Essential Classic X-Men, Vol. 1 by Stan Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 1-24 of the original X-men series, first lauched in 1963, a very different version from the one that was revived by Chris Claremont that are most common today, but the fundamental plot remains: a school for mutants led by Charles Xavier in New York because people fear and hate mutants because humans are fearful and think mutants can't be trusted.

The X-men are a far less complex group than their modern incarnations where only Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, and Marvel Girl (Jean Gray) are the original X-men. So hooray for simplicity, even though I have no clue how Xavier maintains an accredited school with only five students. Or for that matter, while the public is scared to death of the X-men but celebrates the Fantastic Four. However, that's the Marvel Universe.

The series really starts out poorly. While the first issue introduced Magnetto, it had the young male members of the team all but drooling and showing all sorts of uncomfortable sexual harassment stalker tendencies when Jean Gray joins the team. Really, for the first three or four issues, the lot of them are somewhat insufferable. In Issue 3, they encounter, the mutant the blob and essentially provoke him into attacking them and have him turn supervillain.

However, this was the Marvel Age of amazing supervillains and that ultimately saves the book. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants comes along and keeps the book entetaining particularly with the Brotherhood's "not really evil but just confused" members Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Plus Submariner turned in a great guest starring appearance.

While this was happening, several of the X-men began to develop more distinct personalities: Cyclops was the leader, and Iceman was the young impetuous one ala the Human Torch. One of the best characters was the Beast, an ultra strong character with huge feet. He was initially conceived as having a brooklyn accent like the Thing but Lee scrapped that and had him speaking in a scholarly way reminiscent of Johnny Littlejohn from Doc Savage.

The middle to later parts of the book had some great stories in it. Issue 12 featured the coming of Juggernaut and was actually one of the very best Marvel comics I've read from that era. The comic doses out backstory on Professor X as well as on the issue's approaching villain This type of story was done to death during the silver age, but Lee did it differently as rather than getting a 10-12 page info-dump we kept being pulled from the flashback back to the story where Juggernaut who was approaching the X-men, so the whole issue built up to a great reveal on the last page that led into Issue 13.

This book also introduced the Sentinels, the giant robots who have been of the X-men's biggest foes who in their first incarnation rather than merely protecting mankind from mutants, the robots went wild and decided to take over the world. Professor Xavier blamed the robot's misbehavior based on the fact that their designer was an anthropologist rather than a robotics expert which begs the question of how an anthropologist built the robots, but I digress.

Other than a weak beginning, the X-men's big problem was an annoying catch and release policy as they released the criminal Blob on his word not to do evil again, and left the villain Lucifer around because they defeated him once. It makes your heroes look not so bright when exercising such a policy, though perhaps it's due to the X-men's own troubled status with the law. It also featured a typical Marvel romance.

At the end of the day, the plot and characters are not on par with other Marvel group books of the era such as Fantastic Four and Avengers, but given the high standards of those books, that may not be a fair standard. Certainly, I've read weaker books and after the initial bumps, the book becomes thoroughly enjoyable. Lee's 19 issue run may not have been the most memorable but it was solid, as are the first five issues we have from Roy Thomas.

Overall, I'd give this book about three and a half stars. Not Marvel's best, but still a great run from a company that was producing some of the greatest comics ever written.



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