Reviewing 40+ Years of the X-Men: Professor Xavier Is a Jerk and So Are the X-Men.

You know why the world hates and fears you, X-Men?  Maybe because they're pretty cool with you in the first two issues and you act like a bunch jerks.  I got the DVD containing every issue of [Uncanny] X-Men so let's look at issues #1 and #2, with some Silver-Age Super Dickery, Ass Kissing, and Screwing Around.

I'll grant that the X-Men are substantially less dickish than Superman.  Professor Xavier tosses out mindwipes all over the place such that you wonder what the goddamned deal was when he did it to Magneto.  (Aside from the coma?  It inflicted Onslaught on us, but that's another post for another time.)  It also makes you wonder why Cyclops is kissing his ass so hard, assuming you don't know about Cyclops' horrible life in Mr. Sinster's Orphanage of Mutant Breeding to Escape From Under Apocalypse's Thumb, Except Apocalypse Wants to Use the Baby As His Next Host and... y'know, we're not even close to getting to the Huh? of the Summers family, let's save that for later.

Besides, they all have their tongues firmly in the Professor's coin slot, it's just that Cylcops actually flips his shit when a ball comes flying past the Professor, who is sitting in the middle of their friggin' training session and told Beast to throw the ball at Iceman and...

Screw it.

To be fair, the X-Men Who Aren't Cyke or JEAN!!!!! are perpetually screwing around.  I can't tell if it's the fact that I grew up with a mature original X-Men team that makes this weird or if it really is just weird.  Still, keep in mind that Bobby Drake/Iceman is the youngest at age 16.

Here's Iceman asking for a bit more responsibility and more difficult work.  In every other school, the teachers would appreciate this kind of initiative and grant the student's request.  A student that wants more of a challenge?  Xavier, what's Bobby's Extra Credit Assignment?

"Go to recess."


What is this?  Professor Xavier's Pre-school for Gifted Youngsters?

He's 16.

OK, so Xavier then has Beast throw the ball at Iceman leading to Cyclops' fit which leads to Xavier ordering Cyclops to blast the two of them until the arrival of Jean Grey breaks up the fight.

Jean Grey, as you all may know, has the power of teleportation.

...

Yeah, ok, they keep botching up what her power is in the first few issues.  They also can't keep her power level consistent.  She can lift heavy things with ease, she can't lift anything heavier than she could lift herself without strain, she moves around the molecules of costumes to create street clo... *sigh* right, right.  Not there yet.

So it seems Jean couldn't tell anyone aside from her parents where she was coming and why and even she didn't know why she was there.  This is really creepy in light of later issues, more precisely, issue #3 and later still, Onslaught.

Meanwhile, we get our introduction into one of the best villians ever: Magneto.  He fiddles with a top-secret rocket so its test launch fails (and everyone learns about next day) and then after screwing with the base at Cape Citadel, just walks in and demands they turn it over.  I don't mean he flies over in his bubble of Magnetic Awesome, no.  Magneto walks right in the front door and demands the base leading to a terrible panel over an awesome panel.

  

Who the hell did the layout here?  Did Rob Liefeld travel back in time and fuck up the top half of Magneto there?

But the panel right below it?  That's sweet.  Just the determined, focused eyes of Magneto under his helmet with great use of shadow.

Anyway, Magneto's audacity is one of the things that I really like about the first two issues.  Magneto and The Vanisher are super-villians with balls.  Magento walks right in the front door to do his nefarious deeds and The Vanisher announces his scheme to steal defense plans, does so, and then teleports around the base just to screw with his pursuers and then does the same with the X-Men.  Too many villians just stand there and cackle and announce how awesome they are and what they're going to do and then cackle some more.  Magneto and The Vanisher just walk in and do it.  Everyone loves Magneto, but The Vanisher got pushed to the C-list, sadly.  They both join up with super-villian teams later on, but while The Vanisher's disbanded after finding out their leader was an alien, Magneto basically asked himself, "Why do I need other mutants?  Screw this."  But again, we'll get there.

Back on the base, Magneto's thrown up a shield, keeping the soldiers out while he um... controls the base.  Yeah, Maggie wasn't big on big plans in this one.  He took over the base for mutants.  Anyway, the X-Men show up and ask to help.  The soldiers figure, "What the hey," and then we get this:

Who're you attacking?

The real dicks in this are Iceman and Jean for freezing and throwing the soldiers around respectively.  Beast slightly less so for playing leapfrog with them.  But that's how they roll with humans in these issues.  The X-Men can be found to be tossing around disparaging remarks about homo sapiens, like Angel saying earlier in the issue, "Mistakes are for homo sapiens, sir... not The Angel!"  Xavier calls him out for being overconfident, not for talking shit about humans.  In the next issue after saving some construction workers who then thank them, what does Iceman do?

For fuck's sake, Iceman.  Afterwards, he and Cyclops hitch a ride in an ice cream van back to the school.  This seems trivial, but it leads to more, "What?!" next issue.

But to finish up #1, after Magneto fires the base's heat-seeking missiles at them (Iceman knocks that one out of the park awesomely) and then metal and then throws a tank of burning jet fuel at them.

Cyclops plays some Dig Dug with his eyebeams so the X-Men can dodge it, thus showing he's a better strategic thinker than Khan and Magneto flies off.

Not bad for a first adventure.

As I said before, next up is The Vanisher and he is pretty awesome in his being incredibly cocky.  He slips through the fingers of the U.S. government and the X-Men!  How can they solve this?

Professor Xavier examines a video of The Vanisher teleporting and decides that dickery is the way to go.

So after some trash talk about his telepathy while The Vanisher trash talks Xavier's wheelchair, bing!  The Vanisher has full-on retrograde amnesia now.

Jerk.

The Vanisher is taken by the police and if he gets sent to jail after being mindwiped, then I need to exponentiate the hell out of my earlier statement.  What's the point in jailing someone who's mindwiped and doesn't even know where or who they are?  They don't even know what they did and how likely are they to do it again?

Xavier is a jerk.

Maybe he has a good reason to be...