's butchery, it was still Toth working with Kirby's layouts. I don't think he ever did another Marvel comic, which is a shame. I would have loved to have seen his pencils and inks on just about any character.
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Post by paulie on May 29, 2015 13:06:17 GMT -5
I guess they stuck Toth with Vince on the one issue of Rawhide Kid he did as well but he did his own layouts. I personally find this to be unfair so I can only imagine how Toth felt.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 29, 2015 13:18:59 GMT -5
Wait, that's THAT Alex Toth? Wow, I assumed it wasn't. I had no idea. That's a real shame Marvel annoyed him.
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Post by Rob Allen on May 29, 2015 15:47:40 GMT -5
For a few years Stan had most new artists work from Kirby layouts in the beginning, to get used to the Marvel style. Romita, Buscema, Severin and Steranko all did, not sure if Colan ever did.
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Post by Farrar on May 29, 2015 17:53:57 GMT -5
For a few years Stan had most new artists work from Kirby layouts in the beginning, to get used to the Marvel style. Romita, Buscema, Severin and Steranko all did, not sure if Colan ever did. Right...Colan and Adams are the only two exceptions to this that I'm aware of. According to the 2005 TwoMorrows book Gene Colan: Secrets in the Shadows (and mentioned in other interviews throughout the years too), Stan felt that "Gene's style was too unique, too different. It would have handicapped Gene...it wouldn't look like Gene Colan" (p. 60). And by the time Neal Adams started to do some work for Marvel, Kirby was no longer doing layouts for others. The Jack Kirby Collector #29 (another TwoMorrows publication) has a very interesting article by Mike Gartland about Kirby's layouts for artists new to 1960s Marvel (including Toth and the artists Rob mentioned...plus Heck, Tuska, Werner Roth, Gil Kane...). According to Gartland the timeline for Kirby's (credited) layouts were: Mar. 65-May 65: Avengers 14, 15 and 16 July 65-Mar. 66: X-Men 12-17 Sep. 65-May 66: Tales of Suspense, Cap 69-77 Sep. 65-Sep. 66: Tales to Astonish, Hulk 71-83 Sep. 65-Feb. 67-Strange Tales, Nick Fury 136-153 Jan. 66-Feb. 66: Daredevil 12 and 13 |
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Post by Phil Maurice on May 29, 2015 18:12:29 GMT -5
That's very interesting. I didn't know any of those facts regarding the Kirby layouts. I just assumed, since artists like Romita, Colan*, etc. had worked for Timely/Atlas during the Golden Age, that they simply returned to the fold and continued to work. Apparently not. Did Everett and Wood also proceed from Kirby layouts?
*ETA: Duh. You made it clear that Colan was NOT asked to follow Kirby's layouts. Reading fail. |
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Post by Rob Allen on May 29, 2015 19:25:59 GMT -5
As this thread continues, you'll reach the period of X-Men where Don Heck was doing layouts with Werner Roth pencilling. Oddly enough, Heck was almost simultaneously pencilling Spider-Man from Romita layouts.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 29, 2015 20:05:02 GMT -5
That IS kinda weird... it almost sounds like they were using the 'layout/finish' style to transition from one artist to another.
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