X-Men Part 14

X-Men: First Class (Vol. 2) #6–16, 2007, by Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz/Eric Nguyen/Julia Bax/Craig Rousseau/Nick Dragotta/Karl Kesel/Patrick Scherberger

X-Men: First Class Giant Size Special, 2008, by Jeff Parker and Dean Haspiel/Nick Kilislian/Roger Langridge/Michael Cho/David A. Williams

This series continues to be an absolute blast through these issues. We get some more of what made the first part of the series so good (longer story arcs, a focus on the kids being kids, cameos), and we get to go in some unexpected directions as well (a very meta issue dealing with continuity, some heavy looks at the mutant metaphor).

In terms of cameos, we, of course, have the Maximoff Twins showing up. They were such a huge part of the original Sixties issues, it would be a crime not have them in here somewhere. But this time we also get Black Widow in the same issue. She shows up after Jean and Wanda are kidnapped by Hydra while on a shopping trip. It’s a fun little adventure where the kids are dealing with a part of the Marvel Universe we don’t typically see them interact with. We also get to see Man-Thing, Machine Man, Medusa, Spider-Man, and Human Torch. The Human Torch issue is especially fun, as both Iceman and the Human Torch decide their respective teams don’t appreciate them or what they bring to the team. Their response to this situation is to leave, rent an apartment in New York City and start their own team. To no one’s surprise, it goes very poorly.

The two issue arc we get with Machine Man is interesting in the way it gives us a twist on the Mutant Metaphor. We’ve seen plenty of examples of the normal humans that our heroes come into contact with hating and fearing them on sight. And the comics have a fairly varied success rate when it comes to that situation reflecting the prejudice that real life readers might experience. These two issues (#13–14) give us another perspective on that prejudice, and how it’s something that can be in all of humanity, even those that are technically homo superior. When Warren takes a leave of absence the Professor invites Dr. Stack and his creation Machine Man/Aaron Stack to come to the school. After an initial fight with the X-Men, Aaron joins the team in tracking down some Lava Men. Throughout both of these issues Jean is horrible to Aaron. She constantly references that he is a robot, not a person. She refers to him as a science project, jokes that they should get him some motor oil for dinner, and says that she doesn’t have time to teach Pinocchio to be a real boy. In short, she does everything she can to make him feel less than. She employs the same strategies that homo sapiens have been using when dealing with the X-Men, and it’s not a good look. Some of this can be chalked up to resentment at what she sees as a replacement for Angel. But isn’t that how prejudice usually ends up rearing its head? The stress of a situation causes someone to say something that maybe they wouldn’t have normally. Jean ends up being the one who saves Aaron’s mechanical brain when his body is destroyed by lava during a hopeless fight brought about by Aaron’s insistence that he is not a machine but a man. When she gives the brain to Dr. Stack, he tells her that he made a mistake trying to teach Aaron that he was a man. Aaron was neither a robot, nor a man, he was something else entirely. The next model will be taught that it’s possible to be something new, which is a lesson the X-Men will have to learn over and over through the coming years.

One quick slightly off topic note here: Machine Man actually comes from Jack Kirby’s VERY loose and pretty strange comic adaptation of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which Marvel published from 1976–1977. He’s a great example of how many things in both X-Men continuity and Marvel continuity in general come from properties that Marvel licensed in the 70s and 80s, but no longer have the rights to. There are whole corners of the Marvel Universe that are entirely dependent on Godzilla, Rom the Spaceknight, Conan the Barbarian, and Doctor Who. But Marvel is not able to mention or show any of those characters at this point. And while you won’t see any mention of anything directly from the 2001 film, we still have Machine Man running around, just as we will see some direct ties to Rom and Conan, among other licensed properties, as we continue our journey through X-Men.

Back to the topic at hand, we get another look at the topic of bigotry and the mutant metaphor in Issue #10, when Cyclops goes on a solo mission to the mountains of West Virginia. A mutant with a monstrous appearance named Frederick has been kidnapping members of the community and disappearing with them into an old mine that was closed down due to radiation contamination. We eventually find out that Frederick was born a mutant for the same reason as Xavier and Hank, their fathers were all severely irradiated before they were conceived. We slowly see that with Frederick this also meant that his father slowly died of radiation poisoning, which caused his mother to lose her mind, and the cruel children he grew up with to mercilessly ridicule him. When his mutation emerged, and his appearance became obviously not human, he escaped to the same irradiated mine that killed his father, now able to actually draw strength from that same radiation. Scott is presented with a more nuanced situation than he was expecting when it becomes clear that the humans Frederick has taken are a mixture of people that tormented him as a child and businessmen that kept the mine running despite knowledge of the radiation. But as the stalwart leader of the X-Men, Scott always chooses life, even when he also has to point out to the bigots that he’s saving that he is also a mutant.

This issue ends with a scene that will almost become a theme for the X-Men, and it’s something that I want to focus on here. Earlier in the issue, Xavier had cautioned Scott that in this business (speaking of the business of superheroes), sometimes they will have to face death. Scott ends up collapsing the mine on Frederick to save his captives, even though they were also his tormentors. And in a moment of ultimate tragedy that is saved for just the reader, Scott is unaware, we see that when Frederick reaches out to Scott in what appears to be an attack, he is actually seeing the light from his father’s safety helmet in the light from Scott’s visor, and is reaching out for safety and relief. When everything finally settles down, Xavier contacts Scott to ask if he’s ok. When Scott replies that he’s fine, he just swallowed a lot of dust, Xavier says that’s not what he meant. Scott reminds him that in this line of work they may face a lot of death. Xavier points out that they don’t have to like it, and Scott ends the conversation by saying, “Good.” This is the Scott that we will have for decades to come. He will do everything he can to avoid killing his opponent, regardless of who they are. He has no patience for those future teammates that are willing to kill, and he is absolutely crushed when someone is killed during the course of a mission. That’s the Scott we’ll come to know over the course of the regular series, and it’s fun to get a story that shows where that passion came from. This isn’t an obvious origin story, or anything like that. But it gives us something to point to when Scott puts himself in danger to save the life of an enemy. And I really like that.

Issue #11 goes in a completely different direction, and gives us a humorous meta-commentary on the nature of continuity. It digs into what’s “canon” and pokes fun at anyone, like myself, that gets really obsessive with the details. In the story, we are introduced to a team of teenagers that guard the timeline of their reality thanks to a box of comics that they found in a warehouse in the Florida Everglades, near the Nexus of Realities. The comics inside show their reality as comic books, and they allow “The Continuiteens” to help out when needed to keep things on track. In this case, they locate an issue of X-Men: First Class (“Not the original series”), and help the X-Men defeat an immensely overpowered Mysterio. Sadly, they also erase themselves from continuity in the process. It’s a very silly issue, but it’s also a fun commentary on the book itself, as the arguments on whether it’s canon or not haven’t stopped fifteen years later. In the end, they’re telling a fun story, and that’s what’s most important.

Ironically, the very next issue (#12), is the one that pushes it outside of continuity for me. This issue features Warren’s parents visiting the school for the very first time. This in and of itself is awkward because we, of course, remember the time that Magneto kidnapped Mr. and Mrs. Worthington while they were visiting the school, and proceeded to use a machine to breed a race of unstoppable, mindless, mutant androids from them. It’s not a great story, but it is pretty damn memorable. In addition to ignoring that critical adventure, this story shows us that Warren’s parents are very aware of his mutation and have actually known about it for some time. And while Warren will eventually become one of the most prominent “out” mutants, in continuity he had not revealed his wings to anyone except his teammates at this point. My position on these types of problems is to go along with anything that makes the story better. However, in this case, I think the change is actually hurting the story.

As we’ll see when we get to stories later, Warren’s parents not knowing about his mutation is pretty important to his growth as a character. When his father is murdered, Warren blames himself for not preventing the death, despite the fact that he wasn’t around at the time. He believes that he should have been able to stop the death, just as he’s stopped so many other crimes with his mutant powers. Later, when his mother is dying, Warren reveals his mutation to her by flying her into the sky, so that she can experience the joy of flying in her final moments. It’s a beautiful scene, and it’s rendered completely obsolete if she already knows about his gift. And finally, we have the drama from Warren’s inheritance, as there are questions raised of whether his parents would have actually left him anything had they known he was a mutant. These are all stories that I feel are pretty fundamental to the development of Warren as a character, and deciding that his parents knew about his wings all along destroys all of them.

My only other complaint with the series takes us back to the Nexus of Realities. In issue #8, we finally get to meet the guardian of the Nexus, the Man-Thing. Sadly, this Marvel-Brand Swamp Thing isn’t actually that important to the story, but it’s always fun to see his weird, tentacle-covered face. Generally, I think this issue is a lot of fun. We get small glimpses into alternate realities and possible futures for the different members of the team. And most of them are vague enough that it can be fun for the reader to try and pick out easter eggs for future storylines. But then we come to Jean’s possible future, and we get a very clear and unignorable look at a future with her as the Phoenix. If you are not familiar with X-Men at all, and you don’t recognize this costume and everything that goes along with it, the gravity of this spoiler won’t be so apparent to you. But let me try to explain my frustration. The moment when we first see the Phoenix costume in the regular comics is one of the most iconic moments in comics history. It’s shocking, it’s exciting, and it starts one of the best storylines the X-Men comics have ever told. And that’s probably why it’s teased here. Every writer wants to touch a little piece of that story. But it’s almost never a good idea. Most stories don’t look good in comparison with the Phoenix Saga, and, in terms of the story, having teases like this just makes things confusing. Scott, Warren, and Hank should all have remembered this when Phoenix shows up for the first time, if this is in continuity. And that’s not even mentioning Jean. You would think this glimpse into a possible future would haunt her for the rest of her life, but if we are to believe this actually happened, then she forgot all of this in just a few years. I understand the allure and the draw of the material, but pulling in the Phoenix Saga almost always hurts whatever story it’s being used in.

Overall, this second series of First Class is a lot of fun. There are some problems here and there, as with any comic, but I think the series adds a lot more than it hurts. And reading it here, right in the middle of the Silver Age comics, gives the characters some depth and personality that they were sorely lacking. We’ve had a solid run of stories devoted almost entirely to the action, with very little thought given to the people at the heart of that action, and this little break acts like a small course correction before we continue our regularly scheduled journey.

However, before we can move on from the early 2000s, we do have one final stop. 2008 saw the release of the First Class Giant-Size Special, and let me tell you, it’s a great issue. It’s not a consequential story, but it has most of the hallmarks that have made First Class so fun. It’s silly, it’s clever, and it gives the characters personality and characterization. We also get to spend a huge amount of time with Xavier and Hank, which is interesting because they are usually the least likable characters in the group. But as we’ve seen over the course of this series, they’re a lot of fun when they’re both younger/more innocent and being written with a personality.

Most of this issue is following Hank as he investigates a series of possible alien encounters for Agent Baker, an FBI agent that’s been showing up throughout the series. This is essentially an excuse for writer Jeff Parker to tell a series of jokes based on classic sci-fi movies. Each case mirroring a different movie (THE THING, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL). This could easily be stupid and tiresome, but it’s instead very funny. Two of the cases involve the same mad scientist, Professor Philo, who accidentally creates a new life form out of plants. I have no idea if he ever appears in normal continuity, but I’d love to see him again. He’s pretty great.

The issue ends with Agent Baker explaining that he is turning things over to Agent Duncan, who will show up quite a bit back in the Sixties. It’s then revealed to the reader that Baker is actually a Skrull sleeper agent, unaware that he is not a human himself. This is only here because this issue came out right in the middle of the Secret Invasion storyline that Marvel did in 2008. It involved lots of Skrull sleeper agents being activated in an attempt to take over the world, and we’ll eventually get to it, in as much as it affects the X-Men (which honestly isn’t that much). But I suppose it’s sort of interesting to know they had been preparing for the invasion for over a decade. Interesting may not be the right word. But it’s at least something to be noted.

Thus ends our small detour to the early 2000s, and next time we’ll be back with Roy Thomas and Werner Roth. There are a few other First Class one-shots and one more mini-series, but they either came out several years later or lead directly into a later storyline, so I will be getting to all of those in a bit. I’m excited to get into Roy Thomas and see how his run progresses. How much did he learn from both Stan Lee’s missteps and his successes? We’ll find out soon enough.