Origin Story: Third Time's a Bore
As innovative a creator and enthusiastic a personality Stan Lee is, it is quite clear by issue 19 of the X-Men that he had pretty much run out of ideas. The Mimic is innovative, sure, but his origin story is fundamentally no different from Xavier's origin and Beast's origin: atomic or chemical explosion/accident followed by dominance at everything in school coupled with loss of social acceptance. Not only does Calvin Rankin copy the powers around him, but his story is a re-hash of most stories we've seen already. The issue does have a good premise with Rankin as the Mimic, as I said before, but Lee fails to follow through in a meaningful way. He is clearly a mutant (even he knows it), but Cerebro doesn't register him as one. The X-Men give up on their defeat of Rankin too quickly, perhaps because of their hubris at the beginning of the issue with their too-easy training. They had a vacation cut short again and seem to be sick of being X-Men for some reason. Things are too easy, even when confronted by their own powers - the only thing too difficult is having successful romantic lives. Xavier finishes up the re-hashed episode with once again mind-wiping the foe, this time while he is already down and unconscious from the trickery of Rankin's dad and power-absorbing machine that still works after being buried in rubble for an undisclosed period of time. If that wasn't enough, the teaser for the next issue promises the return of three old villains: Unus, the Blob, and Lucifer - that's supposed to be exciting? It was time for a writing change.
