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Tuesday, January 24, 2023

60 Years of X - 1965

Year 3: 1965

1965 X-Men Comics: X-Men #10-17, Fantastic Four Annual #3

013 - Year 3 Cover: X-Men #13

On his way out in '65 (shifting to only doing layouts & covers), Kirby turns in some of the strongest covers of his run, w/several icon entries. I like this one just a smidge more than #12, the other Juggernaut cover.

014 - Year 3 Creator: Stan Lee

On HIS way out (though he lasts a tad longer than Kirby), Stan turns in his best X-work yet, thanks to the 1-2 punch of the Juggernaut & the Sentinels intros, which give the series some much needed thematic resonance.

015 - Year 3 Character: The Sentinels

1965 is when the concept of anti-mutant prejudice truly crystalizes in the series for the first time, in the form of mutant-hunting robots that give the X-Men a way to punch an ephemeral concept like "prejudice".

016 - Year 3 Comic: X-Men #12

Lee, Kirby, and Toth superbly build tension, cutting between the unseen Juggernaut's unrelenting march through the X-Men's defenses & Xavier's backstory, showing just how powerful Juggernaut is while telling us how he came to be.

017 - Year 3 Fun Fact: Brother Magneto

Stan Lee wanted to reveal that Professor X & Magneto were brothers! 

"I always wanted Magneto to turn out to be Professor X's brother...If I had stayed with the book, that's what I would have done."

018 - Year 3 Memorable Moment: Magneto Revealed!

The final panel of the year reveals the return of Magneto; not the most surprising in the context of the story but it sets the stage for a number of future homages; Jim Lee reportedly owns the original art to several of them.

1 comment:

  1. Magneto as Xavier's brother certainly would have changed the franchise. Especially once Claremont came on and he milked that drama for all that it was worth. Of course, it would have meant that we never got Magneto's holocaust survivor origin. It also would have meant that the X-Men's two biggest villains early in the run would both have been related to Xavier.

    It is a little sad to see Kirby go but, as I stated last time, he never really seemed all that into doing the X-Men. Stan obviously didn't have much interest in it without Kirby's involvement.

    The Sentinel stories are my favorite X-Men stories that Lee did. It actually felt like it had more heft, even outside of the thematic trappings. I do mourn that we never got Kirby drawing them. I'm also confused as to why an anthropologist would be afraid of, rather than interested, in mutants. I'm picturing Jane Goodall deciding that gorillas need to die because they have superior strength to human beings. Ah, the Silver Age.

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