X-Men

In this very first issue, we get introductions from Professor Xavier, his X-Men, the Danger Room, and the villain Magneto. The X-Men are training in the Danger Room when Professor X summons them to introduce their new member, Marvel Girl. All the guys are smitten with her and try to impress her (except for Cyclops who is all insecure with himself and stuff). Meanwhile, Magneto is concocting a diabolical plan that involves stealing a U.S. military base. The X-Men come to the rescue of the soldiers and beat Magneto off the base.
 
For a first issue, I really enjoyed this even though it is average writing and art. The old school slang and references entertained me and wasn't too outdated for me. The characters were all interesting especially Iceman (the comic relief) and Cyclops who is super serious all the time and burdened with the responsibility of leading the team. I also liked seeing Professor X's mutant boot camp training sessions in the Danger Room which showed that the team has skills and isn't just a bunch of amateurs thrown together to fight evil. As a first villain, Magneto was impressive as well, and he only gets better as time goes on which is more than I can say for some of the other villains coming up in this series. Overall, decent showing for a first issue.  

The X-Men series gets a decent start with the introductions of Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, Magneto, Marvel Girl, and Professor X. While not exactly an origin story for any them, it helps establish a few facts 
 
*Professor X is loaded, with a private mansion, a modified Rolls Royce and a jet. He gives a brief mention of both of his parents working in the Atomic bomb project. Too bad this clue will only be explored further in his father's origin instead of his mother's. He mentions facing prejudice in his younger years and now comes off as a rather harsh taskmaster. 
 
*Cyclops is extremely serious, voices concern over his mentor's safety, berates his teammates and his force beams prove extreely useful in combat situations. This does not prevent him from fawning over Marvel Girl as "a living doll".  
 
*Angel is rather fast but not a particularly impressive fighter. In fact Cyclops has to rescue him from Magneto. On the other hand the issue mentions how restrained he feels with having to hide his wings. He also starts drooling over the redhead's face "and the rest of her".  
 
*Beast comes off as hot-headed and picks up fights with his teammates. An early attempt to get overly affectionate with Marvel Girl sends him flying. Giving him both a fascination and some evident fear of her. 
 
*Iceman keeps complaining that Professor X keeps treating him as a kid for being the youngest. He also establishes himself as the comedian of the group. Yet in combat he is easily among the best, single-handedly taking down most of Magneto's missiles. Not bad at all. A curious little scene has him as the only guy not paying attention to Marvel Girl's arrival, commenting "A Girl... Big Deal". Either not interested in girls yet or the confusion concerning his sexuality was established much earlier than the 1980s Defenders.
 
*Marvel Girl is soon established as the object of almost everyone's affections and being quite capable of handling the boys. Also the only character who actually questions Professor X about his motives.  
 
*For an "Evil Mutant", Magneto comes off as a big softy. he takes control of machine guns, tanks and missiles located at a military base. But he doesn't attempt to kill or wound the soldiers. Just intimidate them.  With that kind of equipment you'd figure he was a bit more ambitious. 
 
Now lets take a look wit the problems of this issue. If you were expecting any kind of background firmly established on the characters, social, financial, etc, you won't find it here. Their motivations also remain vague. There is some mention of parents but none is actually introduced. There are numerous soldiers running around but nobody is getting named and none gets set up as a a supporting character.  
 
Even bigger problems. Stan Lee has apparently have some problems grasping at what his own characters' powers could do. Jean Grey's telekinesis is termed "teleportation", Charles Xavier's telepathy can drive around airplanes', Magneto seems to also be telekinetic and performs similarly to Jean, Cyclops' optic beams are described as "natural" when opposed to Magneto's unnatural "magnetic field". Best of all a panel explains that ice is attracted to speed. Come again?  
 
Decent start, but character exploration will have to wait.

Writing a review of a 47-year-old comic book would be very difficult under normal circumstances, but writing one for something like this, the first issue of the X-Men, is nearly impossible unless we can agree to judge it only by the standards of its age, not by ours. The dialogue may seem cheesy to us, the art foreign, and the characterization wholly alien, but when we remove the scope of the modern lens, we can start to truly understand this book. That being said, however, this issue is not perfect, and, even for its day it was not popular--it was only after 1975 that X-Men became a huge selling point for Marvel--so let's see what we can make of this, nearly half a century later. 
 
What was good? 
Now that the X-Men are extremely popular, it is rather fun to look all the way back to the beginning and study the foundation for our favorite team of mutants. In this issue alone, we are introduced to a number concepts and characters that are still very relevant--a testament the faithfulness of continuity and a respect for the past. We see first appearances of five of our favorite X-Men, and of course, the magnificent Magneto--a legendary figure in his own right. What's important to note, however, is that in this issue, nothing exists of the characters as we know them. Magneto is a ridiculously dressed megalomaniac, Professor X is a grumpy, stern disciplinarian, and the dialogue for the individual X-Men could all be interchanged--no "voice" had been created for each character yet--all understandable. The real question is: did the original X-Men, Magneto, and Professor X eventually become so popular because of their great start, or rather decades of characterization? I'm leaning more toward the latter.  
 
What was bad?  
As I mentioned earlier, this title was not very popular in its original run. At one point, new issues were even cancelled and Marvel began reprinting older issues for a few years. Then, all of the sudden, Giant Size X-Men came out in 1975 with an "all new, all-different" team that skyrocketed the popularity of the X-Men. In this fact alone, I believe I can pin-point why this first incarnation of the team was not popular--there is no diversity. What made Giant Size so great was the addition of characters from all around the world; in this issue, we are given 5 WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon protestant) teenagers who were supposed to mirror the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., and it didn't go over well. You could say "but there was a big difference in the prevailing attitude of society between 1963 and 1975!" Well, you'd be right, but even in the mid sixties the Original Star Trek series had a crew that was completely multi-racial and audiences loved it.  
 
What was ugly? 
Take a look at the lettering gaffe on page 20, where Magneto says "Wrong, general!". The letterer covers Magneto up with his own word bubble so that all we see are his legs--yikes! Also, I thoroughly can't stand that Stan Lee put exclamation points after every sentence. That's just bad scripting in my opinion. 
 
What's the verdict? 
3.5/5 While we must pay homage to the single issue that started it all and that introduced such iconic characters, this issue does not hold up to its legendary status when examined on its own and without the bias of thirty years of X-Men popularity. 

Little remains to be said about this issue, especially after byzantine's rather thorough summary and review.  One thing that stood out to me when re-reading this again was the meticulous precision Xavier requires: three seconds for this, three seconds for that.  I suppose that is a good tactic, but their training sessions in the first few issues seem so brief it's hard to tell when they actually do their real training (in between issues/major battles, most likely).   Another noteworthy element is their teenage antics and rivalries.  It's easy to forgot after so many decades' worth of issues and stories that they started out as petulant, hormone-driven, brash neophytes.  Bobby Drake, in his snowman form, plays the class clown well; his antagonism with Warren is intriguing, almost as much as his disinterest in Jean's arrival.  Warren is as overconfident as the rest, despite the fact all they've done is train in Xavier's study (not even the basement, let alone called the Danger Room yet).  Hank is not yet the mathematical/scientific genius that he becomes soon - he is just a muscle-bound gruff that takes no orders from "Slim" Summers.  They really are not a team at this point.  We do not yet know how long they have been doing this, but it must have been some time - even though Jean is thrown into combat with Magneto on her first day at the school!  The cockiness of the X-Men combined with Xavier's willingness to just send them against Magneto makes for an odd beginning point on reflection, but there is none of Xavier and Magneto's backstory here, not yet.  Xavier knows there are evil mutants in the world, but we don't know how he knows this yet.  Perhaps the oddest thing is the army's appreciation for what the X-Men do - no real antagonism for the X-Men yet (though maybe they weren't paying attention and don't think the X-Men are mutants).  It is quite telling reading this so close to having read Graphic Novel #4 and the premiere of the New Mutants - despite their success against Magneto, Xavier's reticence to let the New Mutants combat evil mutants makes this original mission of the real first class of X-Men almost foolhardy.  Other little details make this more quaint than anything else: Xavier's Rolls Royce, the mind-powered airplane, Magneto's Wicked Witch of the West impersonation with the message in the sky, Cyclops's slicing through Magneto's magnetic waves - strange, in retrospect.  At least "The Dream" of humans and mutants living in harmony is there from the beginning.  We shouldn't expect fifty years of accretions and connections to be there from the premiere.  Another positive is that the absence of clear origins allows for more detailed character development later on.  It's a good start, all in all.

So by now it's been, what, six months since Marvel's newest full-time superhero made his debut in Tales of Suspense 39? So yeah, it's about time we got somebody new to read about now that The Incredible Hulk has been sent packing—and that we do. In fact, we get six new heroes somewhat out of the blue here with the introduction of the X-Men.

As far as origin stories go, this one is one of the better ones so far (behind Spider-Man and Iron Man), though you can tell that Stan and company view the property as a kind of extension on the Fantastic Four formula that's been funding their wage-cheques over the past year. Obvious similarities aside however, the new gang of heroes still come across as fresh and somewhat distinctive, even if much of the story's narrative sticks to the same beats we've been reading for a while now.

What works is the issues opening half which sees the mutants at Professor X's academy going through tests of their abilities before newbie Jean Grey (Marvel Girl)crashes the party and turns all the guys into embarrassing chauvinist caricatures and herself into another Sue Storm, albeit with a better powerset. What doesn't quite work as well is the latter half which sees the new superteam battle it off with long-term nemesis Magneto who follows the Villains Handbook of Villainy to a T. It's predictable and a little drab, despite having all these new abilities to toy with—nothing exciting really happens.

With that said however, X-Men comes across as a welcome and off-beat take on the Fantastic Four formula that is definitely still to find its own legs (specifically in the art style which right now is lifeless and lacking punch) but which will hopefully offer a decent alternative to what else is out there. Watch this space, I guess.

For full reviews complete with digitally recovered covers and art work, visit http://manicmarvel.tumblr.com/

Overview  
It all started here, for X-Men. It feels odd reviewing such an old issue. Half the fun is just in how odd and old it is. Well I say half but really aside from the historic value its the main draw to me. Xavier has a school, but *gasp* its not like your typical school, its a school for wizards! Oh wait no, sorry, its a school for mutants. Iceman is the young, immature, jokester, (who also snows up and runs around naked in ice form throwing snow as his power) Angel is the rich handsome dude (who stuffs his shirt with wings) Beast is a thug gangster who also talks a good deal of smack and intellectual gibberish (wait I think thats his power) Cyclops plays the nice, albeit super serious guy (energy beams from eyes!) Oh and we are introduced to Jean in this issue, and she makes all the guys go gaga. (She also throws stuff around with her mind) Magneto attacks Cape Citadel (and does some fancy air writing mind you as well) X-men stop him, senior military guy thanks them etc pretty standard stuff (well today, i guess back then it was unique enough to launch a massive franchise) It was a pretty fun read, if only quirky and odd at parts. 

Random Musings  
Oh man, like Xavier refused to use his mouth for like half the book. He just communicated telepathically and not in the natural organic way. He was like keeping perfectly still with a blank, vacant, emotionless gaze. Am I the only one that found it creepy? He seemed way to at ease popping randomly into his students heads lol oh plus how rich do you have to be, to have like a mansion filled with Rube Goldberg machines? Its like some weird Japanese obstacle course game combined with some lame American obstacle course game inside his house. Oh and why is Beast so... so... who would know such a gentle, kind, blue ape/lion... uhm.. well I guess in retrospect. I always sort of knew that all the X-Boys were crushin on Jean Grey but some of them yikes. Magneto was total cheese bad guy as well, so a humble beginning for one of fictions best antagonists. I am going to keep a record of other little amusing tidbits as well. At certain sites people like to tease the idea of Iceman being gay and its so easy to see why.. this first issue alone is ripe for ribbing. In Iceman's first appearance/panel he is basically pole dancing... 
 
Moment of Pretty  
Oh my, just look at how Magneto writes his name with metallic particles? Isn't it so pretty? Its italicized and slanted and linked. Magneto strikes me as the type of boy to have a diary now based on this and then spending all day writing his own name with flowers and hearts around it. Anyway, we knew he was a prideful guy, but this prideful? 
 
Moment of... Innuendo (Oh yeaaah) 
I don't really need to explain the following, other than to offer its not the last time such actions occur... 
 
 
Worth Reading?  
Definitely. Especially if your a X-Men fan. I read mine in black and white but same effect for the most part. THe best parts are how dated everything is.