He's Baaaaaack!

Uncanny X-Men #7 – By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

It’s graduation day in the X-Mansion! Yep, after only seven issues the Merry Mutants are done with school and have the diplomas to prove it. And no sooner does Professor Xavier shake their hands and get a picture, he’s walking out. So, again the X-Men will have to face the hordes of evil mutants on their own. I never realized how often Professor X takes off on them. We already had a couple of early issues with an “injured” Professor out of the fight and the kids taking on Magneto themselves. Now, he’s just off to handle some of his personal projects. Well, heck, aren’t the X-Men his personal project?

Before he goes, he nominates Scott as his “Group Leader” and shows him the secret Cerebro. Xavier explains that while he can search out mutants with his power, someone with a “normal brain” needs help. Now we saw Xavier create an enhancer for his own abilities the first time the X-Men encountered the Blob. I wonder if Cerebro somehow is the version 2.0 of that.

In any case, Scott takes his new job very seriously and stays behind to monitor Cerebro as his teammates head out for a night of fun. We get so see some humorous moments and more spotlight time for the Beast and Iceman. You can see these two are definitely becoming Stan Lee’s favorite to write for. They get more gags out of costume and more fantastic moments in the action scenes as well.

Magneto tries to recruit the Blob and again demonstrates his minimal psychic abilities, but he can’t break through the block that Xavier put in the Blob’s mind in issue 3. The carnies all assume that Magneto is trying to harm the Blob somehow and attack. This group of carnies is nowhere near as interesting and the fight is not nearly as fun as the one in issue 3. During the fight, Magneto pulls a bunch of underground pipes up, and the resulting explosion knocks Blob on the head and loosens the psychic block. As his mind clears, the Blob considers throwing in with Magneto and his brotherhood.

The X-Men arrive on the scene and Magneto has prepared a brace of missiles for them. Iceman has some unique uses of his powers to take out some of the missiles, Angel dodges a lot of them and the Beast tangles directly with the Blob. Overall, this isn’t a very thrilling fight scene. As the X-Men regroup to take on the angry Blob, Magneto unleashes the rest of his missiles – without a care for the Blob being in the way. Blob ends up taking the brunt of the missile hits, protecting the X-Men and Magneto and the rest escape in his newly revealed “Magna-car.”

In a rather anti-climactic ending, Blob walks off declaring he will “live and die as a carnival freak.”

Certainly not one of the best issues of the series, this shows Lee really falling into a formula for the stories. We get a few character and storyline moments in the beginning of the issue, then a few action scenes that didn’t amount to much. Lee didn’t advance Blob’s story much here, except that now he pretty much hates ALL mutants – good or evil. And with Magneto, we’ve seen more elements of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch appalled at his tactics and lack of concern for teammates.

Nothing spectacular here, but I’m looking forward to seeing how long the Professor will be gone and what effects it will have on Scott’s character.

Note: This issue was reprinted in November, 1994 as X-Men: The Early Years #7. Cover by Mike Parobeck.




Professor Xavier and the X-Men #8 – By Fred Schiller & Jorge Gonzales and Nick Gnazzo

Wow, talk about turn-arounds. I actually enjoyed the remake more than the original!

When I started reading the issue I was VERY skeptical because the Schiller/Gonzales version dropped the first half of the story – really just relegating the graduation to a one-panel burst of exposition and it completely skipped the Brotherhood’s little battle with the carnies. Cyclops narrates the issue and he tells us the Professor has left and he’s in charge now. Cerebro gets the one sentence mention, but this version is clearly assuming that readers are familiar with the X-mythos and know what that is.

What the issue lacks in scene variety, it makes up for in actual characterization. First off, the Blob makes a BIG deal of Xavier wiping his mind after the last encounter. He’s pissed and he has every right to be. In fact, this issue alone creates a lot more dialogue between Blob and the X-Men (particularly Cyclops) and gives the characters room to stretch. This element was almost completely missing in the original, and I think it was a big miss on Stan Lee’s part. This is a moral dilemma that the characters have to face – and they explain it was a decision that Xavier did not take lightly. This is an issue of personal freedoms and truly more important today in storytelling, but I’d think a writer in the ‘60s would have jumped at the chance to be able to proselytize for personal freedom.

At any rate, the characters amounts of screen time balance out more in this version. We even get a bit more explanation about why characters can’t deal with the missiles so easily. Even Cyclops comments in his narration about how Iceman has developed his powers and he’s still believes in the good in Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

On the other hand, we get so much LESS of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. There were some nice scenes in the original that developed Mastermind a bit more, showed Toad’s loyalty to Magneto and the naiveté of the Scarlet Witch. Sometimes it seems that Stan Lee was more interested in the villains then the heroes in X-Men. They do get drawn a bit better as characters.

The ending works out pretty much the same, but Blob is much more clear spelling out his disappointments at both the X-Men and Magneto. He actually has good reason to be angry with both teams and agrees to remain neutral in their conflict if they just leave him alone. I actually felt more for him here. He really DOES want to be part of something, but everyone betrays his trust.

Overall, this was a superior issue then many before it. I’m going to attribute this fact to the scripting of Jorge Gonzales. It seems the issues he’s been involved with have been better than others – particularly those penned by Fred Schiller alone. Honestly, I’m not sure how much “plotting” Schiller could have done on this issue as Stan Lee handled that 30+ years before!

It’s not very often that this series improves on the original, but in this case it certainly does!

Up Next: Uncanny X-Men #8 and Professor Xavier and the X-Men #9