Before anything else, I am sorry to have picked these images. They have been recolored and an awful job was done. I don't know have anyone thought the new colors looked better. Ugh.
My own actual issues have long since fallen into dust, so I have been reduced to comparing various reprints. Here's what Cyclop's power beam originally looked like.
And here's the recolored version. Ack! Maybe I don't have the most refined artistic palate but that newer version looks dreadful to me.
Who invited the Evil Mutants? How about annotating another Silver Age comic? All this is off the top of my head, so I might get an issue number wrong or misspell a character's civilian identity, but I hope this is more interesting than just copying information from Wikipedia. Here we have X-MEN# 4, from back in March 1964, where the fledgeling team meets their counterparts. EVERY superhero group tangles with their counterpart team, I think it's in the balance of nature. The Justice Society started it with the Injustice Society back in the 1940s and it has been mandatory since then.
On this and the following cover, Quicksilver's costume is shades of blue rather than green and the Scarlet Witch is in a green getup. Someone asked about this in a letters page shortly after and Stan shrugged it off by saying it was done deliberately to balance the color schemes on the cover. He knew his business. If you look at a gallery of covers from comics that Stan edited, you see they alternate dark background and light background, and the logo is not the same color twice in succession. Stan sensibly thought that this caught the fans' attention that this was a new issue when they were at the stands.
Actually, Quicksilver eventually started wearing a blue and white costume, which made more sense when you consider his name. I think it would be funny if the Scarlet Witch had tried a green costume just to mess with everyone's head and wait for them them to ask the inevitable question.
My feeling is Mastermind and the Toad are designed after Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, respectively. This is more apparent in some panels than others, but sometimes it is so clear I hear the dialogue in those voices (I hear Raymond Massey as Magneto, for some obscure reason; the movies didn't change that.)
Page 1.
Here we go. The Danger Room was implied from the very first issue when the X-Men were shown dealing with elaborate offensive devices set up to do them grievous bodily harm. I think this is the first time it is given a name and shown to be a specific chamber. It's actually a great idea, both within the story to train the novice heroes and as a way to demonstrate to the reader what the various characters can do.
If you know the Beast from the movies and current comics, you might be surprised to see him looking so human. For the first decade, Henry McCoy could pass in public, maybe as slightly funny-looking with his long arms and huge feet but you know, you see odder looking specimens in a big city every day. When the Beast got his own shortlived series around 1972 or so, he experimented on a way to enhance his abilities and goofed big time. He became a more beastly Beast, complete with gray (then blue) fur, fangs, talons, the whole bit. He resembled a were-gorilla. From what I see skipping through recent comics, he seems to have gotten a rather catlike face (no improvement in my opinion.)
Page 2.
The Beast was often shown wearing the heavy yellow gauntlets in the first few issues, but he usually took them off when the fighting started and soon abandoned them entirely. Partly, it made sense because his climbing ability depended partly on his grip, but mostly it was for the same reason that the Thing didn't wear a full Fantastic Four costume... he was more interesting visually this way. Same for Bobby Drake's little yellow booties. He soon ditched them and ran around barefoot. I always wondered why he wasn't slipping and falling all the time, what with having feet covered with snow. But maybe he learned to reduce the coating on the soles of his feet.
Iceman made his creations out of water vapor in the air, which makes sense except for how much he whipped up. Look at the amount of ice in that slide! You have to imagine the air being incredibly dry whenever Iceman was active, since he was drawing all the moisture out of it. ("Professor! I have a nosebleed again!") We're not shown what happens to all the huge chunks of ice lying around wherever he is, either. After everything settles down, most likely Bobby lugs the pieces of ice outside and dumps them on the lawn and gets out the mop.
Quicksilver's second costume used these colors, it became the one he wore longest and always returns to. Polaris' costume appears to be inspired by the green Scarlet Witch here.
Page 3.
Some typical Stan Lee dialogue there, giving the characters just recognizable-enough personalties and speech habits. Over at DC, I found you could redraw the tails on the speech balloons in an issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE and it made no difference. Aquaman and Green Lantern and Wonder Woman all sounded the same. Try that with a page of THE FANTASTIC FOUR. Bobby is a joker but also the youngster trying to prove himself. Warren is a real preppy, good-looking, from a family with money, and gifted with a power that is one of mankind's oldest dreams. Is he smug and selfcentered? You bet.
I forgot about Polaris. The Golden Age and Silver Age scheme was that super-heroes got primary color costumes: red, blue, yellow, sometimes a green one here and there. Villains got green, purple and brown.
I forget the timing but Quicksilver got his light blue costume long after he became an Avenger, so going over to the good guys wasn't the reason.
Page 4.
There is a wee goof in the art here. Cyclops controlled his visor through the dials on the side or through a switch inside his gauntlet. This always seemed like an accident waiting to happen by the way... punching someone or carrying something heaven or climbing a rope with a sensitive switch on your palm that releases a destructive beam from your eyes... yike. I bet there was a lot of damage to the school before he mastered using that gadget.
Anyway, Cyclops is shown here narrowing his beam and delicately cutting through a birthday cake while both his hands were occupied. It's a slight goof, and I bet both Stan and Jack were cranking out the pages too fast to catch that. But if someone had pointed it out and there was time, the inker might have been asked to redraw Cyke's right hand so it was adjusting his visor.
Page 5.
What the heck is with that headpiece, Wanda? I doesn't look like the most comfortable thing to wear. And Pietro has those shoulder crescents I associate with sci-fi heroes like Space Ranger and Cosmic Boy. There was a Golden Age hero named Quicksilver from Quality Comics, a long defunct company by this time; but DC bought rights to the characters and so they had to rename the original speedster Max Mercury. They couldn't call him just Mercury because that name was being used by one of the Metal Men. The longer comics went on, the harder it became to up with a good name that hadn't been claimed.
Page 6.
And there is our boy, Magneto himself. We know almost nothing about him at this point. We don't even see him without the helmet for years, and his backstory isn't told for years yet after that. That is a wild helmet, by the way, with the vertical opening over the mouth and nose showing enough of the face for expression but still concealing enough to make him enigmatic. The slightly satanic horns and the metallic mantle (with rivets no less) which is holding the cape on are nice touches, as well. Kirby turned out a few clunkers as far as costume design went, but mostly he knew how to show a character's personality and powers in their outfit. The movies made such a halfhearted bland effort at giving Magneto a helmet that they would have been better off skipping it entirely.
Magneto was way over-exposed at first. He appeared in five of the first ten issues. In #11, when the Stranger took him and left the Earth, the X-Men rejoiced he was gone, ("At last! At long last!" Marvel Girl said and some fans agreed.) But good villains aren't easy to come up with, and just a few issues later he was back as if nothing had happened.
Page 7.
Interesting page, it doesn't advance the story all that much and could be dropped without harming the flow. But it adds a nice little touch of irony, as the Angel and Magneto get so close without seeing each other. Jean with a smock helping the Professor is another nice touch.
Page 8.
And here is the origin of the Scarlet Witch; I gather her title comes from a local phrase, judging by what the distressed villager says. The auburn hair might contribute to it, as well. Quicksilver has platinum blond hair (silver,eh?), Wanda has dark red (later steel gray as I remember). Touches like these help identify the characters as a sort of shorthand. Like the way Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen wore the same damn clothes for decades, the costumes and hair oddities helped young readers remember who was who.
Wanda is one of the few Kirby characters who had their original costume modified and improved by later artists, and made her headdress look much better, even if nobody knows how it stays on.
Wanda and Pietro are maybe the most interesting thing about the first 11 issues of X-Men, as characters who should have been heroes, trapped on a team of villains where they don't belong.
Well, he was right about outliving Mastermind, but Toad hasn't died yet.
Not sure why Magneto showed up to the office instead of just stealing the ship.
Page 9.
The bottom tier shows the X-Men in their off-duty pursuits. In the first two issues, Henry McCoy spoke like a rather crude thug. Suddenly his characterization changed and he was now a near genius scholar with a slight William Harper Littlejohn complex... that is, throwing out big words to vex his friends, I like the way he is writing on the board with a marker held in his prehensile feet. No one is there, he's not showing off, it's just natural for him. Meanwhile, Jean is exercising, Warren is listening to music (in this era, a preppy like him would probably go for jazz or folk music) and Bobby is working on a gigantic ice cream soda (he was doing exactly the same thing the previous issue, leading me to wonder if the other X-Men kept going to the refrigerator and finding a tiny scraping of ice cream was all that's left. "Bobby!")
I almost always prefer the Kirby originals. He had a great sense of what worked for a character and what made a striking visual. I suspect a lot of later artists fiddled with the costumes just to make their mark.
Yes, the moral conflicts Quicksilver and the Witch wrestled with made the characters more intriguing than most. It wasn't overdone and it didn't get milked for too long.
You know, I never once wondered why Magneto bothered going to that office, Maybe he simply liked scaring people.
Years before anti-mutant hatred became a core theme of X-Men, this was one of the rare examples of an angry mob attacking mutants in the 1960s, but they don't even know what mutants are, they think Wanda's powers are magic. Many retcons later, her powers are magic, not mutant, so this mob was right all along.
Page 10.
Even for Silver Age comics, the idea that the Angel could conceal wings with at least a ten foot span this way is hard to take. But I guess he's a mutant and the bone structure of his wings is very flexible. It must be agony though, and I can't imagine him going through that ordeal when he doesn't have to. Imagine tying your feet up behind your thighs and walking around your knees and I think you're getting how this must feel.
The reference Huntley and Brinkley dates this story a bit, I suppose today the Angel would say something like "Well, thank you, Wolf Blitzer."
It has long been dropped, but in the early issues Magneto had telepathic powers of his own. Not anywhere near Professor X's level, but enough that he could send a mental image to communicate with people in Atlantis or to probe the Blob's brain for information. I have a hunch this might a carry-over from the Henry Kuttner "Baldy" stories where all mutants were telepathic.
That IS kind of ironic. I think the mutant-hatred theme started issue 8, with Unus. After being attacked by a mob, Hank is so ticked off he quits the X-Men briefly.
Page 11.
The bloodless takover is more far-fetched than some of the science in this story. A nation which cannot defend itself at all either comes under the protection of a larger one or inevitably is conquered. The exceptions might be countries which have no valuable resources or strategic location, but even those aren't safe for long. But the Comics Code might have influenced this. Even the Red Skull in stories set during WWII wasn't allowed to kill anyone.
Page 12.
You know, Magneto might have beaten Dr Doom to the punch when it comes to being dictator of a small country. XMEN# 4 came out in March 1964, FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL# 2 followed in July. But it is never clearly explained exactly when Doom seized the throne of Lateria, it could have been his all along; there is no reason why he couldnt have been acting alone in FF# 5 and the following issues. Even when he was established as a Latverian tyrant, Doom thought nothing of traveling by himself.
It's a moot point, of course, since Magneto abandons power at the end of this story. I can't see him holding control of a nation indefinitely as Doom does. He doesn't have the scientific/black magic ability to monitor everything, and the United Nations would be issuing embargoes and pressures to step down. Not to mention undercover activity by the CIA errr SHIELD to arm rebels and undermine Magneto's grip.
Page 13.
My feeling is that the Toad was based on Hop-Frog from the Edgar Allan Poe story. He is the least impressive of the Evil Mutants, no match for the Beast in a direct fight. Against normal humans, he could be dangerous and hard to catch. His whining snivelling personality is difficult to take and I figure Magneto liked having him around as someone he could bully with no fear of reprisal. Mastermind, Quicksilver or the Witch might walk out or even strike back at Magneto if pushed too far but the Toad just ate the abuse up.
In light of the origin Claremont would later give Magneto, his army of literal goose-stepping Nazis here is ironic and hilarious.
Page 14.
I can't find it now to save my life, but I am certain I did a post years ago about how the dialogue contradicts the art on this page. Judging by the way the Beast is gouging out handfuls of rock from the wall and the direction of their speed lines, I think it's clear Jack was showing the Beast throwing boulders upward (while still holding on with his other hand!) Maybe Stan blinked and thought, "I don't want the Beast to be THAT strong! He's not the Thing, he's more about agility." And he wrote those lines where the Toad is explaining how he was bouncing rocks down at the Beast, despite the art showing the contrary. Again, a few minutes spent having someone re-ink the speed lines under the boulders would help here, but the pages had to be at the printed by 3:00 that afternoon...
I hadn't had thought of it. Magneto had no backstory for the longest time, no real name, never seen without the helmet. He was all Magneto, all day every day.
Page 15.
I like the Angel plowing through the guards. Having wings may not seem that great a power in comics (I think maybe half the characters can fly anyway), but it would be an awesome weapon. If the Angel is whipping along at sixty miles an hour, when he shoves someone or smacks them with a wing, it would be like getting struck by someone leaning out of a speeding car. Of course he would likely break his wrists or crack his knuckles, but being a hero isn't easy.
Angel outsmarting Quicksilver is a very Jack Kirby sort of thing. He regularly had one character beat another one who is stronger or more powerful by quick thinking and trickery. Captain America could come up against a huge robot and find a way to shove it down the stairs in the next panel.
That is SO Silver Age. Wanda assumes he's talking about marriage.
I want to mention Professor X's pipe. In the 1950s and 1960s, movies as well as comics, pipes were usually for intellectuals. Cigars were for tough working class guys and everyone in the middle smoked cigarettes. Marvel carried on this tradition until maybe the late 1960s as smoking started to become less univeral.
Having Quicksilver be a literal blur of lines is a neat way to visually convey his super speed
Page 16.
Pietro joins the long long list of super-heroes and private eyes and adventurers who get knocked unconscious by a blow to the head without lasting ill effects. Actually, it looks as if he is already stirring in the second panel, so maybe he was just dazed for a minute. Same thing happens to the Angel a moment later.
I don't think guys call a beautiful woman a "dish" anymore.
You know what really hurts? Magneto knows Cyclops' name but he calls the Angel "the one with wings." Warren must have felt irked by that.
Page 17. The science here seems a bit dodgy. If you tear a generator loose from its support, does it shoot lightning bolts in all directions? I haven't heard of this happening, but well, maybe Magneto modified his equipment so it was not up to code and an OSHA inspector would have closed his castle down.
Ranting about the re-coloring again, that final panel is lame. I remember the original coloring as bright, dynamic and much more exciting.
It works really well. The Flash had his trail of strobe lines, Johnny Quick was often shown in multiple poses. But Quicksilver simply blurring is so effective. It's like what the characters in the story would see.
Page 18. Not much to remark on here. Its just the story rolling along.
Panel two, like the natural way Angel is rubbing his chafed wrists. Those heavy gauntlets were a good idea considering the activities these X-Men undertook. But Panel three. What the heck is going on which Cyclops' pose? I can't figure it out, shouldn't one leg be behind or in front of him. He looks like he's about to drop on his hands and knees.
Jean, you silly goose. What were you thinking? Is the light that bad in there or are you still miffed over the boys trying to catch a look at you in the shower back at the X-Mansion? (Well, these ARE teenagers with rampaging hormones...).
Bobby really looks like a weirdo nudist with just the boots on
He still had the snowman appearance at the time, too. A few issues later, he worked on his powers and got the shiny ice coating underway.
Page 20.
First, why is Cyclops carrying Marvel Girl? Any excuse, eh Scott, tell her how you feel. I should mention that Mastermind is not the brightest supervillain in comics. His big mistake is even letting people know in the first place he can cast illusions. Keep it to yourself, Mastermind. There are a million ways you could have a life of luxury and status with careful use of illusions. Making documents out of blank pieces of paper, distracting people at critical moments while you steal whatever you want, making yourself look like any woman's husband or boyfriend, making it look like that BMW you are driving is still on the dealer's lot. But no, he joins up with Magneto when he doesn't need to and lets everyone in on his trick, robbing it of much of its effect. A secret Mastermind could be almost unstoppable.