I’m reading every X-Men comic. This was a mistake. This will continue to be a mistake. But when have mistakes ever stopped me? Come hang out for some reviews of mid-tier 60s comics!

After I released the first of these btw my boyfriend was like “Babe wtf no, just skip ahead to the late 70s, that’s where everything good is”, but that sounds like a GOOD idea so I’m not gonna do that :)

Strange Tales #120 - May 1964 5.5/10

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It seems kinda crazy to think about now, but at one time, the Fantastic Four were THE comic book heroes. The Avengers were B-listers, the X-Men C-listers, and the Fantastic Four were the REAL DEAL. So to try and get some cred and make sure people know the X-Men exist, what better way than a cross over? And it’s a fun idea too, to boot.

Despite that, it’s nothing too special. Ice Man goes on a boat ride to relax, and finds he’s on the same boat as the Human Torch, who is VERY open about his identity. Ice Man discovers he’s on board cause he flirts with his girlfriend, for the record. You’ll figure it out someday, Bobby.

Some pirates try to take the boat, you know, all those pirates who hang out right off the coast of New York City. Torch and Ice Man have to team up to stop them. There’s nothing BAD in this, and the two work together rather well, it just wasn’t really anything special. In the end they defeat the pirates and then Ice Man dips, just walking back across the harbor.

X-Men #6 - July 1964 3/10

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If there’s any Marvel character I don’t give a fuck about, it’s Namor. I find him annoying and creepy. His biggest character trait is that he’s horny for Invisible Woman and won’t take no for an answer. I mean, I get being attracted to Sue Storm, but come on dog. So I don’t have massively high hopes for this. Anyways, the plot is that both Xavier and Magneto think Sub-Mariner might be a mutant, and might be a good ally, so it’s a race to find him first.

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Okay. Look. Magnetism is a weird force and it’s not very well understood, so I can ignore some of the things Magneto can do that don’t really make any sense…. but there’s no way in FUCK Magneto should be able to create a PSYCHIC ILLUSION OF HIMSELF. I don’t care how big and wrinkly his brain is. Ahhh, we are SERIOUSLY Silver Age right now.

Magneto finds the Submariner first, and he is… screaming and throwing a shit fit, tossing stuff around and breaking things in his castle. Why? Because Sue told him to fuck off again and he’s angry about it. Seriously, it’s his only character trait.

Magneto manages to convince Namor to come and ally with him. The X-Men show up to try and stop this but are easily repelled by Namor. But just as it seems this alliance will hold, Magneto does the one thing Namor cannot abide by.

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Magneto makes some sexist remarks and the pussy whipped Sub-Mariner, feminist chad that he is, IMMEDIATELY defects. I still don’t like him, but thank you, Namor.

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Namor has known Scarlet Witch for 5 seconds but has to force himself not to fall for her. Bro. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver have FINALLY had enough of Magneto almost killing them over and over, and dip…. but then Magneto just tells them to come back to him and they do. Y’all, what the hell are you doing? Anyways the X-Men just got their asses kicked over and over, but Magneto being a sexist caused him to lose, the end.

Fantastic Four #28 - July 1964 4/10

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Another crossover, this time over on the FF’s full comic. So there’s two villains, the Thinker and the Puppet Master, who are trying to destroy the Fantastic Four. The Puppet Master mind controls Professor X and makes him command the X-Men to destroy the Fantastic Four. They’re all very upset at the idea of doing this, but hey, the boss man said.

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The X-Men basically dogwalk the Fantastic Four because they don’t actually want to fight and are more like “what the FUCK is going on”. After being easily defeated, for SOME reason the Puppet Master and Thinker show themselves and go “Yeah so we own you now”. The X-Men are like “the fuck you do?” and even though Professor X brain controls them, they break it just enough to destroy the thing Puppet Master is using to control him. The two are then very easily defeated and escape in a rocket.

It ends with the X-Men leaving and Reed going “gosh gee those X-Men are great, everyone should buy their comics”.

The most interesting part of this is the lore drop that Alicia Masters, The Thing’s girlfriend, is Mastermind’s step daughter. Which is kinda interesting. More crossovers in the future possibly?

X-Men #7 - September 1964 5/10

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Oh hey, the Scarlet Witch is no longer green! She’s kinda more… purple than scarlet, but thats fine.

The X-Men have graduated and Scott is now their leader. But Xavier IS still here, and he introduces Scott to a project he’s been working on, a machine called Cerebro that can scan for Mutants so they can find more people to join their group.

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Also interestingly, Ice Man now has a face. He was just kinda lumpy before. He looks a lot better like this, but looks a little Silver Surfery.

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Everyone is so flirty with Jean, but she seems to only have eyes for one of them. The only one who doesn’t care (or doesn’t PRETEND to care so he’s not outed as gay). First mention of this plot point!

Meanwhile, Magneto is also hunting for mutants, and finds The Blob! He then… probes his mind??? Which like, again, not really a thing, but okay. After they fight a little bit, Blob remembers his spat with the X-Men and agrees to join Magneto cause he’s pissed about what they did to him.

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There’s a big fight where the X-Men are, as usually, kinda trounced. But they win because Magneto decides “oh I can just kill them now, who cares if the Blob is also there” and throws a fucking missile at them. It ONLY hits the Blob, who goes “WOW. Fuck this shit I’m out.” and leaves. The rest of Magneto’s brotherhood are like “Why the FUCK did you do that?” and also abandons him over it so they all flee. Magneto once again clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.

This one was whatever, but it was the first with NO training segment at all.

X-Men #8 - November 1964 5.5/10

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Never heard of this guy before. I wonder if I’m gonna find someone who only ever showed up once.

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NONE of these people have ANY chill about Jean, I swear. Also everyone has death defying training to do, dodging shit and stuff, and Jean’s training is uh…. doing cross stitching with her mind. Cause she girl.

I want to vomit.

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Beast almost causes a fucking race riot because he rescued a kid from almost dying and they invented a guy about it. Glad not much has changed since the 60s, huh? Now I wanna cry. Anyways Beast is fed up, which does make sense, but he’s like “HUMANS CANNOT BE TRUSTED, ALL I CARE ABOUT NOW IS MYSELF” which feels… VERY un-Hank McCoy to me, but I guess I only really know about the more modern Beast. I feel this’d be more like… Angel’s thing. He was also in that riot!

Also Cyclops calls Xavier, who’s like “Yeah I’m busy diving into caves in the middle of Europe, chat with you later hun bun”. What the fuck is he doing??

Beast goes to become a wrestler and gets beaten by some guy, Unus, who’s clearly a mutant with some power to make it so you can’t get near him. Beast sees him also be buddy buddy with the Mastermind, which worries him, even though he clearly doesn’t care about the X-Men anymore.

Unus wants to join the Brotherhood, but is told he has to defeat the X-Men first, which seems like a bit of a tall order from a group who can’t do it themselves. He helps rob a bank to get their attention, and then dog walks the X-Men, as usual. Honestly, this guy mostly feels like a retread of The Blob but with arrogance instead of stupidity as his character trait.

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At least they defeat him in a pretty interesting way. The Beast comes back to develop a beam that enhances Unus’ power. Which I guess is just easy to do, that seems useful. They assume he’s already working for Magneto and try to stop him, but it’s too late, he makes Unus super powerful… but not he can’t even touch anything. Welp. Good job, Beast, you killed him. He’s going to starve in a few days. Or die of oxygen deprevation.

That is actually straight up what happens, they let him run around for a while and starve him out. Then Beast is like “I can cure you, but if you ever cross us again, we’ll just shoto you again and then break the machine so fuck off.” and so he fucks off.

The Beast decides to rejoin, just…. for some reason. He decides that’s where he belongs. All that stuff about “HUMANS AREN’T WORTH THE DIRT ON MY SHOE” stuff is just water under the bridge I guess.

X-Men #9 - January 1964 3/10

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Oh boy, another crossover event! Real excited to see more contrived reasons for super heroes to fight! Who’s the other team today? The Avengers? Pff, get away from THOSE losers, they’ll never take off. And what’s that? A new villain introduced?

Oh… Lucifer. Huh.

Yeah no, I don’t think you can use that name.

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Any time I see panels like this it just reminds me of when Homestar Runner would make fun of old timey comics

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Anyways, The X-Men are getting messages from Xavier, who is somehow fighting Lucifer by himself in some cave, whoever the fuck that is. They head off to join him in the Balkans. Meanwhile, the Avengers are just… wandering around kinda harassing people? The team right now appears to be Thor, Iron Man, Cap, and Antman. And I THINK that’s Wasp? She’s not even on the cover, but DOES flit around and do things, but she has a pretty miniscule presence.

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They can’t kill Lucifer, which apparently Xavier was totally planning to do, since he put a dead man’s switch to a nuke. Just that easy. Lucifer is just a… guy. Who wants to rule the world. He’s like Wish.com Dr. Doom. The Avengers are searching for Lucifer, and Xavier tells the X-Men to stall them so they don’t kill Lucifer, because again, the Avengers are WELL KNOWN for murdering every villain they come across. This is course gives us a chance to have these nerds fight. Also you’d EXPECT them to mention that Angel and Stark met before but uh, they don’t. This also ends very quickly cause Xavier just… knocks Lucifer out with his brain and then tells Thor “quit it” and Thor quits it.

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Silly Charles, we will all return to Lucifer one day.

They just let him go after he gets all sad that they ruined his nuke, and Xavier makes some comment about how he was the cause for his legs not working, but everyone is like “well I guess we’ll find out eventually.”

This was kinda dumb. Uninteresting villain, and the Avengers match up was like… nothing, then they just walk off. They’re not even there at the ending.

X-Men #10 - March 1965 5/10

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There’s some news about an Antarctic expedition finding a a wild tarzan-ass guy in Antartica with a saber tooth tiger. They even compare him to Tarzan. They assume he’s a mutant, but Xavier confirms he’s not. But he says they can go see him to cure their boredom cause there’s been no violence recently. Well I’m glad we’re doing this just for the fuck of it. Honestly I wish we’d get MORE comics of them just being bored and hanging out tbh. Not everything has to be a world ending event.

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While exploring Antarctica they find a tunnel that leads to The Savage Land, where dinosaurs still live. Some… kinda ugly ones but look, it was a LONG time before Jurassic Park made Dinosaurs better forever. Though there’s an Archeoptrix, which is feathered, and thats cute :)

While exploring, Jean is knocked out and kidnapped by some guys, and they’re driven off by Ka-zar and his tiger Zabu. They are not enemies whatsoever, and are in fact, on the same side, but because everyone is allergic to TALKING they start beating the shit out of each other.

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Luckily Ka-zar has REALLY bad ADHD and is distracted by some guy he hates. He beats the shit out of them, then afterwards when the X-Men say “hey let’s be friends” he goes “oh, okay.” I guess he forgot.

Angel is captured too and he and Jean need to survive a poorly drawn T-Rex. Jean is too terrified to be of any help because She’s Girl, ignore the fact that she’d be PERFECT for getting out of this cause she doesn’t care if she’s tied up in ropes. Ka-zar and the others show up and cause a mammoth stampede.

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Th-then don’t? Comics are a visual medium???

They rescue Jean and Angel and try being like “Ah, we’ve made a true friend, Ka-zar, thanks for fighting with-“ but Ka-zar goes “Fuck off, leave.” so they fuck off and leave, and then the mammoth fill the tunnel with rocks.

I mean… it’s fine I guess? Not as exciting as the first time in the Savage Lands should be, I feel.