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So the X-Men had been cancelled in May of 1970 but the characters wouldn’t die! It seems that one man, Steve Englehart, wouldn’t let them! He writes the preface and details his plans for the X-Men in the early 70’s. The mantle was then passed on and Roy Thomas talks about the X-Men from there and how Len Wein guided them up to Giant-Size X-Men #1. There are a bunch of titles represented here. We start with an Avengers two-parter appearing in the pages of #’s 111 and 112 (April-May, 1973). The X-Men bounced to Incredible Hulk #172 (February 1974) before going into a four-part story appearing in Captain America (#’s 172-175, April-July 1974). Steve Englehart wrote all but one of those tales (Tony Isabella and Roy Thomas paired up for the Hulk story) and the comics were illustrated by Sal Buscema (Cap), Don Heck (the Avengers) and Herb Trimpe (Avengers).
That ended Englehart’s work with the X-Men. Len Wein took over the reigns, writing the team in the pages of Marvel Team-Up #23 (July 1974) and The Defenders #’s 15-16 (September-October 1974). Len would also write the first appearance of Wolverine in the pages of the Incredible Hulk (#’s 180 and 181 from October and November of 1974) as well as the first appearance of the Multiple Man in the pages of Giant-Size Fantastic Four #1 (Feb 1975). We end with Marvel Team-Up #38 from October of 1975 which I think was after Giant-Size X-Men #1. Bill Mantlo wrote that last issue of MTU. Mike Esposito worked on art for that book, with John Buscema working on the FF book. Rounding out we have Gil Kane (the MTU #23), Sal Buscema on Defenders and Trimpe on Hulk.
Spoilers Ahead
-Avengers #’s 110-111- Magneto returns! He lures the Avengers to the X-Mansion where the X-Men had been laid out. Magneto has somehow managed to control people’s minds with the iron in his blood. So Magneto takes control of the Avengers and the X-Men for the standard take over the world thing. The only Avengers left standing were the Black Panther, Daredevil, the Black Widow and Thor. It was the Vision that took over the body of some pied piper character that Magneto had in his fold that took out Magneto. There was a lot of other stuff going on (Hawkeye leaving the team and going after Black Widow, only to have Widow leave DD and join the Avengers), but I’m gonna talk about the X-Men. They regroup and find Angel is missing. This was part of the thread that Englehart weaved through the next few comics presented in this collection.
-Incredible Hulk #172- The Hulk is finally captured! They military try to transport him to another dimension but they unwittingly bring in the Juggernaut. The two escape and of course start fighting. The Hulk ends up beating Juggy and leaves, bringing the X-Men in for a page to finally knock him out. They’re still on the look-out for Angel and were looking for Havok and Polaris here.
-Captain America #’s 172-175- This was a great four-issue saga. Cap and Falcon are on the fun from the law because a new revolutionary group had staged a huge smear campaign against him. (The acronym was CRAP, which I thought was interesting). They end up in Nashville where they run into the Banshee and SHIELD. Banshee was there and the X-Men were going to recruit him to find the missing mutants, which now include Havok, Polaris and Iceman. Cap and Falcon agree to work with the X-Men because they had a similar enemy in the SECRET EMPIRE! The X-Men, Cap and Falcon fight off SHIELD (also looking for this group, ironically enough) before getting to work on getting inside the Secret Empire. They stage an attack where a plain-clothes Cap and Falcon save a woman who is on the inside of the group. Cap and Falcon get in, help steal a device to show their worth, and get invited into the inner sanctum. Number One tells the two of their plans of world domination and are actually getting powered by the missing mutants! So the X-Men free the mutants and team-up with Cap and Falcon to stop the leader of this group, who ended up shooting himself, and it was very controversial for the time – indicating that the leader may have been Richard Nixon. The X-Men saga ended on Englehart’s part.
-Marvel Team-Up #23- Len Wein takes the reigns of the team now and starts a little thread about Xavier getting the X-Men together for some secret mission. They contact Iceman here but he has to team-up first with the Torch to stop a villain called Equinox (who combined the powers of the Torch and Iceman). This was the weakest title of the bunch because of the lame villain but that is a huge thread to remember which I’ll mention later.
-Defenders #’s 15-16- Xavier contacts Dr. Strange about an urgent mission that must be taken care of because his X-Men are away. Possibly they are at Krakoa? Anyway, Strange brings his Defenders to battle Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to stop Magneto from creating the ultimate mutant. Magneto ends up unleashing this character that begins to become more intelligent and learns of Magneto’s evil ways. So he turns the Brotherhood into babies and flies off into space. I love how Wein had this tiny thread start in Marvel Team-Up of all places, go to a small mention in Defenders and possibly spiral into the greatest run in comic book history with the All-New, All-Different X-Men.
-Incredible Hulk #’s 180-181- I think this is a rather famous pair of comics featuring the first appearance of a certain Canadian mutant. This is where Wolverine first appeared. The first issue was just Hulk ending up in the Canadian wilderness and getting caught up in a battle with the Wendigo. Wolverine makes his big debut to take down the Hulk. Of course, he fails and he’s brought back to the headquarters but the character was pretty fleshed out even in his first appearance and he was really cool and ready for a primetime role with the X-Men. I know it’s a huge book on the secondary collector market but it was probably one of the best first appearances in the Bronze Age.
-Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4- This was included because it had the first appearance of Madrox, the Multiple Man. Madrox here was very rough and his powers weren’t well defined. He was absorbing energy (as well as duplicating, of course) and he siphoned a lot of power before his suit was fixed by Reed (with Xavier’s help) to get him under control. I don’t know where we saw him next and I can’t remember anything he did before he starred in X-Factor in the 90’s. Xavier doesn’t mention the X-Men here; perhaps they were still on their mission!
-Marvel Team-Up #38- This was a silly team-up between Spider-Man and the Beast to fight the terrible villain known as: THE GRIFFIN! He’s as lame as he sounds.
-The Bottom Line- This was a great add-on to the Silver Age X-Men sets. I thought the first one (Volume 7) was a bit disjointed because of the variance of the stories but I have to say that this one (aside from the last few tales) had a type of coherence that ran through the titles. Englehart started with the missing mutants case and tying it into a Cap book and Wein started laying the threads to what would become the new X-Men. The last two stories were throw-away books with no lasting impact but were included for completeness sake and having the first appearance of Wolverine in here adds to the fact that we’re getting out of the Silver Age and into the Bronze Age and a new set of mutants. There’s a lot of good stuff in here and it is a must for X-Men completists who don’t want to shell out a lot for these one-off issues and have them in one handy collection. There were cool extras, too. There’s all the covers of the X-Men reprints (#’s 81-93), Romita’s Wolverine character sketch, a house ad for Wolvie and Byrne’s cover for a Wolverine trade reprinting his first appearance. Highly Recommended.
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Questions? Comments? Shoot me an email.
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