So This Happened
Frankenstein's monster, really? It's not as bad as the Spider-man issue, since it does have a nice moment at the beginning finally back training in the Danger Room (though it's a bit confusing why they get mad at Iceman for making it harder for Beast to train ... that should be the point, right? training for unexpected things?), and we do have a brief perhaps throwaway moment of some secrecy between Jean and Professor X with something they may or may not be working on. The rest, though ... ouch. The thought of combating Frankenstein's monster isn't intrinsically awful, but the amount of explanation (justification) Thomas has to go through using Xavier's mouth sets us up for disappointment from the beginning. I'd be totally willing to go along with "it was real, it's a real being, let's go get it." Instead we get "it must have been an android made by possibly a mutant in the previous century." Following this ludicrous preface, Xavier, knowing Bobby's ice power is the way to defeat the monster, tells him not to fight until the very end, after the X-Men have been nearly wiped out, after a great deal of NYC has been demolished, after a great number of civilians have been endangered: I'm starting to realize maybe mankind should hate and fear mutants, if this is the lackadaisical way Xavier is going to treat them (all the mindwiping, attacking the Army base's missiles in the previous couple of issues, letting the dangerous foes go on their merry way all of the time). This is especially true in the origins series: early Xavier is just having his way with everyone, though some nobody called Jack o' Diamonds is on the verge of destroying everything before it even begins (it would be too harsh, even for me, to analogize what Roy Thomas is doing to the X-Men here, since he's probably doing his best, what with the small staff and ever-burgeoning workload and all, though fortunately Archie Goodwin has arrived on the scene). The doctor who discovers the monster is never heard from again, but it almost doesn't matter since apparently the android has a self-destruct mechanism that goes off if he gets too cold (other than being trapped in the ice for a century), still giving Xavier enough time to read his mind (which he couldn't do earlier, since Xavier doesn't have the ability to control mechanical brains, at least in the first-half of their stories) to find out the Monster was created by race of multifarious space-travelling aliens (twice in two issues, Thomas?) who originally sent the monster as a goodwill reconnaissance ambassador. Somehow Mary Shelley found all this out, though we never learn when or how. It's all okay, though, since the X-Men are in it for the right reasons: safeguarding the world (except for the people who get in their way or are needed as bait to lure their enemies into more destructive situations). Ah, well.
