X-Men in 1966
Yeesh. After the end of the Sentinel origin, Iceman is in a coma and the remainder of the team is on the mend. Magneto somehow makes it back from the abandoned planet that The Stranger left him on. Magneto attempts a power play blah blah blah, and then Professor X contacts The Stranger, who gives chase to Magneto.
Sounds bad and can’t get worse? Buckle in. Cue new supervillain, Mimic, who has the powers of every X-Man. Because what’s cooler than five heroes with one power each, right? Then Unus the Untouchable and The Blob decide to impersonate the X-Men, while Professor X seeks vengeance upon a paper-thin Magneto caricature named Lucifer. They were so devoid of ideas at this point that they ripped themselves off.
At mid-year, Roy Thomas takes over the series from Stan Lee, but there doesn’t really seem to be any improvement. Clearly for Marvel, they don’t really know what to do with this series at this point, even though there’s a strong concept sitting right below the surface. I believe, before Neil Adams joined the series as a penciler, he made some comments to the effect that this era of the series was directionless.
Instead of strong direction against powerful, compelling villains, we get tussles against a giant robot named Colosso, The Eel, Plantman, and the Porcupine. The villains are so bad that they’re still waiting for Geoff Johns to breathe modern life into them.
