X-Men #43-#45, Avengers #53: The Return of Magneto

With the X-Men still reeling from Professor Xavier's death, it's a good time for Magneto to make a re-appearance. X-Men #43 starts with him watching the funeral, and calling out to Quicksilver, who it turns out has gone AWOL to attend it. I was a little puzzled at this point, because didn't Quicksilver leave Magneto in X-Men #11? The matter is cleared up with a footnote to the appropriate issue of Avengers.

Back at the mansion, we have the reading of the will - or at least a holographic recording that Xavier had made, shortly before going off to confront Grotesk. He reveals what he says was the real secret of X-Men #41-#42 - that he'd been training Jean in telepathy (she had been strictly telekinesis only until now).

We discover that Wanda has been depowered, and that Pietro and Wanda are hoping Magneto will be able to fix this. Magneto has also someone managed to sucker Toad into joining up, despite abandoning Toad on an alien planet. They've nearly got the whole gang back together again... But Magneto has a secret - he caused Wanda's depowerment in the first place!

The X-Men try to Trojan horse Magneto, but get captured, and all placed in custom prisons. Angel escapes, though, and goes away to New York City to fetch the Avengers, stopping off en route during issue #44 to have a side story with Red Raven, a Timely character from the 1940s. The Avengers team he meets is the Hawkeye/Black Panther/Giant-Man/Wasp line-up, just after Black Panther joined, and before they encountered The Vision.

Magneto has a plan. Firstly, as he has outlined, he wishes to create a "sanctuary... a separate country for mutants", on a small island. Scott sees "a lot of sense in what he's saying." But the rest of the plan, which sets the Avengers and X-Men against each other in a big fight, young Mr Summers is less keen on. Magneto is revealed to have let Warren escape, and planted a bug on him, leading to the Avengers believing the X-Men have betrayed them and joined the Brotherhood. Except, at the least moment, we discover that the Avengers have out-thought Magneto. We end Avengers #53 with the Avengers triumphant, and Pietro and Wanda running away on their own again...

All in all, this is very confused, with shifting motivations and no sense of who knows what when, and so therefore it's no surprise to learn that the writer changed during this, from Roy Thomas to Gary Friedrich. The X-Men have permanently lost Xavier, which ought to be opening new story pastures, but instead we get a story which is fundamentally quite regressive, with the artificial return of old Brotherhood line-up only to have Wanda and Pietro break away, a story that we have done pretty much exactly like that before. Additionally, Angel's side story jars, and I suspect it of being inventory material being worked into the ongoing plot somehow.

X-Men #11: The "Triumph" of Magneto

After a couple of off-format issues, X-Men #11 appears to return to the formula of going after a newly emerged mutant - in this case The Stranger. The Brotherhood make contact first, though, and for their troubles are rewarded with the revelation that the Stranger is not a mutant, but an alien, here to take some mutants off-world. He takes Magneto and Toad in to captivity. This is the so-called "Triumph of Magneto" that the cover further emphasises with "No! You're not seeing things! This title means what it says!" So, it turns out - comics have a tradition of lying on their covers. Who knew?

In Magneto's absence, the brotherhood dissolves. Pietro and Wanda decline an offer to join the X-Men, saying they'd rather return home to central Europe (they'll soon enough join the line-up of Avengers). Although Pietro's main motivation has been to protect Wanda, as soon as Magneto is gone, he lords it over her, saying that "No, my sister! It is I who give the orders now!", when she starts to consider signing up. Mastermind is written off as a threat. It's unclear whether this is a genuine attempt to take Magneto off the board so that new things can be done with the emerging mutant stories, or whether it's a mere fake-out. Although Magneto's removal will hardly stick, this is the final end of this Brotherhood line-up.

Continuity notes

First appearance of the Stranger. Magneto and Toad taken off-world. Mastermind, Magneto and Toad are removed from Cerebro.

X-Men #7: Graduation Day

Picking up from #5, where Xavier decided the X-Men were ready now, the team officially graduate at the start of X-Men #7, both as X-Men, and from prep school. Xavier then leaves them under the temporary leadership of Scott. Leader-Scott immediately starts doing the things we know and love Leader-Scott for - i.e. stays in at the mansion watching for trouble while his team-mates make their first on-panel visit to a Bohemian coffee shop in Greenwich Village. Here they feel comfortable displaying their mutant traits, with Hank showing off his oversize feet, and Bobby joking about their friend who is a "super-powered mutant". It's not quite the Stonewall Inn, and Greenwich Village has been that sort of place for decades by the sixties, but makes for a curious conjunction, especially with a trans reading in mind; only amplified by Magneto's finding he can "pass" at the carnival in costume.

Back at the mansion, Scott's vigil is broken by an alert, as Magneto removes Blob's memory block. They rush to the scene and we have the inevitable nil-nil draw between the X-Men and the Brotherhood. Blob walks away, and without Xavier around to mind-wipe him again, he's left with a memory of what happened. Why has Xavier left, anyway? Well, we're not told until issue #9, but Scott does say that he was thinking of leaving the team to seek out a cure until the temporary leadership thing comes up. Xavier, being manipulative? Never. In Astonishing X-Men #14, Emma, under the influence of Cassandra Nova, says he picked Scott to lead because he had nothing else. Perhaps that's not the whole of it.

Continuity notes

Xavier leaves, leading Cyclops in charge. First apperance of Cerebro, a giant machine to aid Cyclops find other mutants. First appearance of the Greenwich Village coffee shop, Zelda, and Bernard. Beast's middle initial given as "P". Blob joins the Brotherhood.

X-Men #6: "He's just a man in swimming trunks!"

I'd known it was inevitable, but I'd purposely avoided finding out when X-Men's first guest appearance was. Here we have it - in issue #6, Namor, the Sub-Mariner, appears. Curiously, although the full Brotherhood line-up recur, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are singled out on the cover.

Namor is one of the original Timely characters from 1939, and was reintroduced in Fantastic Four #4, a couple of years before this. Here he's given enough of an explanation that readers who hadn't read that can get the jist - with editorial footnotes referring to Fantastic Four #27 and Avengers #3.
Magneto and Xavier realise that he must be a mutant at about the same time, and try and recruit him. Naturally, their teams collide, and equally naturally, Namor's libido wins. In a shocking development, Namor refuses to ally with either side. They are, after all, surface dwellers. A few hundred posts from now, we'll see how he'll eventually join the X-Men, alongside Magneto!

Wanda and Pietro briefly break free from Magneto's control (or rather, Pietro is captured and Wanda refuses to abandon him), but return to him by the end. The last panel provides a slashy moment, as Jean proclaims, perhaps little too hard, "I'm glad to see them go! That Witch is much too attractive!" Course you are, Jean.

Continuity notes

Introduction of Namor into X-Men. Magneto uses his powers to produce an astral projection to search for him (as does Xavier). The phrase "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters" appears.

X-Men #5: X-Men in space!

X-Men #5 picks up immediately from issue #4, with Professor Xavier shockingly de-powered in the X-Men's fight with Magneto. The Brotherhood has been driven off, and regrouped in an as-yet unnamed artificial asteroid. This marks the first visit of the X-Men to space - something that will become a mainstay of the series to the point that the recent Wolverine and the X-Men #6 has Wolverine run out of money and take his space plane to go and cheat at an intergalactic casino to raise funds for the school.

The main plot of this issue is driven by Magneto's wish to find out the X-Men's base of operations, something that ends up with Angel being kidnapped after an incident staged by Toad. The X-Men stow away on his ride back to space, and in the ensuing fight, the asteroid is destroyed. This provides a backdrop for some good action scenes and a nice character moment, with Wanda and Pietro refusing to acquiesce in killing the X-Men, but equally turning down their offer to join. In the end, the X-Men escape, apparently. Given that their escape craft is magnetically-powered and then immediately takes off again to pick up the Brotherhood from the soon-to-be-destroyed asteroid, I see a strong implication that Magneto himself saved the X-Men. Much later, we'll discover that Xavier and Magneto have history - history that perhaps explains why Mastermind and Toad are poking around Westchester in the first place. Is Magneto perhaps not being entirely straight with his subordinates?

And finally, we arrive at the last three panels, where we discover that Professor X was not really depowered at all. He was merely testing his students, who have now passed their final exam. Well, that was a bit quicker than I'd expected. I'll note that this "exam" involved Angel getting tortured.

Continuity notes

Jean Grey's parents are introduced - they visit the mansion. First version of Asteroid M. Professor X is revealed to have been faking his depowerment.

X-Men #4: "they hate us -- fear us"

The fourth issue of X-Men bursts with ideas new and old.  It features the first return of a villain - Magneto, who has assembled a "brotherhood of evil mutants" around him (a descriptive term which does not appear to be used by Magneto himself), going up another floor on the threat escalator. Although his identity is given away in the cover, the interior pages introduce his minions first, who refer merely to their "leader", and so avoids mentioning Magneto by name until his appearance on panel in page 6. We meet uncouth Toad, impulsive Pietro, proud, compassionate, Wanda and the aggressive Mastermind.

More importantly for the saga, Magneto is given a philosophical justification of sorts. He claims his coup d'état in Santo Marco is necessary as homo sapiens hate and fear mutants, and they would "would kill [mutants] if only they could! We only fight in self defense!" Coupled with this, we see the first example of actual anti-mutant prejudice, in the flashback to Pietro and Wanda's origin story. An odd result of this is that Wanda's codename, "Scarlet Witch" was given to her by a villager from the lynch mob in the "heart of Europe". Her use of it is a reclamation of the term, and at this stage her powers are no more inherently magical than any those of any other mutant.

Then the X-Men arrive and ruin everything, defeating the Brotherhood after a series of thrilling fights. Pietro, moved by Wanda, disables the scorched earth bomb that Magneto has left behind, saving the innocent civilian population of Santo Marco. And, as a last gasp, Professor X incurs an enormous strain, resulting in his depowerment!

Continuity notes

First appearances of Toad, Quicksilver (Pietro), Scarlet Witch (Wanda), Mastermind, along with the return of Magneto. Pietro and Wanda are given an origin story, implied to have happened some time between issue #1 and #4. Xavier is depowered!