Featuring: X-Men Release: May 5, 1964 Cover: July 1964 12 cents Written: With the flair of Stan Lee Drawn: With the air of Jack Kirby Inked: With the care of Chic Stone Lettered: On a dare by S. Rosen 22 pages
Once again, we see that Namor and Hulk are the binding that holds this nascent Marvel Universe together. Most of the heroes haven’t met each other, but they’ve almost all met Hulk or Namor. (Daredevil hasn’t met either yet, but we’ve only read two issues; he’ll meet Namor soon.)
My confusion about what to call Magneto’s group remains. It’s becoming clearer that “Evil Mutants” is how Xavier and the narrator refer to them. It’s less clear what they would call themselves. They were called the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” on the cover, and in the title, of their first appearance; however, that name has never shown up in-story.
Featuring: X-Men Release: March 3, 1964 Cover: May 1964 12 cents Spell-binding story by: Stan Lee Dazzling drawing by: Jack Kirby Inking: Paul Reinman Lettering: S. Rosen 24 pages
They’ve redesigned the cover box to make room for Beast.
The story begins right where the last issue left off, but then has a bit of time jump mid-story. It opens with a strange piece of narration. The narrator tells us Professor X “seemed” to lose his powers. Interesting phrasing. Why not just say Professor X lost his powers? Unless you know something about this issue’s twist ending I don’t.
I would warn you that spoilers follow, but I would argue the opening page narration has already spoiled the whole story.
Featuring: X-Men Release: January 3, 1964 Cover: March 1964 12 cents Sensational script by: Stan Lee Dynamic drawings by: Jack Kirby Imaginative inking by: Paul Reinman Legible lettering by: Art Simek 23 pages
The Scarlet Witch seems to be wearing green on the cover.
Pedantic notice. The title of this comic is “The X-Men”. After 3 issues, I decided I was tired of typing that. It’s easier to just call it “X-Men”. I will be doing that from now on. Same for “The Avengers”. I’d already been doing that for “The Amazing Spider-Man” without really thinking it through.
I should be paying more attention to the taglines. They are dubbed “X-Men: The most unusual teen-agers of all time!” Last issue had the same subheading. In #2, it was “the strangest super-heroes of all time. The covers of the first two issues dubbed them the “strangest super-heroes of all”.
I feel it should be pointed out that we’ve already met some pretty darn unusual teenagers, notably Human Torch and Spider-Man. So the tagline may be somewhat hyperbolic.
This issue introduces the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Not what I would name my group of mutants. And it’s not clear who, if anybody, named them that. The cover of the comic and the title of the comic call the group that, but the group is not named within the story.
Professor X calls them “evil mutants”, but he has often referred to “evil mutants”. I could never tell if he was speaking generically, or specifically referring to Magneto’s group. I still can’t.
Designation issues aside, introducing a team of villains to battle the X-Men is a good idea, since they themselves are a team. It’s hard to show a team always fighting against a single individual, even though that’s mostly what the Fantastic Four have done. It’s a bit surprising they are yet to come up with a team of villains for them. They’ve come close. Red Ghost had his Super Apes, and that was now four, er, members who could each match one member of the FF. But I have trouble counting that as a team since they are apes. Dr. Doom recruited the Terrible Trio, so again we had 4 people, each meant to face off with one FF member; but that was not so much a team of super-villains as it was Doom and three henchmen.
