UXM #2: "No-One Can Stop The Vanisher!"

(Or ”When the Working Week Defeats Us”)

Comments

Issue #2 manages to be less sexist than its predecessor, though that probably says more about the initial instalment than it does about this one.  Marvel Girl still has to faint into Angel’s manly arms after over-exerting herself (by throwing aside a gaggle of giggling adolescent girls gagging for Angel’s autograph”, no less), and suffer the indignity of Worthington issuing her combat commands using the codename “Gorgeous.”.

At least this time she gets to threaten a pair of hoods with their own weapons, though.  “She’s more dangerous than the others!” one notes, in what actually a pretty impressive piece of accidental foreshadowing when you think about it.

Beast is still without any real individual traits – he claims to be smarter than the others, but that’s treated as boastfulness rather than an accurate assessment. He’s pretty much a fractionally more mature Iceman at this point.

Xavier didn’t really come across to well last time, between his ridiculous obsession with punctuality and creepy comments about his new student’s attractiveness.  Now, though, he’s moved into petty tyranny; demanding absolute silence during briefings (imagine how well that would have gone down with, say, Wolverine or Gambit) and handing out demerits to those who don’t toe the line.  His decision to face the Vanisher and his army of hoodlums is also difficult to tie in to his desire to remain anonymous.  Presumably he wiped everyone’s mind off-screen.

To be completely fair to Lee, although this issue is once again crammed with low-level sexism, ridiculous plot developments (what’s the point of having four men with guns guard a briefcase against a teleporting foe if they talk about his sudden arrival at such length that he teleports out again; one of those times that a duo-specific panel is not only annoying and redundant but actually harmful) and incomprehensible jokes ( “I’d like to help him too.  With a cactus plant!”), he’s now eight for eight in introducing mutant characters who will have at least recurring roles in 21^st century X-books.  One could be cynical and point to this as proof of the line’s creative bankruptcy, but I prefer to credit Lee with a knack for coming up with attention-grabbing characters. 

Bonus points are also given for the speed with which the media turn against the X-Men the instant they lose a fight against a supervillain.  "I knew it... If they were really so great, they wouldn't keep their identities a secret!" It's not exactly an Aaron Sorkin script, granted, but '60s Stan Lee is already orders of magnitude better at talking heads commentary than what you find in Miller's Dark Knight Strikes Again. [1]

Lastly, I’m happy to see the word “Zoweee!” getting an airing.  As a term, it’s only second to “Zounds” on my list of outdated expletives starting with Z.  I hope there’ll be more of this coming later.

Clues

This story takes place over a minimum of five days, if we assume that by “In a few days” Vanisher actually means “The day after tomorrow”.

During the first day of the story, the Vanisher puts a gun on a bank manager as part of a heist.  On the same day, Cyclops obliterates a crumbling wall threatening to squish some construction workers.  I’m not sure whether these events preclude the possibility of it being a Sunday (‘70s US labor laws not really being a particular strength of mine) but it does mean the story can be no more likely to be set on a Sunday than on a Monday, so we’ll assume the story takes place over the working week.

The problem with reading these issues in black and white has become obvious; I can’t tell whether the deciduous trees outside the Whitehouse are green or autumnal.  From the front cover, though, the leaves in question are mercifully free of Fall’s onslaught. I dug out a picture of the Whitehouse in the second week of September:

So greenery at that time is not completely beyond the realms of possibility.  Therefore:

Date

Monday 4^th to Friday 8^th September, 1978.

X-Date

X+3 to X+7.

Compression Constant

1 Marvel week = 6.78 standard weeks.

Contemporary Events

The start of the conference that will lead to the Camp David Accords.

Georgi Markov is stabbed with a poisoned umbrella in London.

Stand-Out Line

“Call the cops!  Even jail would be better than those corny puns of yours!” A rare moment of self-reflection from Stan Lee.  Though having said that, if terrible puns are your thing, this comic is thing of beauty. 

[1] Not hard, because Miler is a disgrace to fiction.  Either he completely lost the ability to write with any competence whatsoever before starting TDKSA, or - as seems more likely - he decided that hating the idea of writing another Batman book was reason enough to make sure it was total shit, but not reason enough to turn down the fucking money.

UXM #1: "The X-Men"

Comments

“The past is a foreign country”, goes the old Hartley quote.  “They do things differently there.”

So it would seem.  Mostly, they do things differently in terms of their promotion of chauvinism and tolerance of borderline sexual harassment.  Professor Xavier is supposed to be a teacher, entrusted by the guardians of his charges to mould these impressionable minds into the best shape possible.  I’m not sure how that’s served by announcing a new addition to the class with the words “I sense a taxi approaching the main gate.  Within... is a most attractive young lady!”  Even Cyclops, usually the paragon of respect, offers his first opinion of his future wife thus: “You’re right, sir! Wow! She’s a real living doll!”

What a charmer.

This behaviour continues throughout the issue, dismissed by the narrator (i.e. Stan Lee) as “bantering”, but which could probably be more fairly described as “actionable”.

I’m also not entirely sure how Cape Citadel operates.  It seems to be a nuclear missile base, but one that announces its test launches to the public, and which has at least one NASA employee on staff.  Maybe the military want a rocket man on hand as an advisor.  Or maybe NASA just wants its own missiles, in case the moon starts steppin’ to.

Despite all that, there is some impressive work in establishing the character ground rules: Cyclops as the uptight swot, Angel as an arrogant show-off, and Iceman as the class clown.  Only Beast doesn’t really make much of an impression (well, and Marvel Girl, but then that never really changes in any case).  I’ve also got to hand style points to Magneto.  Not only does he deliver messages in sky writing using ionised particles, but he takes the time to ensure his signature is in cursive script.  Now that’s a dedication to detail sorely lacking in most super villains.

Clues

This story takes place over two days.

Iceman is identified as both sixteen years old, and the youngest member of the pre-Marvel Girl team.

Xavier notes that he was born to parents who “had worked on the first a-bomb project”.  Only ten pages into the first issue, and we already have our first thorny issue.  The Manhattan Project occurred during the 1940s, which would put Xavier at most in his early twenties at this point (I know I said we would ignore specific historical references, but this is the first freaking issue, for crying out loud).  That doesn’t really feel right, given how he’s portrayed, even granting that, for example, I was given my first class of A-level students at twenty-three.

There are a number of possible ways out of this, actually:

·         Xavier has been prematurely aged by his mutant power;

·         The first experiments with nuclear weapons occurred earlier in the Marvel universe;

·         Xavier is deliberately making shit up to test his student’s knowledge of basic history;

·         This comic is set, from Stan Lee’s perspective at time of writing, in the future.

The first of these is only a surface patch, which doesn’t really explain Xavier’s attitude and breadth of experience.  The second is a distinct possibility, but Marvel generally likes to leave major historical events more or less in place; moving Alamogordo into the mid ‘30s seems like a bit of a stretch (and would raise all sorts of questions about the way the war went, and why Berlin never got a face full of mushroom clouds).

I quite like the third explanation.  It’s short, simple, and pretty funny (I wish I’d tried something similar when I was teaching in the mid ‘00s: “I was born of parents who had worked on the demolition teams for the Berlin Wall”).  Even so, though, I’m going to go for door #4, if only because it will help with the significant time dilation effects we’re going to have to deal with long-term.

I am therefore declaring that this issue took place on:

Date

 Friday 1^st and Saturday 2^nd of September, 1978.

X-Date

 X to X+1.

Contemporary Events

Negotiations continue between Chile and Argentina over the Beagle Channel.

Stand-Out Line

 “Just as the hunter missiles are attracted by heat, so are the Iceman’s ice grenades attracted by the missiles’ speed...”  I know that neither the superhero genre nor the works of Stan Lee are sensible places to seek out scientific accuracy, but this line sticks out as particularly ridiculous.  The X-Men and the laws of physics will never be closely acquainted, but it’s going to be tough to top this one.