Marvel 1968 Week--X-Men #46

Of course, we couldn't do a whole week celebrating Marvel 1968 without taking a look at that comic book juggernaut, that publishing phenomenon known as the X-Men.

But, perhaps surprisingly to those too young to remember, The X-Men wasn't a juggernaut back then. Indeed, it was a back burner title, almost an afterthought. Mutant hysteria amongst comics fans was still a decade away. Believe it or not, there was one, and only one, X-title published in 1968, and that one was plagued by crappy sales. How crappy, you might ask? So crappy that in 1970, even though Neal Adams had been drawing the book for a year, the book was canceled, and was later resurrected as a reprint-only, bi-monthly mag. That's right, kiddies--for a 5-year+ period, there were NO new X-men stories. Kinda hard to believe, if you look at the comics shelves today.

So, getting back to 1968, we have a "chicken or the egg" question--did the X-Men have bad sales because lesser talents were being assigned to it, or were lesser talents being assigned to it because of low sales? Only Stan knows. But a look at the credits box for X-Men #68 shows us that none of the Marvel A-team were involved:

Not to pick on Gary Friedrich and Don Heck and Werner Roth, but Lee/Kirby or Thomas/Buscema this ain't, as we'll see.

We start at the funeral of Professor X:

Yes, his funeral. He's dead. Really dead. D-E-D. Kaput. Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary story. How do we know this? Because the letters page tells us so:

Of course, this just goes to show us that retcons are nothing new...within two years a new regime would reveal that Charles had been alive the whole time!! Let's watch as our heroes pine for their late teacher:

What, Bobby Drake doesn't get to mourn?? That's just cold...This panel also show us that retcon-induced continuity snafus are nothing new, either...the same issue that revives Charles will tell us that Jean Grey knew all along that he was alive. Which means what, she was lying to herself in this panel??

We go off for the reading of his will (because he's really dead), and look, a special guest star:

Oh, Foggy, are you slumming again? Well, the will has no surprises, so let's skip ahead to...the Crimson Cosmos!!:

Ah, our good friend Cain Marko, Xavier's half-brother, the dreaded Juggernaut!! He's where the X-Men last left him, exiled to the Crimson Cosmos (home dimension of the Ruby of Cytorrak, don't you know?). Well, he's not getting out...

Uh-oh.

A brief interlude. I've always suspected that one reason the 1960's X-Men never caught on was their lame-ass costumes. The first set, all blue (or black, depending on the printing that month) & yellow and hideous, were not one of Jack Kirby's greatest moments, and subsequent artists couldn't make them look any better. Then they were these weird, discordant, day-glo colored outfits, and nobody particularly matched anybody, and they looked like refugees from a bad kiddie cartoon. And then came this, my personal nomination for the worst super-hero costume of all time:


Ah, Warren, that is...eye-meltingly bad. Shudder.

Back to our story. Marko's facing a big hurdle in his quest for revenge against Xavier:

Of course, he doesn't believe it, and since he was going to kill the X-Men anyway, well, his belief that they're lying to him just gives him extra incentive.

There follows a long, extended battle replete with ridiculously bad storytelling. This is a perfect example of telling instead of showing. Example one:

You'd think it was pretty clear from the artwork that Juggernaut was hurtling a piece of machinery at Scott. But either because he thought the art wasn't clear enough, or because he couldn't think of anything else to say, Friedrich has Scott narrate this to us as if it were a book on tape, instead of, you know, a comic book with pictures. Example two:

Same deal...instead of using dialogue to compliment the pictures, Friedrich is just using it to repeat what we already see. His words are adding nothing to the fight scenes!! And these are only two examples...this goes on throughout the book...Well, Juggernaut eventually discovers that Charles is dead (really! Truly!) and has a super-freak out, including a never before seen power (and never since seen, or even explained):


So how do our heroes defeat the unstoppable foe?


Ah, yes, the from-beyond-the-grave deus ex machina.

Anyway, this FBI agent has been trying to meet with the X-Men all issue and kept getting interrupted. Well, now is our chance to find out what the hell he wanted:


Whaa??? Aside from the torrent of illogic here...no, not aside, let's look at the illogic. How does what happened here "prove" that they'll become a target for evil mutants? Juggernaut isn't a mutant, and he didn't come back because Xavier was dead--quite the opposite!!

Not to mention, what power does an FBI agent have to order the X-Men to disband? But, pussies that they are, the X-Men agree, giving us one last bit of Scott/Jean soap opera before they leave:

Don't you just want to smack their heads together??

The last few pages of the book are taken up by the regular back-up feature of this period:

Now, you'd think that, since they're mutants, the origin would be: "They're born, The end." But they're actually looking at when their powers first manifested, and how they got recruited to the X-Men. This issue features Cyclops rescuing young Bobby Drake from a lynch mob. Meh.

All in all, pretty tepid, non-involving stuff, with lackluster art, terrible storytelling, an ineffective super-team, and a lame ending. But in a few months, Roy Thomas and Neal Adams would come on board, and at least things would get prettier and more interesting before the end.

For some cheap irony, here's Stan's Soapbox from the month:

Given the amount of books Marvel has been releasing lately, and the amount of grief they've been getting for it form some quarters, I find it amusing that Stan had to apologize in 1968 for putting out about a dozen non-reprint super-hero comics per month. Hell, I'm too lazy to count, but I'm willing to wager that there will be more X-related books released this month than Marvel's ENTIRE monthly line in 1968. My, how things change in 40 years...

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

At least one corner of the Marvel Universe wasn't stagnating into mediocrity, as were the X-Men; Steranko was going NUTS over in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. From the Bullpen Bulletins: "On an incredible island--amid such danger as mortal man has never witnessed--the redoubtable leader of Shield must must defeat the monsters who defied evolution--or perish!" The story's title was "So Shall Ye Reap...DEATH!" Steranko would come on board to do a few X-Men covers and (I think) just one interior before the year was out...

Thursday, in the 40-year retrospective that no one could stop, we'll take on--Iron Man!!