X-Men in 1968
In January, the X-Men faced off against Frankenstein, as if this was some sort of lame Scooby Doo tale. Yes, the episodic cavalcade of crappy comic villains continues again this year.
New uniforms for the team were previewed at the end of last year and effectively debuted this year. Beast and Iceman’s new suits were great, as were Cyclops and Jean’s, but Angel’s was a total dog. Woof. No one outside of David Lee Roth could pull off the red-suspenders-over-yellow-leotard look, though, to be fair.
Given the sheer length of time that Cyclops wore this exact uniform (two decades!), it’s a very comfortable feeling to see it on him. Anyway…
The next story is miles better but, then again, the bar for X-Men had gotten pretty low by this point. I hope 55+ years is enough time to drop a spoiler: Professor X is killed off in a two-part battle with Grotesk. Amazingly, this tale isn’t as straightforward as this franchise has been thus far; the villain has a literal death wish and wants to take out humanity with him. Professor Xavier, sensing a disease which is about to take his own life, decides to sacrifice himself to take out Grotesk. He enlists Jean to hold the team back, briefly alienating her from the rest of the group.
After the funeral, Magneto returns with his lackeys in tow. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were, by this time, in the Avengers as good guys, but were tricked by Magneto into working for him. Gotta tell ya, I really dislike the megalomaniacal version of Magneto. There’s no character at all in that shell-of-a-villain. But there’s actually a first that happens here: the story begins in an issue of X-Men, and then ends in Avengers. We’ve got a Marvel crossover, folks!
The team is contrived to break up against their will for a couple issues, leading to filler material. But after that, things get better. WAY better. We get Lorna Dane (aka Polaris), the iconic X-Men logo, some all-time-great covers by Jim Steranko, and even some issues drawn by Steranko himself. That green Polaris cover alone might be worth bumping this year’s total up a point or two.
Electrifying.
