Hey.
I was now reading some "classic", pre-Claremont X-Men. And I am in a mood for sharing it with you, since it's awesome.
I will be starting with a classic, Stan Lee/Jack Kirby story, and then I will jump lots of issues to the story with the two Steranko issues, and then to the amazing Neal Adams/Roy Thomas run.
I might not finish it all since I might fall asleep in the process.
But first, let's start with (Uncanny) X-Men 14. Among us - stalk the Sentinels!
They just dont make covers like they used to.
Unfortunately, I only found 2 versions of #14 online
One is scanned from something that looks like the original, but has blurry and just-barely-readable text, and one is digital, probably from comixology.
I don't like digital versions of silver age stuff, since it has "unnatural" colors and it distracts me, always. So I am posting the blurry version. Sorry about that.
Anyway, X-Men are back from fight with Juggernaut, last issue.
For comparison (only one I will post), this is the page from the digital version.
The colors are just too bright. My opinion.
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Even when the stories were not that good, "x-men as a menace" was present in the comics from very early.
Claremont then took it and made it an analogy to other minorities of course. But it is still present there
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one of the more terrible things in the book was the "romance" between Cyclops and Marvel Girl
They had it in the thought bubbles, but never actually spoke about it like human beings.
Silver age stuff
Newsprint looks so much nicer and is way more durable then the thin paper smudgy ink crap of modern books. I wish wed go back to using it and drop the cost of books.
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>I am an anthropologist
>I also build giant sentient robots
The beatnik coffee where Iceman and Beast date the two girls is a running theme in the early issues
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As you probably know, Jean only had telekinesis back then.
Next few issues I have only scanned from a reprint (seems like Marvel Masterworks to me). Unfortunately.
But at least you can actually read the letters I guess
Back into action!
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|Well fuck, a glass cube.
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Back in those day, Xavier powers also worked on artificial intelligence. And actually electronics in general. (And, in reverse, Magneto had some limited psychic powers.)
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This is a pretty awkward way to cram in some origin story
But at least it's not long
Action again!
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#16
Still Lee/Kirby combo
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That's pretty random
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Can it happen? Can our X-Men be defeated?
Of course not, they have the power of magic pink stone!
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And that's the end of the first story I will post tonight.
The shadow, if you are interested, is actually Magneto, who was supposed to be on another planet I think, kidnapped by an evil alien. But he got better.
Now we jump a few issues and years later, to...
...issue 49.
Who dares defy - the DEMI-MEN?
Is anyone still here?
It will really only get better from now on.
if anyone bumps this I will continue. I don't want to post just for myself :/
Sorry user, but not only is Silver Age X-Men a chore to begin with, most of us got that merit badge with X-user.
bump
Hey, great
Yeah, most of Silver Age X-Men is trash. But it gets better.
Well now, #49.
(meta-)context of the story: the book didn't sell well. They felt they had to do something, so they killed Charles Xavier in a terrible Obelisk story (he got better) and they broke the team. They intended to have each issue to be intended for just some part of the team.
But then they made a story of them together again.
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Well... it takes a while to get better. But it does!
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Oh. Not only is Xavier "dead", Magneto is also "dead", from an earlier Avengers story.
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Oh, on the last page, you can see Jean already having some psychic powers
It was taught to her by Xavier before he "died". (Later it was retconned that she had them all the time, just dormant.)
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And this is the famous #50 cover. By Steranko, who is also drawing the next two issues. Awesomely so.
He also created the X-Men logo for this issue. From 2006 SDCC panel with him:
>Steranko had turned Nick Fury into a popular character who warranted his own series, then moved onto Captain America, before was asked to draw “X-Men” because the book had been late.
>“At first, I didn’t want to work on the X-Men because of all the five-sided panels. I couldn’t relate to the characters, I didn’t know how to make it work, so I asked to work incognito on the book. But I signed my name to my first three covers. And that logo they had was awful. Logos were trademarked, but they let me redesign it, just to get rid of that awful logo. I never got paid for it.”
>“That logo’s still being used today on the books,” said Spurlock. “If Jim got paid a royalty for everytime they used it…”
And the book gets instantly better with his art
First part of 2-page spread
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based Steranko
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