Today's edition of Marvel 1964 Week will be guest-written by the biggest X-Fan I know, my nephew Myron Q. Oglethrorpe!! He knows his X-Men inside and out, and he should have a gas telling us why September 1964 was so cool. Take it away, Myron!!Thank you, Uncle snell. Today, I have been given the privilege of showing you this comic:
And boy, does this comic suck!!Seriously, in 1964, they obviously had NOOOO conception of how to tell an X-Men story!! What a bunch of lame amateurs!!
[snell here....Uhh, Myron, you're talking about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby here, the guys who actually invented the X-Men. Shouldn't you show them some respect??]
No, Uncle, and let me show you why:
I mean, just look at that!![Uh, what's wrong with it?]
Well, first of all, Magneto and his group wouldn't call themselves evil. They just take a different, tragic path, and most of them will turn to good...and back to bad...and back to good...that's how characterization works!!
Secondly, just look at that X-Men line-up!! I mean, come on!!
[Uhhh...what about it, Myron? That's the original line-up.]
Yeah, but there are NO members from alternate timelines; NO members from hypothetical futures; NO members from other dimensions!!! Seriously, how can you have a heroic team if you don't throw in members who constantly remind you of how awful and tragic and nasty things could be? Sheesh.
And then there's this guy:
Yeah, the Blob. Shoot him with a cannon, prove how tough he was, whatever.If Stan Lee were any kind of writer, he'd have the Blob do something radical, like eat the Wasp--that'd establish his street cred!! But he's got no balls!!
[Myron!!]
And check this out:
The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are all over this book, but Lee is too chicken-shit to even hint at incest. Lame!![OK, Myron, that's just about enough...]
And a story that's done in one issue? And doesn't continue over multiple titles? And doesn't have an "X-" or "Ex" in the title?? Do these people even know how to do a mutant comic book?!?!?!?
[Myron, I'm pulling the plug on this...]
And not once, not even for a second, are any of our heroes tempted by their darker side, or have to fight and restrain their hidden evil!! How can you have have a mutant comic without the mutants constantly opining how hard it is not to be evil?!?!?!
[Goodbye, Myron...]
And not once does any human oppress mutants...what kind of X-Men story doesn't wallow in how awful humans are?!?
And Cyclops isn't even making it with hot chicks who wear minimal clothing? What the....
[Adios.]
Sorry about that, readers, I guess Myron just wasn't ready for the big leagues yet.
Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes, it's graduation day at Xavier's school!!
I've mentioned this before, but man, when it came to the X-Men, Kirby designed the most godawful costumes ever. I mean, those things are terrible. Even the letter writers agree:
Professor X uses this occasion to take a leave of absence from the school:
He's probably just going to Hooters or something...but no surprise, he picks Scott Summers as the team leader...
...and shows him the first appearance of:
Just to prove what a great leader he is, two pages later, Scott forgets Cerebro's damn name:
D'oh!!And it takes barely 5 minutes for Scott to metamorphose into a total pill.
Meanwhile, back in Magneto's secret lair, we find out that the villains dress even worse than the heroes:
And witness as Magneto, homo superior, master of magnetism...hurls a chamber pot at Mastermind:
Then, as Magneto does his Reservoir Dogs walk through the carnival:
Uhh, Mags, you could appear pretty much anywhere with impunity, if you just took off the damn costume. Seriously, do you never do laundry?He's there to recruit the Blob, which leads to tonight's Tuesday Night Raw:
Well, you know that's not going to go well for Blobbie...and the resulting beat-down stirs his Xavier-altered memory:
Meanwhile, in a scene that has nothing to do with anything, the Beast and Iceman are out on the town, and a group of batty beatniks decides to start worshiping Hank McCoy's feet. Seriously:
What, you thought I was making that up? Next, we get Magneto's idea of a trap...just broadcast a message and wait for your enemy to show up:
The X-Men are startled to find the Blob there when when they arrive, and while they wear themselves out battling him:
Magneto throws torpedoes at them!! Really--torpedoes!
Of course, that doesn't work. And the Beast discovers Blob's secret weakness: dirt!!
Tired of waiting, Magneto hurls the last batch of missiles at the X-Men, even thought the Blob is standing right there:
Ah, Magneto, you truly are an idiot.
Of course, despite still having the upper hand, the Brotherhood flees, while Maggy crafts new strategery for next time.
The Blob, despite a second offer to join the X-Men, decides that he's tired of the reindeer games:
Cue the David Banner music...And so endeth a typical early X-men affair: not much angst, no "metaphors" bashed into our heads, no cannibalism or incest, no characters from aother portion of the space time continuum, without anybody vacillating infinitely between good and evil. Geez, it's no wonder the series never caught on.
ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:
Not all Marvel output was superheroes back in the day:
Even though you could be hard pressed to tell. Villains named Scorpion and Doctor Danger, breathless cover copy...change costumes and this western cover could just as easily be any Marvel superhero cover of the era.[Was he the one that was gay?]
Shut up, Myron.
Ladies & Gentlemen, The Blob showing off his awesome power of just standing there!
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I don't recall that his feet actually adhered to what he was standing on. Did they evre show that aspect of his power again?
Yeah, later writers never really played that up, but it was established in his first story (X-Men #3) that he had his own "gravitational pull" when using his powers. When he was concentrating, you could break up the ground he was standing on, but you couldn't disconnect him from it.
ReplyDeleteWell, Myron the Fanboy of Straw does touch on some valid points of criticism, some of them even visible to a 1960s reader.
ReplyDeleteRe. the Magneto's band: "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" is a stupid name to choose and the later reinterpretation that Magneto used it "ironically" couldn't save it. (Of course that was the level of writing you expected from comics at the time, but I don't really consider that an excuse). Back then, Magneto's character was pretty pedestrian even in comparison to other villains, they never really bothered about his origin or motivation in the 1960s. He was basically a cool costume and powers.
BTW, I think it would have been funnier if Myron had seen Wanda speaking of Pietro as her "beloved brother" as implying an incestual relationship (and in the 1960s Quicksilver's protective attitude towards his sister could be downright creepy at times).
"Geez, it's no wonder the series never caught on."
And there you almost wrote "no wonder the series was cancelled and went into reprint", eh?
The Blob's "gravitational pull" power was used quite well by Chris Claremont during the "Freedom Force" incarnation of the Brotherhood, when Rogue and Colossus managed to take him out in spite of it during the early 200s of UXM.