Mighty Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men Volume 1

The Mighty Marvel Masterworks volumes present the early days of familiar heroes and in the case of the X-Men we’re talking about a clean start because they aren’t heroes who made guest appearances in other comics before getting their own. They debuted with The X-Men #1 in September 1963 as something totally new. They also didn’t have any kind of origin story because Stan Lee was apparently tired of those so he just made up the idea of them being mutants (the original name of the comic was going to be The Mutants).

But I just exaggerated when I called them something totally new. We hadn’t heard these names or seen these faces before, but as the covers of the first two issues made clear, this was a superhero team that was very much “in the sensational Fantastic Four style!” So there’s a brainy leader (Reed Richards, Mr. X/Cyclops), a pretty girl with psychokinetic powers (Invisible Woman, Marvel Girl), some muscle (the Thing, the Beast), and a Mr. Cold (Iceman) instead of a Mr. Hot (the Human Torch). I guess the main difference here is that the whole team are supposed to be teens. Or, as the cover again heralds, “the most unusual teen-agers of all time . . .” I never thought of the X-Men as teens because they weren’t in the comics I read as a kid. But again they were just starting out here (the volume collects X-Men #1-10) and Marvel was appealing directly to a teen audience. Even Namor and Professor X have faces that make them look all of about 15 years old. Iceman is the youngest, for which he is mocked and even addressed as a “teen-age brat of a mutant” by Unus the Untouchable, but I don’t see how he can be much younger than the others if they are all teens. We’re told at one point that he’s 16, so he might still be in high school whereas the others are the equivalent of college freshmen, if any of them actually go to a real school.

So the “gang” (as they refer to themselves) were still finding their way. That’s clearest in the character of the Beast, who begins not as the blue gorilla he later transformed into but a wisecracker more like Ben Grimm. But then starting in X-Men #3 he’s shown reading an Advanced Calculus textbook and his vocabulary takes a big jump up. As a character he’s found his voice, and it won’t be long before he’ll be calling Namor a “piscatorial pirate.” That’s the Beast we all know.

Given how much I like (1) early Marvel comics, and (2) the X-Men franchise, I thought I would enjoy this a lot more. The thing is, I didn’t know the early X-Men well, aside from the odd costumes. But I think you would have been hard pressed in the mid-1960s to see anything in this series. They just aren’t very good comics. A lot of the super powers on display – like the psychokinesis of Marvel Girl and Magneto, the thought projections of Professor X, and the repulsion force of Unus – are invisible energy fields that can only be represented by squiggly lines. I think every issue has a page or two or three set in the training area of the Danger Room, and these are dull and repetitive filler. The budding love between Scott (Cyclops) and Jean (Marvel Girl) is schmaltzy true romance stuff. He thinks: “If only I could tell her the words I really want to say! How gorgeous her lips are . . . how silken her hair is . . . how I love her! But, I dare not . . .” She thinks: “I can’t listen to my own heart! I must be detached . . . unemotional!” When he is injured she indulges further: “Oh, Scott! My heart just breaks when I see you so pale, so shaken! If only I could comfort you with my arms . . . my lips . . . But I know I mustn’t! As our acting leader, you’ve no time for thoughts of romance! If only we were ordinary humans . . . free to follow the urgings of our hearts! But, I mustn’t allow myself such hopeless dreams.” And he thinks: “When she stands this close to me, I forget everything but my desire to reach out . . . to embrace her!”

They definitely don’t write comics like that anymore. And that’s progress. I mean, in one startling aside we even find out that Professor X is pining after Jean but dares not express his love for her. And that’s creepy.

So here’s the first ten issues of The X-Men and they’re really not very good. There are a surprising number of typos in the text. There’s more interesting drama going on in Magneto’s League of Evil Mutants than there is among the gifted teens. And when your best villain is a truculent, unmoveable force like the Blob and supplemental figures like the Tarzan rip-off Ka-Zar are your guest headliners, then it just feels like a lot of B-listers are duking it out. I mean, get a load of the Vanisher’s costume! Is he supposed to be dressed as a flower? Even the source of the team’s name is kind of dumb: “I call my students . . . X-Men, for Ex-tra power!” Sheesh. They really needed Wolverine.

I did get a smile though out of the Vanisher demanding ten million dollars “tax-free” from the government. Because what supervillain wants to pay taxes on his blackmail money?

Graphicalex