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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 20, 2016 16:42:45 GMT -5
I love the early X-Men issues!
I got the first volume of X-Men Marvel Masterworks from the library and I'm up to #5. (I've read them all before mostly through reprints, but its been quite a long time for some of them.)
The stories are amazingly stupid at times. Even the biggest fan can hardly deny that. But so wonderfully stupid. My god! The plot of #3, for example, is almost non-stop ridiculous. They ask the Blob to join the X-Men, they don't have an alternative plan for what to do if he won't join. And then the Blob leads the circus in an attack on the Mansion because ... for some reason. And the circus goes along with it because ... for some reason. And the circus comes within a whisker of winning because ... for some reason.
But I love the Blob being all full of himself and coming on to Marvel Girl. Oh! Gross! (What a catch for Jean!)
And I love every issue with the Scarlet Witch. I like reading through early Marvel X-Men and Avengers and trying to figure out how Wanda's powers worked in the early days. She points ... and either a cup falls over or the wall caves in or a robot explodes.
(And one of my favorite panels in all comicdom is in #4 when Warren sees Wanda for the first time. He says something like "VA VA VOOM! If that's an evil mutant, get me an application blank!")
Also ... the Beast randomly having gloves for no reason.
The Toad MAKES NO SENSE in a group of evil mutants. His powers are pretty lame. (Also, Wanda and Pietro make no sense in this group either. Magneto should have seen what a liability they would be in many situations. But I guess the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants couldn't just be Magneto and Mastermind.) The genius of the Toad's character is that he's sort of like the Fool in "King Lear." They just never did enough with that aspect of his character.
I love #7 and #8, but I haven't got that far in the Marvel Masterworks volume so it's been quite a while since I read those. Gotta love that Chic Stone inking! Every panel looks like a weird stained-glass window.
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Post by Mormel on Nov 20, 2016 17:08:29 GMT -5
Incidentally, this morning I was reading my "Essential Classic X-Men Vol. 2" (which has nothing to do with the actual series Classic X-Men that ran from 1986 to 1996), which reprints the middle third of the Silver Age X-Men. I was having a surprising amount of fun with it too, but that's partly because I can laugh at the really silly stuff that's in it. At the same time, I can see why one would find the characters boring, considering the original five X-Men are fairly one-dimensional: Scott is the stoic leader, Bobby is the class clown, Warren is the stuck-up rich kid, Hank is the brainy bruiser, and Jean is the GURL who has to bake cakes for the other X-Men and sew them new costumes.
One question for everyone, though: which would you guys say were better, the Stan Lee issues or the subsequent Roy Thomas run from #20 to #44? I'm partial to the former, especially for the issues that introduce the Brotherhood, the Sentinels, and the Juggernaut. I find Thomas' first run on the book suffers from an unclear direction and throwing in villains that are ill-suited for the X-Men to fight, like Cobalt Man, Mekano, and Merlin/Warlock/Maha Yogi.
Still, it does feature some things I really liked, like the short arc with the Mimic and the introduction of Banshee. I'm quite fond of Werner Roth's pencils, I think he captures the youth of the X-Men very well, especially when they're in civvies.
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Post by urrutiap on Nov 20, 2016 17:23:05 GMT -5
I never said all of the original x Men is boring.
I said that the first 4 issues I was bored and tired of due to Mastermind and Toad and Magneto. I was even getting sick of Blob too. At least Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver I liked since they didn't have much of a choice anyway to be in the Brotherhood.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 20, 2016 19:33:48 GMT -5
Like codystarbuck says, it's really the high point of the original series, by far. Shockingly, it wasn't long after that the title went into reprint mode before getting cancelled. Yeah, I don't know if Roy got tied up with other books or what. Adams was busy with other things and it was a couple of years before they did the Kree-Skrull War together. The first X-Men I saw was Giant Size X-Men #2, in August of 1975, which reprints the Sentinels story, minus the Living Monolith story (which leads into it) and the Sauron story, which acts as an epilogue, then moves to the new story. At the time, I though Cyclop's eye-beams were generated by his visor, as it looked like Quicksilver was using them. i had to reread the story to realize that the X-Men change places with Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Toad, and that Cyclops' eye-beams were self-generated. It didn't help that he used to have to press a button on the visor to open it up, to fire the beams. The early stories are definitely run-of-the-mill team stories. it could have been The Champions, for all of the personality there. Roy was a bit more in sync with the younger voices and gave them personality. Prior to Adams, though, the Steranko issues (50 and 51) are visual treats. I have them in a turtleback edition (library-oriented format, where a tradepaperback is bound into a hardcover, with the original cover laminated to the new hardcover) of Steranko's non-Nick Fury stories, that was deleted from a library. I wanted to scream "What is the matter with you people?" at the library; this is classic stuff. It features those issues, the three Captain America issues, the Tower of Shadows story, and his romance comic story, from Our Love Story. Yeah, man, Steranko did a romance comic! Heck Kirby (and Joe Simon) the King of Action (and Comics), created the romance comic genre. He was married to Roz for over 50 years, so he knew a thing or two about romance. The sales were still awful. Adams wanted the book because he wanted one of the their worst-selling books. I think that sales went up a bit with Thomas/Adams, but not enough to keep the book from being cancelled...or in this case going to reprints. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 20, 2016 19:35:50 GMT -5
I never understood why the X-Men went into reprint mode with issues #67-93? If sales were so poor, why keep it alive with reprints? Were the reprints selling well enough to keep it afloat? I can't remember, was there a big gap between issues #93 & 94? I remember reading those very early Lee/Kirby issues and thought they were just ok & later the Thomas/Adams run (which was/is awesome!), but nothing inbetween. One of these days I will have to read the inbetween/mid stories. Because it was a cheap way to get books on the stand. At the time Marvel was flooding the newsstands with a ton of reprint books to try to push other publishers off the stands. They didn't have to pay anyone for the scripts or the art. So as long as the book made back the publishing cost it was gravy. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Nov 20, 2016 19:53:44 GMT -5
Marvel's X-Men were originally cancelled around the same time dozens of other superhero titles were being cancelled from both Marvel and DC. The general public got tired of the avalanche of super-heroic books spawned by the Batman TV craze.
Publishers responded with more horror titles (hedging their bets a bit with some having super hero overtones). Barbarian comics also supplanted the long john characters.
Many surviving super-titles got demoted to bi-monthly status. This shift in public acceptance is probably the key ingredient of the end of the Silver Age and beginning of the Bronze age. X-Men was just one of the casulties
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Post by Pharozonk on Nov 20, 2016 20:27:22 GMT -5
Bah! Read you Simonson's X-Factor you heathens!   |
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 20, 2016 21:52:20 GMT -5
I never understood why the X-Men went into reprint mode with issues #67-93? If sales were so poor, why keep it alive with reprints? Were the reprints selling well enough to keep it afloat? I can't remember, was there a big gap between issues #93 & 94? I remember reading those very early Lee/Kirby issues and thought they were just ok & later the Thomas/Adams run (which was/is awesome!), but nothing inbetween. One of these days I will have to read the inbetween/mid stories. Because it was a cheap way to get books on the stand. At the time Marvel was flooding the newsstands with a ton of reprint books to try to push other publishers off the stands. They didn't have to pay anyone for the scripts or the art. So as long as the book made back the publishing cost it was gravy. Well, from what I've read, the creative team did get a reprint fee; but, it was a pittance. Flooding the market was the oldest strategy in the Marvel playbook, going back to Timely. They did the same in the early 80s, with the Baxter-format reprints; and the 90s with the Marvel UK, 2099 titles, and other stuff. Doesn't work, long term. |
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Post by hondobrode on Nov 20, 2016 22:38:38 GMT -5
Except for those BWS issues, they're largely forgetable IMO.
Not horrible or anything, just nothing I've re-read for 30 years or so.
I like the concepts, but the execution was weak. In fact, it's my least favorite Lee / Kirby from that period.
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Post by coke & comics on Nov 21, 2016 0:46:50 GMT -5
I find pretty much everything prior to Neal Adams unreadable, but think the Thomas/Adams stuff is pretty solid.
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 21, 2016 3:47:02 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't know if Roy got tied up with other books or what. Adams was busy with other things and it was a couple of years before they did the Kree-Skrull War together. The first X-Men I saw was Giant Size X-Men #2, in August of 1975, which reprints the Sentinels story, minus the Living Monolith story (which leads into it) and the Sauron story, which acts as an epilogue, then moves to the new story. At the time, I though Cyclop's eye-beams were generated by his visor, as it looked like Quicksilver was using them. i had to reread the story to realize that the X-Men change places with Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Toad, and that Cyclops' eye-beams were self-generated. It didn't help that he used to have to press a button on the visor to open it up, to fire the beams. The early stories are definitely run-of-the-mill team stories. it could have been The Champions, for all of the personality there. Roy was a bit more in sync with the younger voices and gave them personality. Prior to Adams, though, the Steranko issues (50 and 51) are visual treats. I have them in a turtleback edition (library-oriented format, where a tradepaperback is bound into a hardcover, with the original cover laminated to the new hardcover) of Steranko's non-Nick Fury stories, that was deleted from a library. I wanted to scream "What is the matter with you people?" at the library; this is classic stuff. It features those issues, the three Captain America issues, the Tower of Shadows story, and his romance comic story, from Our Love Story. Yeah, man, Steranko did a romance comic! Heck Kirby (and Joe Simon) the King of Action (and Comics), created the romance comic genre. He was married to Roz for over 50 years, so he knew a thing or two about romance. The sales were still awful. Adams wanted the book because he wanted one of the their worst-selling books. I think that sales went up a bit with Thomas/Adams, but not enough to keep the book from being cancelled...or in this case going to reprints. Actually, from what I can gather, sales of the Thoma/Adam issues were indeed high enough to kep the book afloat-if those sales had been taken into consideration when deciding on whether to continue it. But the decision on that would apparently have been based on a quarterly or bi-annual (I forget which) report, and the figures used only went up to just before they hit their stride and sales started to rise. The book was actually cancelled outright with #66, dated March 1970. It was revived as a reprint nine months later, with #67 dated December. It was cancelled again with #93 in April '75, and revived four months later with the new team. |
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Post by tingramretro on Nov 21, 2016 4:06:37 GMT -5
I seem to be in the minority here, but I love the original X-Men. I first read them in the 70s in British reprint titles like The Superheroes, and always liked them; I've since collected the original run from #25-66, plus #16, #18 and #23, and am still on the lookout for reasonably priced earlier issues. The Thomas/Adam run is one of my all time favourites, but I actually like pretty much everything after Thomas and Werner Roth took over with #20. Angel is still my favourite X-Man, and Unus, Mastermind and Mesmero are still my favourite evil mutants.
I discovered the new X-Men only in the late 70s (I think #111 was the first issue I found, in a newsagents in Hastings, though I'd already "met" Wolverine and Nightcrawler elsewhere) and admittedly, I liked them too, enough to have tracked down the bulk of the issues between #95 and today, but the originals still have something for me that the later team don't. And I really am not that fond of anything after about issue #175.
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Post by Dizzy D on Nov 21, 2016 5:12:23 GMT -5
I like most of the original X-Men run, excluding the Friedrich issues and several of the Thomas/Roth issues (they had good issues, but also El Tigre, The Warlock and Mekano for instance).
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Post by Deleted on Nov 21, 2016 10:09:35 GMT -5
Yesterday I sat down and re-read X-Men #1 because it had been many, many years since I read it. It was pretty bad! I read half of #2 and had to stop, could not take any more! Lee's script was pretty childish & Kirby's art was bland and uninspiring. I never was a big Kirby fan on these very early Marvel books. It's actually hard to believe that the Jack Kirby who drew this mess is the same Jack Kirby who would later become an artistic god!
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Post by MDG on Nov 21, 2016 10:47:33 GMT -5
Yesterday I sat down and re-read X-Men #1 because it had been many, many years since I read it. It was pretty bad! I read half of #2 and had to stop, could not take any more! Lee's script was pretty childish & Kirby's art was bland and uninspiring. I never was a big Kirby fan on these very early Marvel books. It's actually hard to believe that the Jack Kirby who drew this mess is the same Jack Kirby who would later become an artistic god! Jack and Stan might've been running on empty at that point and coming up with a new hero book--with a group, yet--may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Even if they were initially excited about it, they may not have had the time/energy they were putting into FF, Thor, etc. to do anything with it. Mormel mentioned how the characters were basic stock--they could've been the cast of a team book. And while Kirby could come up with intriguing character concepts all day (Blob, Juggernaut), he wasn't able to find too much novel for them to do. Stan was, admittedly, better at dialogue than any of the other writers he was hiring at this time, it feels like he was only looking at the books and characters issue by issue (if not panel by panel). |
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