Episode 1340 Talkback: Spotlight on The X-Men in the Silver Age
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This year is also the fiftieth anniversary of the X-Men, so they too will get the CGS spotlight treatment, starting with the Silver Age. Chris Eberle from Wild Pig Comics joins us as we review the early history of Marvel's Merry Mutants, from their first appearance to their brush with (gasp!) cancellation! (1:09:19)
Listen here.
Listen here.
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Looking forward in Claremont We Trust!
Matthew
Anyway, the first issue of X-Men I read was issue 41 (like Avengers 41!). And it wasn't even my comic! My sister bought it and I remembering seeing that STARK RED cover for the first time. WoW! So, basically I just took it from my sister and read it. ("Sorry, sis!")
Murd: Spoiled again. Sorry, Murd.
Ah, man. I remember this era of Uncanny X-Men so vividly. The new costumes, the Steranko and Adams artwork, my sadness when I heard the title was cancelled, etc.
I remember seeing X-Men comics in the racks in '79 (I was seven) flipping through them and even though I liked the issues of Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-In-One that had appearnces by X-men in them, I had always felt like the X-Men book was not for kids my age.
What changed that for me was the two episodes of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends that the X-Men were in and ROM #17 & 18. It was in the late 140's or early 150's that I started reading X-Men, I really can't remember what my first issue was.
I have the first two volumes of X-Men MMW, hoping to grab the rest at C2E2 and jump into Uncanny later. The early X-Men seemed to lack what FF and Spidey had, but they were still fun to read and I've loaned those two volumes of X-Men out to friends and co-workers more than anything else.
Great episode. I love when Chris is on. One small correction, the X-Men did appear in a cartoon during the Silver Age. On the Sub-Mariner cartoon of the 60's, there was a mini three parter that adapted parts of Fantastic Four Annual #3 and Fantastic Four #6. Since Hanna Barbera had the rights to the Fanastic Four, they were cut out of the story. The cartoon, which used panels from those comics to bring the story to "life", used the panels of the X-Men in the Annual to take the FF's place in the story. This cartoon was released as a VHS in the 90's with Wolverine on the box...even though the character had not been created at the time the show first aired!
Marvel did the same with Starlin's Warlock and Moench/Sienkiewicz Moon Knight.
Kirby did layouts for just about all of the artists Marvel brought in during that time, at least for a couple of issues. Stan thought it was the best way to convey to the artists the type of dynamic storytelling he was looking for. Werner Roth, who had done a lot of work for Marvel in the ’50s (primarily on Venus, Apache Kid, and Lorna the Jungle Queen), never could get the hang of it to Stan’s satisfaction, even though both Kirby and Don Heck often provided layouts for him on X-Men. Eventually, Stan moved him back to a western strip. He died in 1972, so who knows how much longer he would have lasted at Marvel. Perhaps a more dynamic artist would have kept X-Men out of the sales basement.
Only ever read the book sporadically as a kid - a little too "soapy" for my tastes at the time, but those few issues/reprints I had I did enjoy a lot.
I also need to correct Adam regarding the Changeling: he did appear as a villain prior to his replacing Professor Xavier. The Changeling was second-in-command of Factor Three, the villainous organisation that plagued the X-Men in issues #37-39 (and numerous issues before that).
Wound up getting into it again thanks to a gift from my wife of the "40 years" CD-ROMs they sold of the full run of X-Men to that point. It was engrossing, and was amazed by the Neal Adams artwork from the 70's--someone who I had loved because of his work with Denny O'Neil on Detective/Batman. But his work on X-Men seemed to really push through boundaries.
Still have a love/hate relationship with the series, which can easily lend itself to melodrama and excess, but which can also show real depth.
It's worth pointing out that mutant powers were supposed to develop during puberty and these characters weren't THAT far past puberty.
Xavier definitely wasn't an old man, but it certainly wasn't a young adult either. I guess there's some leniency for his crushing on Jean -- he wasn't an old man and she wasn't a "little girl" -- but the notion is still gross and inappropriate, as the original panel even makes clear. It isn't pedophilia -- because, again, Jean was definitely post-pubescent -- but it was obviously creepy and wrong.