Featuring: X-Men
Release: December 8, 1966
Cover: February 1967
12 cents
Stan Lee… editor
Roy Thomas… scripter
Werner Roth… artist
John Tartaglione… inker
Sam Rosen… letterer
Irving Forbush… skating instructor
20 pages
| Previous | #649 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Amazing Spider-Man #46 | Reading order | Sgt. Fury #39 |
| X-Men #28 | X-Men | X-Men #30 |
Funny… it took an inhuman, emotionless thing like the Super-Adaptoid… to make me realize the true value of the emotion called… friendship!
We haven’t seen many seasons yet in our years of Marvel reading. But now it’s clearly winter. We’ll think at the end of the post about what that means for our continuity.
Jean is in town for the weekend from college. Going off to college seemed like a way of sidelining her from the series, but she’s managed to miss very few adventures.
We learn Warren is recovering from his accident.
And see Scott standing alone and aloof off to the side while his teammates enjoy themselves.
Cyclops goes off alone to practice control of his optic blasts. Such control is necessary if he and Jean are to have a future. But it may be his emotions about Jean which cause his control to fail.
His failed practice awakens the Super-Adaptoid. Who plans to transmute people into his android slaves. Or such.
Iceman is very poor at ice-skating. Is that irony? I’ll check with Alanis. The problem is the skates. Wearing his normal shoes and in his ice form, he is very good at ice-skating.
Iceman fights the Super-Adaptoid then goes home to tell the X-Men about it. But none of them believe he may have encountered a powerful super-villain. As though the world isn’t crawling with them at this point.
Mimic considers the Super-Adaptoid’s offer to become an android. Which seems absurd to me. At first I assumed we were about to learn he had a clever ruse in mind. But no, he was considering becoming an android. Why?
Anyways, Cyclops talks him out of it.
Mimic can’t mimic the Adaptoid’s powers. Makes sense. Mimic mimics mutants, and the Super-Adaptoid is an android. But then we learn the Adaptoid can’t duplicate Mimic’s powers. Because they are “artificial”. Huh? He’s mimicked the powers of Captain America, Goliath, and Wasp. Whose powers are also artificial. And he’s mimicked the “powers” of Hawkeye, who just has training. So I’m not sure what the issue is here.
But it’s a big enough issue that the Super-Adaptoid loses all his Avengers-based powers and turns back into the regular Adaptoid.
The Angel flies to catch Mimic. The first time we’ve seen him fly since his accident. Or, his “accident”.
It’s worth noting that a battle between Mimic and the Super-Adaptoid is basically a battle between the X-Men and Avengers in a microcosm. The groups will actually battle eventually.
Perhaps even sooner than that…
This story ended way too fast. The X-Men were incapacitated, but Mimic came in to save the day. Held his own against the Super-Adaptoid, but was left powerless. However, his battle gave the X-Men time to recover. That’s a good story set-up. It should have led to a great battle between the X-Men and the Super-Adaptoid. Instead, we ran out of pages. So the Super-Adaptoid was also randomly defeated by trying to absorb Mimic’s “artificial” powers, so there is nothing for the X-Men to do when they recover.
Dumb ending.
The Mimic seems to have permanently lost his powers from the battle, so this may be the end of the Mimic.
Sometimes these titles directly or indirectly cross over and that helps us line them up in time. The X-Men have had fairly separated adventures, so we see less of that.
They fight a Captain America foe in this issue, which places it after that story. The Super-Adaptoid refers to his fight with Captain America as “weeks ago”, but I am suspicious of such specific references.
The other thing that helps us line things up is school years. Spider-Man, Human Torch, and the X-Men are all about the same age and graduated high school together. The X-Men were at a very nontraditional school, but now Jean is at a traditional college. In fact, the same college as the Human Torch.
Now I don’t know what winter in upstate New York means. Where I live, snow on the ground means anytime between November and May. The narrator specifically calls this “early winter”. November? Early December?
Angel’s comment that Jean is visiting for the weekend suggests this is not winter break.
So I’m not concluding much here. Just making a note for the record that it is winter in what I believe is still Jean’s, Peter’s, and Johnny’s first year at university.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆, 39/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
Scans are from a reprint in X-Men #77, 1972. Cover is courtesy of the GCD.
Characters:
- Mimic/Calvin Rankin
- Beast/Hank McCoy
- Iceman/Robert “Bobby” Drake
- Angel/Warren
- Marvel Girl/Jean “Jeanie”
- Cyclops/Scott
- Super-Adaptoid
- Professor X
Story notes:
- Carol Heiss and Iceman Cometh reference (in same sentence!)
- X-Men go ice-skating.
- Jean visiting from college for the weekend.
- Warren fully recovered from accident.
- Scott and Mimic only two not putting on ice skates.
- Warren would have been more injured, but Cyclops had weakened the beam, which makes him wonder if he is gaining more mental control over his beams.
- Cyclops notes that even his eyelids once couldn’t stop the rays.
- Cyclops goes off alone to test his control, and fails. Perhaps because his emotions about Jean are out of control. He accidentally starts a rock slide.
- Tunnels once used to store ammunition by the British during the Revolutionary War are now the home of the Super-Adaptoid. Cyclops’ rock slides disturbs the lair.
- Super-Adaptoid no longer wishes for AIM to retake control of him.
- Super-Adaptoid ten feet tall.
- Super-Adaptoid still thinks he destroyed Captain America.
- Super-Adaptoid’s other goal had been to evolve other beings like himself and then conquer the world. He intends to rule a planet of androids. First, he will test his powers of transmutation.
- Super-Adaptoid thinks he can turn Iceman into an Adaptoid.
- Super-Adaptoid doesn’t know about ice, and falls through.
- Super-Adaptoid objects to being called a robot, when he is the product of years of bio-chemical research.
- Mimic has officially transferred from Metro to Xavier’s school.
- Mimic and the other X-Men get in a fight.
- Professor X kicks Mimic out of school because of his ego.
- Factor Three a secret European group Professor X had been preparing them for.
- Behind the mysterious locked oaken door lies Xavier’s greatest secret and most tragic failure.
- The Super-Adaptoid attacks the X-Men during a game of football, intending to transmute them into copies of himself.
- Adaptoid’s shield deflects Cyclops’ beam.
- Cyclops compares his powers to Mimic.
- Adaptoid can only create Androids from willing subjects. Instead he decides to make pantographic tracing of the X-Men to add their powers to his own.
- Mimic unable to mimic Adaptoid’s powers because they are artificial.
- Transmutation process involves special cellectric rays, which change the body cells and nerve endings into solid state components…
- Mimic considers becoming an Adaptoid, but Cyclops warns him he’ll be a slave.
- Mimic lets Super-Adaptoid know Captain America still lives.
- Super-Adaptoid hopes to copy Mimic’s powers and thus get all the X-Men’s powers. But it doesn’t work.
- Mimic uses Professor X’s telepathic power to plant a suggestion in the Adaptoid’s mind.
- Angel catches Mimic, whose wings have faded.
- Backlash from trying to absorb Mimic drained Super-Adaptoid’s circuits. He changes back into the form of merely the Adaptoid, losing Wasp’s wings.
- Mimic has lost his powers, but saved the world. He reconciles with the X-Men.
| Previous | #649 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Amazing Spider-Man #46 | Reading order | Sgt. Fury #39 |
| X-Men #28 | X-Men | X-Men #30 |
