X-Men Part 17
The X-Men #30–33, 1967, by Roy Thomas and Jack Sparkling/Werner Roth
We’re looking at four issues today, and the first is not what I would call enjoyable. If this readthrough was not an attempt at being absolutely complete, this is actually an issue I would suggest skipping. But we don’t skip things around here, so we’re going to dive into issue #30 headfirst, trying our best to avoid the rampant sexism that permeates almost the entire story.
This story involves a very boring villain who calls himself the Warlock, while also claiming to be Merlin the Magician from King Arthur’s court. After awakening from a one thousand year sleep, he was promptly beaten by Thor, and has now decided to conquer the world using a device that will make everyone on the planet as stupid as people were in the Middle Ages, thus preventing them from using modern technology and allowing the Warlock’s goons to take over. Were people actually stupid in the Middle Ages? Or did they just not have the technology that we have now available to them? I’m going to guess that most historians would argue with “Merlin” on this, but they won’t get the chance because he shows up very infrequently after this appearance.
“Merlin” has also decided that he needs a queen before he can conquer the world, and he, of course, chooses Jean Grey for this role. How does he know who she is? How does he know who the X-Men are for that matter? Neither of these questions will be answered in this issue. I suppose it’s possible he saw them on TV at some point. Maybe some of his goons used to work for the Maggia. Regardless, the Warlock has chosen his bride, and summons her from the mansion, along with Xavier and the Angel. We’re also not given a clear explanation for how this happens. We just see a giant hand and then everyone is pulled through an abyss and ends up in the hills of New England. Of course, this could all be explained by magic, especially since this man is claiming to be THE Merlin. But he dismisses that notion and says everything is done using science and his own mutant abilities. It’s unclear which of those two things makes the giant hand.
Once Jean has arrived, the Warlock immediately takes control of her mind and distracts her from her own peril with a bunch of unicorn/pegasus hybrids. This is exactly what would distract my five-year-old, but I had really hoped we had moved past this kind of nonsense with Jean. She has proven herself both integral to the team and more than capable of handling herself many times at this point, but that’s all thrown out the window in this issue. Instead, we get a medieval tournament thrown in her honor and comparisons to Guinevere. And that lasts through almost the entire story. It’s incredibly frustrating.
That’s about the extent of the issue. There are some hilarious images of knights in shining armor holding tommy guns. We also noticeably have a different penciler on duty. Jack Sparkling’s art feels like he honed it working on romance comics. I haven’t been able to find any information on who he was or what else he worked on, but it’s a fun take on the characters.
I also want to point out that the Warlock is not actually Merlin from King Arthur’s court. We will meet him later on, once the Braddock family enters the picture, but this joker is an imposter. And a pretty disappointing one at that.
The next issue isn’t much better when it comes to the main plot and the villain, but it has so much soap opera and character development in it that we can almost overlook that failing. To begin with, we finally get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Ted Roberts and his obsession with not being as successful as his older brother. His brother Ralph turns out to have not only been a record setting college athlete, but to now be a super scientist that until very recently worked for Stark Industries (of Iron Man fame). He’s left that job due to Tony Stark not sharing the secret of Iron Man’s armor with him, and he’s now developing all kinds of technology at a lab of his own, technology specifically based on the element cobalt. That’s a lot to live up to, and Jean gets a front row seat to Ted’s insecurities when he invites her out for the afternoon to meet his older brother.
This family drama culminates with Ralph putting on a suit of cobalt battle armor and completely losing his mind due to a head injury he received earlier while competing with Ted. He decides that Iron Man is a menace that needs to be put down, and anyone standing in his way, like the X-Men, are equally as dangerous. Oh, and his cobalt armor will also turn into a nuclear bomb and explode if he wears it for more than two hours. This very tiny design flaw is due to the nature of cobalt and is definitely not a big deal. Ralph makes that very clear right before he goes insane and starts calling himself The Cobalt Man.
Obviously, the X-Men prevent this C-List villain from blowing up and destroying most of New York City, and it’s all pretty by the book and skippable. The really exciting thing in this issue happens after Warren drives into town with Scott to find Jean. Upon arriving at Metro College and seeing Jean with Ted, Warren decides he’s done competing for her, whether that’s with Scott or anyone else. He excuses himself from the group and heads out on his own, ready to find some other “fair-haired fish in the sea”. The search leads him directly to the most stereotypical 1960s teen dance club imaginable, the Monkee’s Paw. We see some very fashionable young people dancing to actual songs by the Monkees (which clearly illustrates how concerned Marvel was with copyright issues at this time). Warren is just getting ready to jump on the dancefloor when he’s surprised by an old friend, Candy Southern (it’s spelled Sothern here, but that appears to be an error), or as Warren refers to her, “the light of my misspent youth”. This is Candy’s first appearance, but she’s going to both stick around for a long time and become a pretty important character in her own right. She’s also clearly very important to Warren, and has been since they were both very young. We’re treated to some truly incredible dialogue as Warren and Candy pick up wherever it was that they left off, and when the Professor summons Warren to help the rest of the team with the Cobalt Man, Warren makes future plans with Miss Southern before he leaves.
Candy is an interesting character. She’s obviously a nod to the seminal 1960s novel Candy, by Terry Southern, but keeps herself away from most of the things that identify the title character of that book as being very little more than a male fantasy. As Candy Southern’s story continues, she will end up running both Warren’s company and a superhero team, and it’s always a blast when she shows up.
We only get a quick glimpse of Xavier in this issue, but he’s still experimenting in front of the mysterious and large wooden door in the basement of the mansion. It’s still very unclear what he’s experimenting on, since this time it involves mice and lots of test tubes, but he seems to think it’s very important.
Finally, Roy Thomas plants another small story seed at the end of this issue. Ted Roberts seems to suspect that Jean Grey and Marvel Girl may be the same person. Could it be that her tiny domino mask, coupled with her VERY red hair, doesn’t hide her identity very well? Maybe Jean should have spent a little more time in the design phase of creating new costumes for everyone. I’m sure we’ll see if Ted is actually as nice of a guy as he seems, or if he does something nefarious with this information, in the future.
Issues #32–33 finally reveal the mystery of the locked door. Xavier has been experimenting for weeks to try and find a way to drain his step-brother, Cain Marko, of the power of the Juggernaut, and he’s had Cain comatose and chained up, locked behind this door the entire time. To be clear, the Professor has been keeping an unstoppable engine of destruction that hates nothing more than Xavier and all he holds dear in the basement of a school. Horrifying? Yes. Surprising? No. It’s impossible at this point to go on without thinking back to the last issue and wondering what the hell Xavier was doing with those mice and test tubes? What could that possibly have had to do with the power of the Juggernaut? Was he turning them into tiny avatars of the demon god Cyttorak? If so, it’s a crime that we didn’t get to see that.
Before we get to the meat of these two issues, we’re treated to some soap opera by way of Bobby’s 18th birthday party. We get some unspoken tension between Scott and Jean as they dance together, Bobby’s forced attempts to enjoy having a girlfriend, Warren’s introduction of Candy Southern to his classmates, some hip poetry courtesy of Bernard the poet, and a huge brawl with a biker gang called Satan’s Saints. All in all, it’s a pretty great sequence of events. I would honestly rather read four more issues of just this than continue the Factor Three storyline. But this is what I signed up for.
Once the kids have subtly used their powers to teach Satan’s Saints some manners, we see that Xavier’s plans to pit his mental abilities against the magic that empowers his step-brother does not work out. In fact, thanks to some manipulation by Factor Three that is never explained, there is an explosion that leaves the Professor on death’s door and Juggernaut with Xavier’s mental powers in addition to his own unstoppable might. This leads to Juggernaut demolishing the team when they show up to stop him. After deciding to join Factor Three in Europe, Juggernaut continues to fight both the X-Men and the National Guard on his way to the airport.
Most of issue #33 actually takes place inside the mystical gem of Cyttorak that gave Cain the powers of the Juggernaut. Thanks to some help from Dr. Strange, Scott and Jean go inside the timeless universe of the Crimson Cosmos that resides in the gem to find a way to defeat the Juggernaut. Specifically, they are looking for the “spirit form” of the sacred gem, that apparently is kept inside the gem itself (I’ve found when it comes to mystical realms it’s best not to ask too many questions). And after battling the ancient guardian of Cyttorak’s temple, they are able to retrieve it and take it back to reality. This, in turn, allows them to easily defeat Juggernaut by trapping him within the Crimson Cosmos.
This is actually the story that issue #4 of X-Men: First Class (2006) was referencing. In that issue, we see that a demon escaped with Scott and Jean when they returned to their own world. And when they open a portal to send it back to the Crimson Cosmos, it’s literally packed with other demons. This is strange because here in Uncanny X-Men #33, we don’t see a single other creature apart from the guardian. And it definitely feels to me like we are supposed to see this world as an empty, lonely place. Maybe all these other demons have been hiding while the guardian was around, and now that he’s gone there’s nothing to keep them from running rampant. Regardless, it’s nice that we finally got to tie up that loose end here.
We end the issue by finding that Professor Xavier has been taken by Factor Three. I wish this had the impact that Roy Thomas clearly wants it to have, but I’m just not interested in Factor Three. We still have next to no information about them. Why are they called that? What are their goals? Why is Xavier such a threat to their operations? Just having the answer to one of these questions would make the whole storyline a little more interesting. But instead we just keep hearing everyone talk about how they’re a huge threat, without giving any evidence to support the theory. This results in a lack of interest on my part, and that is probably going to lead to me covering more issues at a time than I normally do. I am ready to get through Factor Three and on to some of the fun and exciting nonsense that we have coming up.
