Certificate X

We're inching closer to the summer holidays and I have plenty of nostalgic entries lined up here and on Materioptikon.This afternoon's post concerns the X-Men stories by Neal Adams.

 
While some consider the original X-Men to be a pallid imitation of the FF, they were my favourite characters in the Power Comics Era (which, coincidentally was pre-school from me). I discovered them in b/w Werner Roth reprints, when the preppy youngsters were pitted against lumbering, monstrous villains: The Ogre, The Super-Adaptoid, The Juggernaut and The Outcast.

 There was a "Scooby Doo" quality to the stories as youth and attractiveness was contrasted with the grotesque (or should that be Grotesk?). It would be another three or four years before I read reprints of the original Kirby/Lee issues with Magneto and his Brotherhood, where the austere school environment was counterpoint to the vagabond world of the circus.


 As a small child, then, I had the vaguest memories of the sci-fi psychedelia of Jim Steranko but the cinematic realism of Adams was a revelation. One of the most striking aspects of this run (reflected in the cover illustration ) is how exaggerated and freakish his mutants appear. In a previous post, I was quite dismissive of Roy Thomas and his verbose scripts for the 1980s All-Star Squadron. Here however, I believe he was at his peak, while also producing multiple issues of Avengers, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, Sub-Mariner and Captain Marvel. I'd also argue that, without the template of these issues, the Claremont-Byrne X-Men era might not have won its popularity.

This collection begins with the introduction of Alex Summers and his obscure link to King Tut-alike The Living Pharaoh. His alternate identity, the Living Monolith, is a bizarre and imposing figure but one who is defeated abruptly and it's never clear why or how the characters are connected. However, Adams revitalises the X-Men, particularly Cyke's optic beam, Jean's telepathy and The Avenging Angel's wings, which dominate many sequences. Angel is often the POV character in the book and his ascension to stardom is complete when he finally dons his simple, stylish costume in the Savage Land.


The Sentinels three-parter, besides ramping up the android threat to a planetary level,also functions as a Greatest Hits with cameos of virtually every mutant introduced in the series. The emotional lives of the team leap off the page as the staid romances of Roth's Archie X-Men become operatic with the return of green-haired Lorna Dane and the début of Havok. Alex Summers is another stunning design.

  I had never read the unedited final episode before, having seen only a bowdlerised version in this UK annual, and again Jean's powers become spectacularly visible. The tragedy of Larry Trask- who reminds me visually of a young Anthony Perkins- would eventually reach its climax in Thomas' final Avengers story of the 70s.


 I first encountered the next, new villain in the Claremont-Byrne stories:

The Sauron story reflects the impact of Tolkien in the youth counterculture. This pteranodon/man is both vampire and lycanthrope with a mind-control power which is reminiscent of several other X-baddies. He also foreshadows Man-Bat and Anthony Lupus ( but that's another story). This moody horror comic two-parter is somewhat unsatisfying since there's never a climactic showdown.

The return to the Savage Land was a story I had pictured and pined for some half-dozen years. I had been intrigued by a cameo of the  Beast-Brood at Xmas 1974 in the Avengers Annual and by a reference to Lorelei, "Magneto's female mutant slave" in the first issue of Foom Magazine.

I finally read the b/w reprint in the very early 80s and of course, it didn't quite live up to my imaginings:

Pure entertainment from thirty years ago!

 It does set up Magneto as a super-geneticist and a distorted mirror-image of Xavier, manufacturing his own mutant followers.This will lead to his eventual downfall with Alpha. It's also interesting that these followers often map directly to members of his original mutant band: Amphibius for the Toad, Brainchild for Mastermind and Lorelei for Wanda. (The siren mutate would go on to make two further appearances). However, the climax with a defeatist Magneto is, again, anticlimactic but I suppose it strikes an early note of Women's Lib as Marvel Girl saves the day.


The Z'Nox one-and-done places the X-Men on a far greater stage than ever before as they trump an alien invasion with comic-book physics and  more style than they did Dominus. It also restores Prof.X. However, Denny O'Neil's style always seems florid and overrated to me. The Marie Severin monster also jars somewhat.


Disappointingly, the collection doesn't feature the stories by Sal Buscema or Don Heck, particularly this childhood favourite:

Why was surly Sunfire never a Defender?

All in all, it remains a beautiful collection, although plot threads dangle and ideas seem haphazard. I'd also like to revisit the Kree-Skrull War soon.
 It's intriguing to wonder where Thomas and Adams might have taken the book. Would Sunfire return? Would Iceman have quit? What about the volatile Angel ? Would some of the Lovecraftian themes from Strange and Namor's books have cropped up? Juggernaut seems a likely rematch as does the Living Monolith. Would the radical politics of the early 70s have featured?
Having pencilled one issue of New Avengers recently, it has been announced that Adams is illustrating  The First X-Men, starring, to no-one's great surprise, Wolverine, Magneto and Sabretooth:

  While it is a quite reductive move for Charlie X, it reflects elements of the narrative of the most recent X-Men movie; I'm certainly going to give it a chance. We'll be returning to Neal Adams both here and on the 'optikon during the next few weeks...


Coming soon: The Crimson Hand, the Spirit World and the summer of 2977.


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