Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78) | Chapter 14: The College Years (1978-83)

We now enter a pretty weird era. By 1983, the X-Men were an incredibly hot commodity and it seems there was renewed interest in the old team members. J.M. DeMattias, who was writing the non-team book The Defenders and struggling to find a new take on it, convinced his editors to relaunch it as The New Defenders with a stable lineup of characters. So Iceman and Angel join Beast (already a cast member) along with a fairly random assortment of other Marvel characters. Although not an X-book, it ends up dealing with a lot of mutant concepts by virtue of its cast.

Also, as we’ll see, the book positively drips with queer readings. By 2021, more than half the core members of the New Defenders have officially come out of the closet in print, and this book lays a lot of the groundwork for those stories.

This week, we’ll cover the short period before DeMattias quit the book, including the first Iceman miniseries.

 

Defenders #122 (August 1983)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Don Perlin

Iceman visits the Beast on summer break from college, as Valkyrie, Hellcat and Hellstrom announce they’re leaving the team. Beast decides to try to form a more permanent roster of Defenders.

How much did Hank and Bobby miss each other? Enough that what when Bobby shows up, he tackles Beast and Beast leaps into his arms and kisses him.

Next, Bobby follows Hank and Gargoyle into the bathroom where Bobby, uh, helps Gargoyle lather up.

As Hank boasts about his sexual conquests, Bobby simply notes that he’s not seeing any girls, because of course he isn’t. Then they bump into Hank’s (gender-neutral?) teammate Overmind, and Bobby is simply gushing at how big he is.

Later at dinner, Hank and Bobby are bickering like an old married couple and even team maid Dolly notes how much they “adore each other.” When Vera coincidentally shows up, having been stood up by Beast, she doesn’t even acknowledge Bobby, whom she hasn’t seen since X-Men: The Hidden Years #2, an acknowledgement of how he ghosted her best friend Zelda.

 

Defenders #123-124 (September-October 1983)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Don Perlin

Iceman, Beast, and Gargoyle visit Scarlet Witch and Vision, and get attacked by Harridan, Seraph, and Cloud from the Secret Empire. No one makes any comments about the fact that Cloud is basically just a naked woman, so it seems like Bobby’s growing up.

Meanwhile, Dr. Strange, Hulk, Namor, and Silver Surfer are being told of the prophecy that if they continue working together, they’ll destroy the earth, which leads to next issue’s permanent roster change.

 

New Defenders #125 (November 1983)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Don Perlin

After Mutant Force attacks the wedding of Daimon Hellstrom and Hellcat, the New Defenders team is formed: Beast, Iceman, Angel, Valkyrie, Moondragon, Gargoyle.

When Hank and Bobby come home drunk to find Angel waiting for them, they all decide to dance around in their underwear. Bobby reminisces about them busting into Cyclops’ room together “doing our old Rockettes routine,” and this is a flashback I really need to see.

Later at the wedding, Bobby is a jealous brat when a woman flirts with Warren. During the fight, he gushes over Gargoyle, “that Isaac is really something else.”

Angel recaps what he’s been up to over in X-Men, and the narrator refers to a story that was to run in upcoming issues of Marvel Fanfare to explain his newfound confidence, but that story never ran.

No three straight men have ever held hands this way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Defenders #126 (December 1983)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Alan Kupperberg

The New Defenders squabble over who will be team leader until the giant Leviathan escapes from SHIELD and they work together to stop him. Meanwhile, the Secret Empire uses the distraction to break Mutant Force out of prison.

This issue begins a long-running subplot of both Iceman and Angel mooning over Moondragon, who is interested in neither of them (by 2006, Moondragon would be in a lesbian relationship with the second Quasar, Phylla-Vell). Bobby believes he doesn’t have any chance if Warren is also charming her. This continues his long-running trend of pursuing women who aren’t interested in him. In this case, his thought bubbles seem to suggest his interest is genuine, but this is explained away in New Defenders #140: Moondragon is using her mental powers to seduce all members of the team to try to get them to remove her power-dampening headband.

Angel again refers to an unpublished Savage Land adventure that was supposed to run in Marvel Fanfare but never did.

 

New Defenders #127 (January 1984)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Sal Buscema

Cloud escapes the Secret Empire and asks the Defenders for help but is immediately recaptured.

Meanwhile, Iceman brings Beast, Warren, and Candy Southern to his parents’ house, where he finally tells them he’s still superheroing. It’s not clear when exactly Bobby “came out” to his folks about being Iceman, since he was still keeping a secret identity through the entire run of The Champions. This is Mr. and Mrs. Drake’s first published appearances since the “Origins of the X-Men” backup strip in X-Men #44-46. Mr. Drake says he worried about Bobby getting killed when he found out he was in the X-Men. Presumably, Bobby came out to his folks sometime between the end of the Champions and Bobby’s appearance in Uncanny X-Men #145-146 – although, given that two of the five students at their son’s private school turned out to be publicly known as X-Men should have been a big clue.

Iceman leaves his parents in a state of shock when he transforms into his ice form in front of them. The scene looks like it was meant to be read as a humorous take on an actual coming out, but to be honest, it’s so confused about what Iceman’s parents know and accept already that it’s a bit muddled.

 

New Defenders #128-130 (February-April 1984)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Alan Kupperberg, Don Perlin and Kim Demulder, Mike Zeck

The New Defenders attempt to rescue Cloud from the Secret Empire but are captured. The Secret Empire attempts to brainwash them into killing the New Mutants, but Moondragon successfully blocks the brainwashing and frees them. Meanwhile, the Secret Empire was also planning to launch a satellite that would cause the US and USSR to ratchet up hate for each other and start a nuclear Armageddon, with the hope that they’ll emerge to rule the ashes. The New Defenders stop the satellite, crush the Secret Empire, and arrest Mutant Force.

The villain for this arc is Professor Power, who fought Professor X and Beast in Marvel Team-Up #118 and #124. He blames Professor X for not helping to cure his son (whose body he’s now inhabiting) and plans to get revenge by killing his current and former students. In the end, Moondragon destroys his mind as she tries unsuccessfully to bring back his son’s consciousness. (Nevertheless, Professor Power crops back up a few times, and runs into Iceman again in Spectacular Spider-Man #197-199.

As for Bobby, this arc is mainly notable for continuing the running gag of both he and Angel both being horny for Moondragon. He also casually mentions his father’s upcoming retirement party, trailing the Iceman miniseries.

 

New Defenders #131 (May 1984)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias (plot) and Peter Gillis (script)
Artist: Alan Kupperberg

While delivering a speech at Brooklyn University, Beast is attacked by aspiring villain The Walrus, and appealed to by aspiring hero Frog-Man. Beast, Iceman and Angel – having what must be their worst day – are all beaten by Walrus, who in turn is beaten by Frog-Man. Beast is spared having to give Frog-Man membership in the New Defenders when his dad shows up and drags him home.

This is a really bizarre issue, and it’s most notable for a scene in the Green Room before Beast’s speech where a female student is flirting with Warren and Bobby, and Bobby responds by introducing himself as Beast’s boyfriend Lance. She runs off, causing Hank to worry that she might believe it.

So, maybe this was meant to be hilarious in a Three’s Company sort of way, but isn’t this just Bobby finally being honest?

Valkyrie knows what’s up.

 

Iceman Vol 1 #1 (December 1984)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Alan Kupperberg

Iceman returns home to Port Jefferson on Long Island for his father’s retirement party and has to defend their neighbors when aliens White Light and The Idiot attack.

We’re skipping ahead in the publishing order, but this is where the miniseries fits continuity-wise, as well as thematically given it’s DeMattias’ last swing at the character.

This miniseries seems like it was designed intentionally to be chock full of subtextual hints about Bobby’s sexuality, even as on the surface it’s brimming with Bobby’s supposed lust for his female neighbor, Marge.

When he first meets her, he tells himself he’s in LOVE, and decides to try to impress her. So he makes an ice pole to slide down in front of her. Unfortunately, it’s not strong enough and collapses under his weight. That’s right, Iceman is unable to maintain a stiff pole for a woman.

Later, he encounters a bigoted cop who accuses him of “spreading your filth around this town.” There’s definitely a strong parallel to anti-gay bigotry in the word choices here.

But then we get to something much more direct. After evading the cop, Bobby ices down and gets dressed in a neighbor’s yard. He pauses to reflect on the growing trend of religious extremism targeting mutants in X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills (Marvel Graphic Novel #5) and following Dazzler’s coming out in Dazzler: The Movie (Marvel Graphic Novel #12). And then an older woman literally calls him a “sexual deviant.” Seems the old woman did know what she was talking about after all.

Incidentally, this is the issue that establishes that Bobby’s father is Irish-Catholic and his mom is Jewish. Bobby says he went to Hebrew School as a child. He may be joking, but it seems to me he was raised Jewish enough to be bar mitzvahed.

Iceman Vol 1 #2 (February 1985)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Alan Kupperberg

After an argument with his parents, Iceman ends up transported back to 1942, where he meets them as a young couple. There, he’s attacked by Kali, who’s looking for Marge. William Drake gets killed in the battle, meaning Bobby will never be conceived. Well, this issue did come out five months before Back to the Future.

Before going back in time, Bobby has a heart-wrenching soliloquy about how hard it’s been on his parents that he’s a mutant and how he’d “give anything to be normal.”

As soon as he lands in 1942 in his costume speedos, a cop accuses him of wearing some other man’s underwear.

Continuity trivia: Ok, Marvel time aside, something is a bit screwy with the characters’ ages. Bobby says is about to say he was born (or, possibly, conceived) in 1959. That would make him 25-26 as of the publishing date. That’s a little old, considering he was meant to be either Jean’s age or a year younger, and she was 23 when she died in 1980. It would also push all the other original X-Men close to 30. Bobby has still been written as a fairly young college student up to this point. It’s got to be a math error.

 

Iceman Vol 1 #3 (April 1985)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Alan Kupperberg

Now trapped in nonexistence, Bobby has nightmares about his life until the cosmic entity Oblivion offers to restore his dad to life in return for Bobby bringing his daughter, Marge, back to him. Marge doesn’t want to return and strikes Bobby down before her desire to confront her father sends them both back to Oblivion.

Bobby’s dream recap of his life has some interesting points. He sees his parents as infantilizing him, but but also seems to resent Xavier and the X-Men for using him. At one point, he dreams of Xavier wanting to hop on his back and ride him. He just wishes he wasn’t a “freak.”

When we get to the Champions era, he dreams of Hercules picking him up and he exclaims “I love you!” He quickly covers that by saying he meant to say that to Darkstar, and for the first time he seems to recognize that Darkstar was never actually interested in him.

 

Iceman Vol 1 #4 (June 1985)
Writer: J.M. DeMattias
Artist: Alan Kupperberg

Iceman fights back against Oblivion, and his love for his parents leads Oblivion and Marge to make peace of a sort with each other. Oblivion sends him back to earth and he makes peace with his parents.

This is a really weird end to a really weird series. I guess we’re meant to see a contrast between Iceman striking off on his own and Marge just returning to her father’s control. And maybe they’re cosmic beings and beyond such relationships, but the text really suggests that by the end they’ve replaced familial love with romantic love for each other. The sentence “Let us come close… merge… become one…” is uttered.

The peace Bobby makes with his parents over being a superhero doesn’t last. When next we see them in Uncanny X-Men #289, William Blake is a racist and bigot again.

Next Week: Peter Gillis takes over writing New Defenders and Bobby starts chasing after yet another woman… or does he?

Where to find these issues: They’re all on Marvel Unlimited and have been reprinted multiple times. Most recently, they were all collected in Defenders Epic Collection Vol 8: The New Defenders. They’re also split across The Essential Defenders Vol 6  & Vol 7. A trade paperback called The New Defenders Vol 1 collects everything except the Iceman miniseries. That miniseries was collected in a Marvel Premiere Hardcover edition called X-Men: Iceman.

 

 

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76) | Chapter 13: The Champions Part 2 (1977-78)

Iceman spends nearly five years in the woods as seemingly no writer wants anything to do with him until he joins the cast for the tail end of the New Defenders. It’s a pretty shocking considering that this time period is also when Iceman was making a move into mainstream popular culture as one of the main characters in the syndicated Saturday morning cartoon show Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Original episodes aired between 1981-83, and continued in syndication through 1986. While that show is beyond the scope of this blog project – unless you think I should do a full entry on it (let me know in the comments) – it’s definitely responsible for how a generation of nerds came to perceive Bobby Drake.

It’s even the foundation of this notorious Family Guy joke from 2006.

But despite his lack of a main book, Iceman makes a handful of guest appearances in this era.

X-Men #138 (October 1980)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: John Byrne

This is the clip show issue after the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga, where Cyclops spends Phoenix’s funeral recapping the series so far. There isn’t much significant for Bobby in this issue, but Claremont does specifically include the scene from X-Men #1 where Iceman brushes of Jean’s arrival with “A girl… big deal!”

Other notes of interest: It doesn’t appear that Havok or Polaris attend Phoenix’s funeral. Also, Phoenix’s grave lists her lifespan as 1956-1980, meaning Claremont considered her 23-24 at this point in the story, which gives you a relative ballpark age for the other original X-Men. Bobby should be about a year younger than Jean.

 

X-Men #141, Uncanny X-Men #142 (January-February 1981)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: John Byrne

The classic “Days of Future Past” story, in which time-travelling Kate Pryde gets the X-Men to stop Mystique’s new Brotherhood of Queer Evil Mutants from killing Senator Kelly, unleashing the Sentinel apocalypse.

Bobby’s not in this story, no, but his tombstone confirms that he was killed by the Sentinels in the DOFP timeline. He’s buried between his two silver age loves, Beast and Polaris (Honestly, it’s odd that the Sentinels bothered with building a graveyard, isn’t it?). But that’s just an admittedly flimsy pretext to talk about a story that’s pretty important for any queer history of the X-Men.

It’s the first published appearance of Mystique’s lover Destiny. The narration refers to her as Mystique’s only friend in the group, so it’s clear they have a special relationship, even if the degree of closeness isn’t yet evident. We’ll see more of this in Avengers Annual #10 (January 1981), the issue where Rogue debuts and steals Ms. Marvel’s powers.

The story also strongly hints that Kate Pryde and Rachel Summers have a queer relationship (perhaps with the approval of Kate’s husband Colossus). Rachel calls Kate “my darling” at one point. The narration also makes the point of saying that while Kate is being pulled back to her home timeline, she gives her younger self a kiss. She does this right after she phases through, or physically penetrates Destiny, who yells that Kitty is “consuming” her (eating her?). This is the beginning of a long tradition of queerbaiting with Kitty Pryde that was finally paid off in Marauders #11, in which she has her first on-panel same-sex kiss.

Finally, I should note that it’s the debut of the original Pyro. So far as I know, he’s never been officially confirmed as queer, but he’s certainly coded as such with his pink shirt and ascot, and his flaming powers. Pyro was eventually given a backstory as a writer of steamy romance novels under a woman’s name. As in this story, he’s often paired with Avalanche, who’s never really been given a proper backstory as far as I can tell.

More good analysis of this story here.

X-Men Forever Vol 1 #4-5 (2001) established that in the new timeline created after Kate Pryde stopped the assassination, Iceman lived through the Sentinel apocalypse and was a mutant freedom fighter, at least to that point (the given year was 2014).

 

Marvel Two-In-One #76 (June 1981)
Writer: Tom DeFalco and David Micheline
Artist: Jerry Bingham

By coincidence, Thing and Iceman happen to both be at the Circus of Crime’s latest show (how do they keep getting bookings?) and they team up to stop them from robbing the audience, with the help of Goliath (Bill Foster). The story is called “Big Top Bandits.”

No explanation is given in this issue for why Iceman is in New York, but presumably he’s already transferred to the unnamed east coast university he’s studying at in Uncanny X-Men #145. Terri Sue Bottoms, his, uh, girlfriend from Incredible Hulk Annual #7 is still with him, living in New York City.

When Bobby goes to pick her up, he thinks about how hard it’s been for him to live a “normal life” and how much he misses the X-Men.

Once he ditches Ms. Bottoms, Bobby is all about the Tops.

After the Circus of Crime is stopped, everyone goes home. Iceman and Thing barely even exchange any lines in this team up. Terri Sue Bottoms is never seen again.

Unfortunately, this issue is not on Marvel Unlimited.

 

 

 

Uncanny X-Men #145-147 (May-July 1981)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Dave Cockrum

Ms. Locke kidnaps a bunch of the X-Men’s associates, in order to coerce the team to rescue Arcade, who’s (sort of) being held hostage by Dr. Doom. The X-Men recruit Iceman, along with Havok, Polaris, and Banshee to form a scratch team to search Murderworld while they confront Dr. Doom.

This story picks up on a stray plot thread from Marvel Two-in-One #68, where Arcade hired Toad to kill the Thing and Angel in Doom’s upstate New York castle, but Toad failed and ultimately turned the castle into a successful frog-themed amusement park. Having now regained the castle, Doom has kidnapped Arcade as a sort of revenge, and yet he treats him as a guest. It’s all very muddled, to be honest, as is Storm’s ‘psycho-goddess’ freakout in the climax.

The narrator says Bobby’s a college sophomore, but that should be glossed over. Bear in mind, he’s in his early twenties at this point – a little old to be an undergrad living in dorms. Presumably, he’s pursuing graduate studies or a professional program.

But let’s take a look at what’s visible in Bobby’s dorm room: on the walls he has a poster of the Ayatollah with darts thrown in it (topical in 1981), a poster for “Space Craft Yamato,” and what looks like a Playboy centerfold. There’s also a bra visible above his dresser, oddly tacked to the wall. And yet in the same story, Bobby notes that he’s more likely to be studying than making moves on ladies. You might say Bobby has staged all of this junk to make anyone who comes into his room think he’s a big ladies man.

It’s also worth wondering why Bobby needs to drink alone in his room.

At Murderworld, when Bobby has to rescue Lorna, his thought bubbles do give us some insight into his romantic feelings. He’s accepted that Lorna is with Alex now (and thank goodness because they haven’t even seen each other in over two years of story time!) but he tells himself he’s still in love with her and always will be. As I’ve said before, Bobby’s compulsive need to be loved by women who aren’t interested in him in the slightest seems is a good cover to others, but it’s becoming clearer here that it’s also a defensive mechanism for himself. Bobby is outright explaining to himself why he doesn’t feel attraction or the need to pursue other women. He’s starting to believe his own story.

The scratch team don’t appear in Uncanny X-Men #147, but it completes the story.

 

Bizarre Adventures #27 – second story (July 1981)
Writer: Mary Jo Duffy
Artist: George Perez

While visiting friends at Dartmouth College, Iceman stops burglars from stealing some technology on loan from Henry Pym.

The story opens on a page of Bobby admiring an ice sculpture someone made of Angel in particularly lusty tones. “These ice sculptures are nice. Especially the Angel. Those wings glittering in the sun make him a very impressive figure.” When Bobby’s friend asks about a girl Bobby was supposedly dating, Bobby dismisses the idea, saying he dumped her because “she was too fickle.” It sounds to me like a skeptical friend nudging him into admitting that he’s into dudes, and indeed, he tells Bobby “there’s this freshman in my dorm” he wants to introduce him to, being careful to use a gender-neutral term.

We have to handwave references to Bobby being a college sophomore, since we’ve settled on Bobby getting his Bachelor at Xavier’s, and assume Bobby is still pursuing a professional post-grad degree. That also resolves the awkward point about all the students who are openly drinking in front of police officers (as the drinking age in New York wouldn’t be raised to 21 until 1986, five years after the story was published).

This story was originally published in black and white, and that’s how you’ll find it on Marvel Unlimited and in X-Men Omnibus Vol. 2. However, it was digitally colored for the X-Men Rareties TPB from 1995, which is how I first read it. I remember it looking quite nice.

This issue also contains two other stories. In the first story (by Claremont and Buscema), Jean Grey’s sister Sara reminisces about an adventure they had where Attuma kidnapped them both and turned them into Atlanteans in an attempt to force them to breed mutant Atlanteans (the R-word isn’t used in this story, but…). That story fits best between X-Men #110-111. It’s mostly remembered for the flashback-within-the-flashback that gives Jean Grey’s origin for the first time. Structurally this is a mess (why is Sara remembering Jean’s origin?), but it’s held up as an important Phoenix story. Also, Sara is worried about her son Tommy, who is never spoken of again (going forward, she has twins Joey and Gailyn).

The other story (by Layton , Duffy, and Cockrum) has Nightcrawler and Vanisher accidentally trapped in an all-female dimension when Nightcrawler tries to free Vanisher from the halfway-teleported state he was left in Champions #17.

 

Avengers #211 (September 1981)
Writer: Jim Shooter
Artist: Gene Colan

Another one of those periodic issues where the Avengers just argue over their roster. Moondragon, who isn’t even a member at this point, decides to summon a bunch of heroes she considers good candidates for the team, and Iceman is one of them. Angel and Dazzler also show up, but Iceman doesn’t have lines with either of them.

Iceman does get into a fight with Moon Knight while both are being controlled by Moondragon. Of minor interest, Moon Knight calls Iceman a “punk,” which depending on your reading may be a homophobic insult.

Iceman mentions he’s still a college student and planning to be an accountant.

Eventually Moondragon decides she doesn’t want to help the Avengers, and all the candidates leave, except Tigra, who joins.

Beast decides to quit, too, so he can go back to being a scientist. He mentions in this issue he holds a dozen PhDs and speaks 53 languages. Beast also mentions that he has a lot of girlfriends – not sure if that’s a part of his character during Avengers, but it’s certainly not something that continues into his return to the mutant books. He ends up joining the Defenders just a few months later in Defenders #102, a couple years ahead of Iceman and Angel.

Speaking of Angel, he turns up again in Avengers #214, where Ghost Rider attacks him for no terribly good reason. Angel forgives him, but Ghost Rider is too stubborn to accept help, and everyone goes home. This sets up an eventual appearance in New Defenders that we’ll get too soon.

 

Marvel Super-Hero Contest of Champions #1-3 (June-August 1982)
Writers: Mark Greunwald, Steven Grant, Bill Mantlo
Artist: John Romita Jr., Bob Layton

The Grandmaster and Death force Marvel’s Super-Heroes to fight each other in a pointless bet.

A notorious cash-grab mini with a broken story. It was supposed to tie in with the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but Marvel held and revised the series after the US boycotted those games. Somehow in the three-year long production cycle, no one noticed that the plot doesn’t work because while all the characters act like Grandmaster won, they actually played to a tie. The writers simply miscounted the points. The plot hole was sort of handwaved away in Avengers Annual #16.

The entire first issue is just a glorified tour of all the super-hero characters Marvel had in its roster at the time. Iceman appears in two panels, where he has a brief conversation with Darkstar. Oddly, the narration refers to them as “two who had once been lovers,” when Champions made it clear that they were never actually a couple. Maybe the narrator is being sarcastic? Certainly Darkstar doesn’t look happy to see Bobby, despite what she’s saying on panel. Maybe she’s just trying to be polite.

This is the first time Iceman meets Northstar, the Marvel Universe’s first gay superhero. They don’t share any scenes, and Northstar is still a decade away from coming out, but they’re stuck in the same room with all the other heroes for the duration of the story.

 

Incredible Hulk #278-279 (December 1982-January 1983)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artist: Sal Buscema and Mark Gruenwald

After Bruce Banner is finally able to control the Hulk, all the Marvel heroes get together to petition the President to pardon him for everything the Hulk has done, and New York City throws a parade in his honor.

Iceman is seen at the parade and it’s implied he’s at the petitioning ceremony. The X-Men are seen at both. Oddly, Professor X is seen with the X-Men on the White House lawn, when his connection to the X-Men is not generally public knowledge.

This story doesn’t work at all for me. Leaving aside that Banner only got control a few days ago, it’s odd that they’d throw a parade for a guy who’s repeatedly devastated whole cities.

And that’s it for five years of Iceman appearances!

Elsewhere in the Mutant world:

• Uncanny X-Men #117-137: Xavier and Lilandra leave earth and he tells the story of how, he fought his first evil mutant, the Shadow King (#117); the X-Men finally make it back to America after Wolverine falls in love with Mariko and the team fights Moses Magnum in Japan (#118-119) and is ambushed by Alpha Flight in Calgary, where Marvel’s first gay hero Northstar makes his debut (#120-121); the X-Men fight Arcade (#122-124) and Arkon (Annual #3); the X-Men are finally reunited with Jean in Muir Island where they fight Proteus and Banshee leaves the team (#125-128); Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club all debut, Angel rejoins, and Phoenix goes mad and commits suicide to save the universe in the Dark Phoenix Saga (#129-137)
  • Worth noting: Two of the Shi’ar soldiers that Phoenix murders appear to be in a gay relationship (#135).
• Uncanny X-Men #139-144: Wolverine helps Alpha Flight with Wendigo, ending his obligation to Canada (#139-140); We finally learn Nightcrawler’s origin story, including his weird incestuous relationship with his foster sister, and a bisexual demon comes onto both him and Storm (Annual #4); Kitty fights a Demon (#143); and Cyclops meets Lee Forrester and fights D’Spayre (#144)
• Uncanny X-Men #148-167: The X-Men and Dazzler fight Caliban (#148); The X-Men fight Magneto on his island and we learn that he was a Holocaust survivor (#149-150); Emma Frost swaps bodies with Storm (#151-152); Kitty’s Fairy Tale (#153); Cyclops finds out Corsair’s his father and the X-Men fight the Brood (#154-157); the X-Men fight Rogue at the Pentagon (#158); Storm fights Dracula (#159, Annual #6); Belasco kidnaps Illyana (#160); Young Xavier and Magneto fight Hydra in Israel (#161); and the X-Men fight the Brood again (#162-167).
• Classic X-Men #23-44, once again, just the highlights of backup stories set in this era: Colossus goes home to Russia where he’s first denounced as a traitor but allowed to leave and banned from returning (#29); Moira attempts to clone Proteus but decides not to in the end (#36); Dazzler stops a possible mugger/rapist/murderer who claims to be a filmmaker (#38); Storm, Colossus and Wolverine fight a psychopathic mutant named Briggs (#39); Nightcrawler meets a mutant street busker (#40); a flashback to Cyclops’ time in the orphanage run by Sinister (#41-42); Phoenix in the afterlife (#43); and teenage Rogue gives trouble to her foster parents Mystique and Destiny when Mystique takes her on her first mission with the Brotherhood (#44, and Marvel Fanfare #60) – notable for Mystique’s stern insistence that Rogue “be strong and stay away from boys!”
• X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills: The X-Men fight Reverend Stryker and The Purifiers, an anti-mutant religious movement.
• Power Man and Iron Fist #56-57: The X-Men help Power Man and Iron Fist stop the Living Monolith, who has figured out a way to absorb cosmic energy without involving Havok. (Between X-Men #121-122)
• Marvel Team-Up #89-90: Spider-Man teams up with Nightcrawler to fight Cutthroat, and then with Beast to fight Killer Shrike.
• Super Soldiers #7: The X-Men try to recruit future Marvel UK character Guvnor. (During #129)
• Marvel Team-Up #100: Xavier helps the Fantastic Four deal with Karma, who makes her debut. Decades later, she’ll finally come out as a lesbian in the Mekanix Also, Storm and Black Panther meet again and reminisce about their brief teenage romance. (Between #138-139)
• Wolverine: First Class #1-21: Wolverine takes Kitty Pryde on a number of training missions.
• Dazzler #1-24: The first X-Men spinoff series sees Alison Blaire struggle to be a single working mutant woman musician while fighting off the Enchantress, Dr. Doom, Terror Tank, Hulk and She-Hulk, Galactus, Terrax, Techmaster, Titania and the Grapplers, the Absorbing Man and the Inhumans, and Mystique’s Sisterhood of Mutants. She also briefly dates Angel and finally finds her estranged mother. She also teams up with Spider-Man and Paladin to fight Thermo in Marvel Team-Up #113.
• Spider-Woman #37-38: The X-Men help Spider-Woman stop Black Tom and Juggernaut and the debuting Syrin.
• Marvel Fanfare #1-4: The X-Men team-up with Spider-Man on an adventure in the Savage Land.
• Marvel Team-Up #117-118: Spider-Man teams up with Wolverine and Professor X to fight Mentallo.
• Defenders #102-105: Beast “joins” the Defenders after asking Dr. Strange for help curing his girlfriend Vera, with whom he reconnected in Avengers #209 right before she was poisoned by a Skrull. She continues being his girlfriend through to the early issues of X-Factor. There’s no real moment where he actually joins the non-team. He just kind of becomes part of the cast.

Next Week: Iceman is reunited with his teenage crushes when he joins the New Defenders!

Where to find these stories: The X-Men issues and Bizarre Adventures are all in Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol 2. The other guest appearances are scattered in a number of trade paperbacks, and you’re probably best to find them on Marvel Unlimited.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75) | Chapter 12: The Champions Part 1 (1975-76)

 

Bobby Drake’s story shifts in the back half of The Champions from being mainly about his tension around coming out of the closet (as a mutant superhero) and into a long-running subplot about his supposed romantic interest in new teammate Darkstar. Later writers — particularly those writing in the age when these stories were long out of print — tend to imply that this was an actual relationship, but as we’ll see, she’s just the latest in Bobby’s string of women that he theatrically chases who have no interest in him.

Champions #11 (February 1977)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Pencils: John Byrne

The Champions team up with Hawkeye and the Two-Gun Kid to fight the Soldiers of Warlord Kaa.

Bobby flirts with Darkstar, who seems wholly uninterested. This begins a subplot that runs through the series where once again Bobby is putting all his romantic energy into a woman who will never want him to follow through.

This is John Byrne’s first time drawing Iceman and Angel.

 

Champions #12-13 (March-May 1977)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Pencils: John Byrne

The Champions tie up a plot from Black Goliath by stopping Stilt-Man from stealing a bomb that belonged to The Stranger. The bomb is armed anyway, and the Stranger sends the Champions to find the only thing that can stop it from destroying the solar system. In the end, Darkstar saves the day by being able to teleport to find the magic widget.

Iceman now has a thing where he flirts with an oblivious Darkstar or outright leaps to her protection shouting things like “That big weirdo just messed with a lady I like!!” It’s honestly pretty cringey writing even if we’re meant to read him as straight.

 

Ghost Rider Vol 2 #23 (April 1977)
Writer: Jim Shooter and Gerry Conway
Artist: Don Heck

The Champions wave goodbye as Ghost Rider goes off on some adventure. I said comprehensive!

Luckily it’s so inconsequential, because it’s not on Marvel Unlimited.

 

 

 

 

Champions #14-15 (July-September 1977)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Pencils: John Byrne

The Champions fight Swarm, a Nazi scientist who has become a sentient swarm of bees.

Bobby is still acting weirdly overprotective of Darkstar despite the fact that she has shown zero evidence that she’s even aware he’s alive. Again, this subplot allows Bobby to continue demonstrating to all his friends how grossly heterosexual he is without ever having to act on it.

Bobby finally gets a uniform that covers more than the speedo and boots he’s worn since 1963. Good for him, giving himself a makeover.

Almost immediately, the Champions are all attacked by their own headquarters’ defense systems. Iceman and Hercules come to each others’ aid, and Iceman is positively gushing when Herc gives him a compliment. But when the other Champions find them, Ghost Rider can’t help but make a homophobic comment implying they were just fucking each other in the dark.

 

Godzilla #3 (October 1977)
Writer: Doug Moench
Artist: Herb Trimpe

The Champions fight Godzilla in San Francisco but fail to stop him from destroying the Golden Gate Bridge and causing the SHIELD Helicarrier to crash into the Bay. Nothing of particular importance happens to Iceman.

This issue, along with the next two entries were part of three months of guest-starring appearances in an unsuccessful attempt to drum up interest in The Champions to stave off cancellation. Due to licensing issues, it probably won’t ever be reprinted or put on Marvel Unlimited.

 

 

Iron Man Annual #4 (August 1977)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artist: George Tuska

Iron Man asks the Champions for help stopping Modok and AIM from building a super-weapon.

Ghost Rider keeps derisively referring to Darkstar as Iceman’s “girlfriend” when she’s not in earshot, in what is clearly becoming a running subplot of the redneck Ghost Rider’s homophobic bullying of the obviously gay Iceman. This plotline also has Ghost Rider making racist comments about the Russian Darkstar (but oddly not Black Widow).

Of course when the heroes split up into three teams, Bobby jumps at the opportunity to visit San Francisco, where, as you’ll recall, he once briefly lived with his boyfriend Hank McCoy in the silver age.

 

Avengers #163 (September 1977)
Writer: Jim Shooter
Artist: George Tuska

Typhon coerces Iron Man to attack Hercules and the Champions by holding Beast hostage, but the Champions regroup and defeat him. Nothing much to report, but Bobby and Beast have a nice-team up moment where they reminisce about being X-Men. It’s the first time they’ve shared dialogue on-panel since Beast left the X-Men.

While we’re dropping on Hank’s new book, I highly recommend taking a look at Avengers #178 (December 1978), a solo fill-in story by Steve Gerber that follows Hank as he tries, successfully, to pick up women at a bar before he gets attacked by an anti-mutant bigot. Afterward, he recalls that “there was one I really felt comfortable with. They accept me because I’m a certified hero.” Note the singular “they” obscuring the subject’s gender.

Beast then gets accosted by an unnamed, half-naked empathic man, who tells him “You yourself have question the wholesomeness of your newfound acceptance by humans. You yourself– I can say no more!” Later, the empathic man warns him “there remains in you so much–so much–which needs killing.” The empath never appears again, and he’s one of a long line of bizarre Steve Gerber characters who exist mainly to spout the author’s own views. As the event leads Beast to become introspective and depressed about “the agony I must’ve caused my parents by being different,” it sure seems like Gerber is making a direct comment about the futility of Hank McCoy trying to hide his queerness. For example, the empath literally “can say no more” about the subject because of the Comics Code restrictions on presenting homosexuality openly in a positive light.

 

Super-Villain Team-Up #14/Champions #16 (October-November 1977)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Pencilers: Bob Hall

Oh look, it’s Cancelled Comics Cavalcade! Super-Villain Team-Up was cancelled before its story of Dr. Doom conquering the world was ready to wrap up, so the story continued into Champions which was also being cancelled. The Champions barely even do anything in the story.

Anyway, Magneto tries to convince Dr. Doom to conquer the world with him, but Doom laughs him off because he’s already released a gas into the atmosphere that allows him to control every person alive. He allows Magneto to go free, though, because he’s bored and wants a challenge. Magneto tries to recruit the Avengers, but they’re under Doom’s control, and Doom only allows him to recruit a single hero. He chooses Beast, hoping Beast will help him get the X-Men on side, but they’re too busy saving the universe in X-Men #107-108. Instead, they try to get the Champions, but they’re also under Doom’s control.

“But he’s my friend! He –” How was Bobby going to finish that sentence?

It all ends in a fight on the White House lawn where Doom accidentally inhales his own mind control gas, negating its effects on everyone else, and Magneto flees away.

 

Giant-Size Hulk #1 (June 2006)
Writer: Peter David
Penciler: Juan Santacruz

As the Champions prepare to receive the presidential medal of freedom for their role in stopping Dr. Doom, they get into a fight with the Hulk, who is trying to get his cousin Jennifer (the future She-Hulk) to the hospital when she gets appendicitis.

Hercules makes a fun nod to Marvel time when the Champions say they’re excited to meet President Clinton, but he remembers the president’s name being Carter, as it was in the original story.

A flashback to this fight is seen in Incredible Hulk #106 (July 2007).  

 

Champions #17 (January 1978)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Pencilers: George Tuska

The Brotherhood of Mutants attacks the Champions and the issue runs out of pages before the team breaks up. A caption helpfully tells you to find the end of the story in Avengers, but it actually ends up in an issue of Peter Parker, Spider-Man. Just a true disaster of a final issue.

Anyway, Iceman and Darkstar are at the premiere of Johnny Blaze’s new movie when they get the signal that the Champions building has been attacked. Bobby is acting like it’s a date, but Darkstar is once again oblivious. When Bobby ices up, he and Darkstar are promptly attacked by anti-mutant bigots in the crowd. Angel pulls him out of it and honestly the way he rides Angel back to the base looks impractical, uncomfortable, and highly homoerotic. Also, unnecessary, since Iceman usually travels pretty fast on his own power!

Blob, Unus and Lorelei have come to the Champions claiming they need protection from a pair of Sentinels hunting them. They’re no longer infants (following Defenders #16) because when Erik the Red returned Magneto to adulthood in X-Men #104, he also accidentally fixed them as well (and presumably Mastermind, who must have decided to go off on his own). But it turns out to be a con – they were sent by the Vanisher, who stole and reprogrammed the Sentinels after being captured by Steven Lang behind the scenes around X-Men #100. He’s just looking for revenge on the X-Men and is starting with Angel and Iceman because they have a publicly listed address (So does Beast, with the Avengers, but he was probably banking on the Champions going down more easily). However, Darkstar manages to take command of the Sentinels, capture the Brotherhood and trap Vanisher halfway between teleporting. He’ll next turn up in Bizarre Adventures #27 (which we’ll get to next week).

 

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #17-18 (April-May 1978)
Writer: Bill Mantlo
Artist: Sal Buscema

Peter Parker is sent to cover the break-up of the Champions (what, was there going to be a formal ceremony?) but he arrives too late. He and Angel team-up to stop Rampage, who’s brainwashed Iceman into attacking them.

Remarkably, the flashback to the actual breakup takes only a page and a half. They couldn’t fit this into the final issue of Champions?

When Darkstar announces she’s moving back to Russia, Iceman says he loves her. She tells him “though I like you—it has never been more than that!” Bobby’s really quite pathetic in the 70s.

For some reason, when Spider-Man tosses Iceman into a car wash, he snaps out of his brainwashing.

And this issue also wraps the minor Champions subplot about things in their headquarters constantly falling apart when lawyers for the construction company that built it admit that the contractors conspired to destroy the Champions through faulty construction. For some reason, the lawyers believe they have leverage over Warren for it.

Finally, a minor plot point confirms that Spider-Man has known Iceman’s identity since Marvel Team-Up #4 – but it’s not clear the X-Men know his identity, since Angel doesn’t appear to recognize him as Peter Parker. Spider-Man takes care to cover Bobby’s face after he knocks him out so that his secret identity isn’t revealed. This seems to confirm that despite all the tension in the early issues of The Champions, Bobby never actually did “come out” officially during this series.

And that wraps up the Champions era, except there’s one more appearance that belongs here thematically.

 

Incredible Hulk Annual #7 (December 1978)
Writer: Roger Stern
Artist: John Byrne

Angel and Iceman team-up with the Hulk when the new Mastermold attacks.

Iceman invites himself and his new girlfriend over to Angel’s Rocky Mountain mansion for a vacation. And if you’re saying to yourself, “GIRLFRIEND?” Why yes, Bobby is in a relationship with a girl named Terri Sue Bottoms. That’s apparently not meant to be a drag name. Terri only makes one more appearance, which we’ll get to next week.

Angel is back together with Candy Southern, who’ll be his girlfriend through the next decade or so. After this story, Angel rejoins the X-Men and becomes a supporting cast member of Dazzler for a while before joining the New Defenders with Iceman.

Even though they’re already at the weekend-away stage of their relationship, Terri seems to just be using him so she can meet Angel. Terri also must be fairly slow – she’s not meant to know that Bobby is Iceman, despite his unexplained friendship with Angel that extends to Angel allowing him to use the Champions’ jet to fly out to his house. Candy also has a stray thought bubble that she suspects Bobby is Iceman – which is pretty reasonable given she knows Angel’s identity, and that he went to school with four people who look just like the X-Men. The Hidden Years established that she had already figured all that out by this point, but that wouldn’t be published for another 20 years.

John Byrne draws a very beefy Angel, but Terri’s comic lust over him is a little undercut by the fact that Byrne makes Iceman just as cut. There’s a bit of a running gag about the boys wondering if Terri “gets off on ice” which is downright scandalous for the era, but the book also makes it very clear that Angel and Candy are fucking.

When Mastermold attacks, Angel decides the smart thing to do is to lure it to Gamma Base where Hulk can tear it apart. Mastermold captures Angel and Iceman and rockets away to its orbiting base, and Hulk latches on because he’s just so angry. Eventually Mastermold explains that it was on Steven Lang’s orbiting base from X-Men #100, and that Lang’s mind merged with it and is now controlling it. This doesn’t impress Angel, who tells him that the army found Lang’s body and he’s still alive in a government hospital in a vegetative state. This angers Mastermold long enough to distract him while Hulk tears apart his body. The three heroes then escape back to earth in time to see the orbiting base explode with Mastermold’s remains on it (But he’ll return in X-Factor #13). Meanwhile, Lang will turn up again in Uncanny X-Men #291 in the lead-up to the Phalanx story.

And what of the X-Men and other mutants? Well, they’ve been pretty busy getting a complete overhaul during this time. Here are the highlights:

• Uncanny X-Men #95-108: Thunderbird dies trying to stop Count Nefaria (#95); Prof X is having nightmares caused by Lilandra, who’s trying to reach him psychically for help defeating her brother Emperor D’Ken (#96); the nightmares unleash Professor X’s evil side who forces the X-Men to fight psychic illusions of the original X-Men (#106); Moira MacTaggart arrives, pretending to be a housekeeper, and begins a relationship with Banshee (but the X-Men probably know she’s a professor as Google exists and she’s calling herself a doctor by Uncanny X-Men: First Class – Giant-Size Special) (#96); Erik the Red attempts to kill Prof X by attacking him with a brainwashed Havok and Polaris (#97), Juggernaut and Black Tom, who have sometimes been hinted at being more than partners (#102-103), re-aged Magneto (#104), and Firelord (#105); Stephen Lang attacks the X-Men with his new X-Sentinels (#98-100, and Marvels Epilogue), leading to the birth of Phoenix (#101); the X-Men save the universe from D’Ken and Phoenix and Storm learn that Corsair is Cyclops’ father (#107-108)
• Uncanny X-Men #109-116: The X-Men are attacked by Weapon Alpha, who’s trying to force Wolverine to come back to Canada (#109); Warhawk bugs the mansion for the Hellfire Club, Jean decides to stay, and Moira, Havok and Polaris move to Muir Island (#110); Mesmero puts the X-Men in a carnival and Beast attempts a rescue (#111); Magneto takes the X-Men prisoner in Antarctica (#112-113), leading to an extended period where Phoenix and Beast are split from the others and escape back to New York, and both groups believe the others are dead; the other X-Men fight Sauron, Garokk, and Zaladane in the Savage Land (#114-116).
• Amazing Spider-Man #161: Nightcrawler, Spider-Man and Punisher fight Jigsaw (between #96-97)
• Uncanny X-Men: First Class Giant-Size Special: The New X-Men fight a mutant spore species (probably between #96-97)
• The Brotherhood (Blob, Toad, Unus and Mastermind) tries to recruit Santa in Marvel Holiday Special 1991 (immediately before #98)
• Marvel Team-Up Annual #1, Marvel Team-Up #53, and Marvel Tales #262: The new X-Men meet Spider-Man and fight the Lords of Light and Darkness, and Sunstroke and his Desert Dwellers (around #101)
• Iron Fist #14-15: Sabertooth debuts, and the X-Men get into a fight with Iron Fist in Jean’s apartment upon their return from outer space in #108. Scott and Jean also cameo in Iron Fist #11.
• Uncanny X-Men: First Class #1-8: The X-Men fight the Inhumans when Nightcrawler insults their customs; Banshee’s ex-father-in-law hires a mutant voodoo priest to torment him; Storm, Jean, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing are forced to team up to fight Nightshade; the X-Men fight the Knights of Hykon, and the Banshee solves the murder of one of Cassidy Keep’s leprechauns. (Entire series fits between #109-110)
• Marvel Treasury Edition #26: Wolverine gets into a bar fight with Hercules. (Between #110-111)
• Captain America Annual #4: Magneto fights Captain America with his new Brotherhood, which includes a debuting Peepers.
• Ms. Marvel #16-23: Mystique, probably the most prominent queer villain in the X-Men universe, makes her debut in a subplot where she wants to take down Ms. Marvel. The book was cancelled before writer Chris Claremont got to finish the story, and the final two issues were eventually published a decade later in Marvel Super-Heroes Vol 2 #10-11. In MSH #10, she fights Sabertooth, who’s escaped from SHIELD custody, where they were training him to go after Wolverine. In MSH #11, Claremont seems to be cramming in a whole bunch of unrelated concepts to resolve all of Ms. Marvel’s plots before her cancellation/death. So Ms. Marvel ends up caught in the middle of an arms deal involving Mystique’s Brotherhood and the Hellfire Club – that’s right, if published, it would have been the first appearances of Rogue, Destiny, Pyro, Avalanche, Shaw, Leland, Pierce, and Tessa/Sage. It’s also fairly clear that Mystique and Destiny have a domestic relationship, so this would have been the earliest lesbian relationship in the X-Men universe. We learn that Mystique is trying to destroy Ms. Marvel because Destiny has predicted she’ll destroy Rogue. In the event, Ms. Marvel was cancelled and she was written out in the notorious Avengers #200, and Claremont came back to fix the plot back to what was intended in Avengers Annual #10, where Rogue debuts and steals her powers. Another oddity of that final Ms. Marvel story is that she keeps having hallucinations similar to Mastermind’s timeslip manipulation of Phoenix – she even appears in the same Black Queen costume. Was Claremont intending Ms. Marvel to be the original Dark Phoenix? Frequent X-Men villain Deathbird also debuts in Ms. Marvel #9-10 and #22.
• Marvel Team-Up #65-66: Captain Britain makes his US comics debut, teaming up with Spider-Man to fight the debuting occasional X-Men villain Arcade.
• Marvel Team-Up #69-70: Havok is captured by Living Pharaoh and teams-up with Spider-Man and Thor to stop him (Havok’s abduction is what prompts Lorna to ask Beast to look for the X-Men in #111).
• Defenders #62-65: While in New York, Havok and Polaris join the Defenders for a day along with dozens of other heroes. Among the dozens of villains they fight are Blob and Toad.
• Classic X-Men #1-22 features many back-up strips set in this era, most of which are inconsequential expansions of the concurrent stories or character pieces. The highlights are: The X-Men return Thunderbird’s body to his family and they meet his younger brother, who will go on to become Warpath (#3); Wolverine dares Nightcrawler to spend a day in town without his image inducer, and the owner of Harry’s Hideaway comments on how handsome he is (#4); Sebastian Shaw takes over the Hellfire Club after its anti-mutant leadership tries to have him killed (#7); Sabertooth attempts to kill Wolverine on his birthday (#10); We learn Magneto’s origin living through the Holocaust, the arson that kills his daughter, and his brief career as a Nazi hunter (#12, 19); We see the formation of the Starjammers (#15); Colossus makes love to two Savage Land women (#21), with whom we later learn he fathered a son (Uncanny X-Men Annual #12); Storm ventures into an alien dimension where it is heavily implied that Storm has a sexual relationship with its warrior queen M’Rin (#22)

Next Week: We’ll take a look at what Bobby was up to from 1979-1983, when he wasn’t regularly appearing anywhere.

Where to find these issues: Unless otherwise noted, they’re all available on Marvel Unlimited. The Champions Classic Complete Collection TPB includes the entire run of The Champions, plus the Iron Man Annual, Hulk Annual, and Spectacular Spider-Man, Avengers, and Super-Villain Team-Up issues. The Uncanny X-Men issues are all in Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Vol 1. The Mystique appearances are all in the Ms. Marvel Epic Collection Vol. 2. The Classic X-Men stories are all collected in X-Men Classic Omnibus. 

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years | Chapter 11: X-Men on Hiatus (1970-75)

In 1975, Marvel decided to revive the X-Men, but with a mostly brand-new cast. Iceman is ushered out of the book and moves to Los Angeles with Angel. In fact, while Champions is short-lived, Iceman barely makes any appearances in Chris Claremont’s entire run on X-Men.

So Bobby Drake largely misses out on the X-Men’s bold new relaunch and instead appears in The Champions, a book that was originally conceived as a road-trip team-up series for an odd-couple pairing of Angel and Iceman and ended up becoming a dumping group for characters who weren’t starring in other books but also had no compelling reason to work together. The non-concept of the book is hammered home by the fact its first four issues feature three different writers. Still, some important development of both Angel and Iceman occurs over this short series.

But before we get to it, Iceman has a few final appearances with his original team.

 

Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975)
Writer: Len Wien
Artist: Dave Cockrum

When the original X-Men are kidnapped by Krakoa, a new team is recruited to rescue them.

Iceman’s main contribution to this story is yet another pissing match with Havok over Lorna, who is unconscious and can’t properly object.

This story has classic status because it introduces the new team and not because it’s some great work of literature. Over the years, it’s bee retold and expanded upon in numerous ways, none of which particularly affect Iceman, whose role is minor. But the expansion set for this issue includes: X-Men: Deadly Genesis #1-6, which reveals that Moira’s students were sent to rescue the X-Men but were all believed killed and that Xavier wiped Cyclops’ memory of that; Uncanny X-Men: First Class Giant-Size Special, which has a brief flashback to the new X-Men’s first night at the mansion; X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wolverine: Origins #28, Alpha Flight #52, and Wolverine: First Class #5, which all expand on Wolverine’s recruitment scene; Giant-Size X-Men #3, X-Men: Gold #1 (2013), X-Men Origins: Colossus, and X-Men: Liberators #2, which all expand on the first hours the new X-Men are together in the mansion before the mission. The other X-Men’s recruitment scenes have all also gotten a bunch of flashbacks over the years too. Naturally, Iceman isn’t in any of those. There are also various hints over the years that Xavier already had the new team in mind, particularly in Uncanny X-Men #300 and X-Men: The Hidden Years #8.

 

Classic X-Men #1 – backup story (September 1986)
Writer: Dave Cockrum
Artist: John Bolton

Classic X-Men #1 repackaged Giant-Size X-Men #1 with new story pages and a new backup feature telling the story of the new X-Men’s first night in the mansion.

This is the first time we got to see how the two X-Men teams interacted on that first night and, well, they weren’t all fast friends. Iceman is particularly bratty to all the new characters, with a very strong racist undertone to everything he says (“This is America,” he tells the Russian Colossus; “Assuming you can read” he says to Native American Thunderbird). It’s no wonder Claremont hardly used Iceman if this is what he thinks of him. I suppose Claremont figured someone had to be resentful of the new team, and Iceman was the only character who didn’t have any history with them to contradict at this point. Thank god MAGA Bobby never took hold as a direction for the character.

Iceman’s resentment at being replaced by the incoming team is somewhat undercut by X-Men: First Class – Finals, which suggested he was planning to leave the X-Men and go to a real college anyway.

Minor continuity note: Due to sliding Marvel Time, Iceman claims he is not old enough to drink, even though he was old enough to drink in the 1960s. New York raised the drinking age to 21 in 1985, a year before this issue was published. He’s probably 19 or 20 here.

 

Marvel #2 (November 2020)
Writer/Artist: Dan Brereton

The original X-Men, including Beast, have a Danger Room session with the new X-Men. It’s not entirely clear if the stories in this series are meant to be canon or dreams cast by Nightmare and Dr. Strange. It doesn’t fit neatly, since if Beast meets the new X-Men here, he shouldn’t be surprised to see them in X-Men #94 (and this story would have to come first since Sunfire is in it).

 

 

 

X-Men #94 (August 1975)
Writer: Len Wien and Chris Claremont
Artist: Dave Cockrum

The original X-Men, minus Cyclops, leave the book, as does Sunfire, and the new X-Men head off to stop Count Nefaria from taking over NORAD.

Iceman gets into an argument with Wolverine when Wolverine tells Jean to stop being so dramatic and just leave. Classic X-Men #1 gives some context to this scene by showing that Wolverine and Jean had made something of a connection the night before, so he’s really just lashing out to cover his hurt feelings. The fight is broken up before it begins and Iceman doesn’t get to do much other than leave.

And so begins the Claremont era! But we won’t be covering that because Iceman is heading west!

 

X-Men Forever Vol 1 #3 (March 2001)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Kevin Maguire

A quick flashback to Bobby and Warren’s first day at UCLA. Bobby looks annoyed that Warren is chatting up a girl (but technically the reactions are of the time-travelling Bobby from 2001).

 

 

 

 

 

X-Men Forever Vol 1 #5 (May 2001)
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: Kevin Maguire

A flashback has Bobby as a freshman in college get into a car accident with his friend Ty while both were “drunk off their butts.”

The reference to being a freshman aside (Bobby completed undergrad at Xavier’s and must have started a second degree or professional program at UCLA), this makes the most sense as coming before the Champions gets formed.

Why is Bobby thinking about Ty (who’s never been seen before or since) in the moments before his death? What were Bobby and Ty doing out drinking and driving together alone?

 

Champions #1 (October 1975)
Writer: Tony Isabella
Artist: Don Heck

When Pluto attacks the UCLA campus, an ad hoc group of heroes who happen to be on hand join forces to stop him.

Since X-Men #94, Bobby and Warren have enrolled in UCLA, and Xavier’s secured a scholarship for Bobby. They had both discussed taking business courses in X-Men: First Class – Finals, but Warren is taking some form of Humanities course.

The opening page feels very coded. The narration refers to them as “two confused young men,” as they discuss how “it’s not working for” them (college). When Bobby proposes asking to join the Avengers with Hank, Warren says he doesn’t think they’d fit in on any other super team. “Face it– the flyboy-popsicle combination just isn’t cut out to do somebody else’s thing,” Warren says. It seems they’ve rekindled a friendship that hadn’t gotten much attention since the earliest part of the silver age.

I can’t talk about Angel’s new costume without mentioning that it includes a v-neck that plunges right to the waist, essentially forming a flesh arrow that points to his dick. It is the most queer costume ever worn by an X-person.

When the Harpies attack campus and Iceman instinctively fights back, Warren worries about Bobby’s secret identity: “What if somebody sees you? What about your parents?” Later, Warren debuts his new maskless costume, saying now that his mother is dead, he’s decided to come out and be publicly known as the Angel. Interesting that Angel’s chief concern was their parents’ reaction. (This was the first published mention of Angel’s mom’s death; we eventually got the story 25 years later in X-Men: The Hidden Years #15.) Iceman’s worries about his parents finding out about him would be a simmering subplot for the next several years.

And this is the first time Iceman meets Hercules, who I believe is the first openly queer character he meets in print (leaving aside the time-travel stories) – though Marvel wouldn’t acknowledge Hercules as bisexual for another forty years.

Pluto’s plan is to trick Zeus in forcing Hercules and Venus to marry Hippolyta and Ares so they wouldn’t be able to interfere in Pluto’s plan to overthrow Zeus. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

 

Champions #2-3 (January-February 1976)
Writer: Tony Isabella and Bill Mantlo
Artist: Don Heck and George Tuska

The Champions run through hoops trying to stop Pluto and win when Ghost Rider convinces Zeus that it was all a trick to overthrow him.

There’s not a lot to say about this story. George Tuska does his best to liven it up in issue #3, where we get to see Angel strut around in a speedo while Iceman, uh, figure skates in the background.

Iceman has a little poor me soliloquy where he lists how everyone’s doing fine without him, and he includes the fact that “the girl I loved, Lorna Dane, has forgotten all about me!” He really needs to get over this subplot, but honestly, pining over a girl who’s not interested in you is a pretty good strategy for covering up your lack of interest in other girls. (By this point, Lorna and Bobby were last a couple in 1969 – six years previous. They don’t even live in the same state anymore!)

 

 

 

Champions #4 (March 1976)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: George Tuska

We already have a fill-in writer on issue four! And this is the third writer on the series so far.

The Champions stop an evil psychiatrist who’s experimenting on his charges against their will. It’s not a classic.

The art has Bobby sitting cross-legged reading an X-Men comic. Later, he delivers some, uh, interesting criticism of his own performance in the fight: “That little number just left you wide open for Herc’s hairy playmates,” as he is bent over in front of them.

 

Ghost Rider Vol 2 #17 (April 1976)
Writer: Tony Isabella
Artist: Frank Robbins

Just a cameo where Ghost Rider reminisces on what he was up to in Champions #3-4. Note the way Iceman’s resting the back of his hand on his hip in this panel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Champions #5-6 (April-June 1976)
Writer: Tony Isabella
Penciler: Don Heck and George Tuska

The Champions stop Rampage, a guy who’s robbing banks in an exo-suit because he’s angry at the government over the economy.

Warren’s lawyer informs him for apparently the first time exactly how rich he is. Warren and Bobby are both shocked, and Warren immediately decides to use the money to bankroll the Champions. There’s a token subplot raised about other family members trying to take the fortune claiming Warren is an unsuitable heir because he’s a mutant, but that doesn’t go anywhere (and we don’t know of any family members other than uncle Dazzler, who’d be ineligible as the murderer, and aunt Mimi, who’s known about Angel since X-Men: First Class).

Bobby casually mentions working in his parents’ corner store as a teenager. That’s never been mentioned again, and generally Iceman’s father is said to be an accountant.

Richard Fenster joins the cast as team publicist. When next we see him, he’s had a bit of an overhaul, and is presented as a much younger man, going by “Dick.”

A subplot begins about Bobby being uncomfortable with the public direction of the team, because he’s afraid of being outed to his parents (as a mutant). He resolves to quit the team as soon as it’s running smoothly.

Don Heck sure draws this battle homoerotically. And the language. “He’s creaming Herc!” “By the shattering shafts of Apollo!”

 

Avengers #151 (September 1976)
Writers: Jim Shooter, Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart
Artist: George Perez

The Champions make a cameo as the Avengers announce their new lineup, which officially includes Beast.

Angel and Iceman reminisce about the X-Men and Iceman seems a tad jealous that the Avengers got his old pal Beast.

 

 

 

Black Widow: Deadly Origin #3
Writer: Paul Cornell
Artist: Tom Raney, Scott Hanna, Matt Milla

Just a generic flashback to the early days of the Champions. Iceman doesn’t even have a line.

(Chronology Project has this around the break-up, but it doesn’t make sense, because Ivan is still there and Angel’s in the old costume).

 

 

 

Champions #7-10 (August 1976-January 1977)
Writer: Tony Isabella and Bill Mantlo
Artist: George Tuska and Bob Hall

I can only imagine the backroom causes of why this book keeps alternating creative teams.

A group of Russian super agents (including Darkstar, who makes her debut here), together with the Griffin, spring Rampage from jail and plot to destroy the Champions. They have a variety of personal and nationalistic reasons to be upset with Black Widow and her partner Ivan.

Oddly, #7 has a subplot where a Black child asks Hercules for help and it’s never followed up on after Bill Mantlo takes over the rest of the story.

When Angel’s costume is ripped in a fight, Dick gives him a modified version of the one Magneto gave him in X-Men #63 – red instead of blue. It becomes his standard look for the next ten years.

The Champions make their public debut in a big press conference attended by Governor Jerry Brown (who, yes, was Governor of California from 1975-1983 and again from 2011-2019).

In the end, the villains are caught, except for the new Crimson Dynamo, who is allowed to escape. Darkstar defects and will soon join the Champions.

Rampage tells his version of the story in Punisher: War Journal Vol 2 #17 (March 2008) but it doesn’t add much Iceman.

We also see part of the battle with Rampage in Gambit: From the Marvel Vault (August 2011), a fill-in book drawn by George Tuska and later scripted by Scott Lobdell after it was found in Marvel’s archives without the original script. Iceman barely appears in the story – Black Widow says he has homework. Angel is also marginalized early so that neither of them meet Gambit before they’re supposed to meet during “Days of Future Present.” Anyway, in the story, Gambit is hired by Spat (a fellow thief who appeared in Uncanny X-Men #347-350) to steal an ancient scroll from the Worthington Foundation, but in the end he decides to help the Champions stop MODOK from stealing it – by destroying it. I don’t think that’s much better, given that Warren was planning on returning the artifact to the Middle Eastern country it came from. Somewhat interestingly, Gambit appears to be shy about admitting he’s a mutant, prompting Spat to derisively call him “a closet case.” This isn’t a common characterization for Gambit, but it’s nice that Lobdell was bringing up one of the running themes of The Champions.

 

Marvel Treasury Edition #13 (December 1976)
Writer: Roger Stern (?? It’s not clear from the issue who wrote the framing device pages)
Artist: George Tuska

The Champions make a brief appearance in the framing device for a reprint of Daredevil #86.

It’s not on Marvel Unlimited right now.

 

 

Where to find these issues: The entire Champions series was collected in The Champions Classic: The Complete Collection in 2018, although that series does not include any of the guest appearances included here. Everything is on Marvel Unlimited unless otherwise noted.

Next Week: The Champions come to an end as they tackle some classic X-Men villains. Speaking of the X-Men, what have they been up to?

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2 | Chapter 10: The Hidden Years

After X-Men was cancelled in 1970 with issue #66, the team went on to make a number of guest appearances in other titles over the next five years, before the book was revived in 1975. There are also a smattering of continuity implant stories that take place in this era which I’ll cover here. Iceman doesn’t get a whole lot to do in this era, and yet this period is fertile ground for queer readings

Oddly, in most of the stories published in the 1970s, the X-Men are back in their trainee uniforms, perhaps because at the time, X-Men was running reprint stories from the trainee era (X-Men #67-93).

 

X-Men: Deadly Genesis #2 (December 2005)
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Trevor Hairsine

Havok has a brief hallucination (provoked by Vulcan, using Sway’s and Rachel Grey’s powers) of a time when Lorna kissed Bobby behind Alex’s back. She’s apparently had a change of heart since she told Bobby in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t interested in him multiple times in The Hidden Years and the Silver Age issues. We’re apparently meant to take this at face value, but it really doesn’t seem in character for Lorna, and it’s more likely that Vulcan is taunting the X-Men with a series of images of events that didn’t actually happen. Other hallucinations presented in this series clearly didn’t actually take place. Bobby is also in the wrong costume here.

Note the phrasing: “Before I met you, I was the straightest arrow in this school…” Bobby again seems incredibly eager to assert his heterosexuality.

 

Incredible Hulk #150 (April 1972)
Writer: Archie Goodwin
Artist: Herb Trimpe

Lorna has gone back to Alex, prompting another dumb fight between him and Bobby, in which Alex uses his power against him. Feeling guilty, he quits the X-Men and sets up a home in New Mexico, which will become a recurring location for him and Lorna through the 1980s.

Lorna comes to get him back but he’s not interested since he doesn’t want to be a superhero (and, unstated, but he already has his college degree, so doesn’t need to be at a school like the other X-Men). But Hulk stumbles past them and confuses Lorna for his alien friend Jamella and provokes a fight. Alex is motivated to rejoin the X-Men because the fight causes him to realize his super-powers can be useful.

Nevertheless, Havok and Lorna never make it back, as they are captured by the Secret Empire between issues – a long-running subplot through the X-Men’s appearances in this era. The X-Men simply suspect Lorna decided to stay in New Mexico with Alex (and apparently never bothered to call).

 

Amazing Spider-Man #92 (January 1971)
Writer: Stan Lee
Penciler: Gil Kane

Stan Lee writes Iceman for the first time in ages. Iceman has a misunderstanding that leads him into a fight with Spider-Man before they team up to expose the criminal dealings of an old-school bigot candidate for DA. Oddly, neither seems to remember the multiple times they’ve met before in the pages of X-Men.

When we first see Bobby, he’s on a date with an unnamed woman. But he can’t be that interested, since he immediately packs her into a cab with the excuse that “a guy needs his beauty sleep!” before going off to fight Spidey in his undies.

 

Amazing Adventures #11 (March 1972)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Artist: Tom Sutton

Beast leaves the X-Men to work at the Brand Corporation, where he turns into his familiar ape-like form.

There’s a bit more gristle for my “Bobby and Hank were a couple” theory. When he leaves, all the X-men shake his hand or pat him on the back, except Iceman, who feels up his chest and waist.

 

“Remember how you felt as you prepared to leave those you’d come to know — and love?” Hmm… whom among the X-Men did Hank McCoy love?

In the group photo he packs of the original X-Men, he and Bobby are side by side, mimicking Scott and Jean’s pose. Later, when he’s angry at himself for the transformation, he looks at the picture and shouts, “Everything I could have been — Everything we were together – is gone.” Really? Tell me what you were together, Hank.

There’s a pretty clear queer subtext through this whole story. Hank leaves the X-Men to join mainstream society and promptly starts a relationship with a woman, Linda Donaldson – his first real romantic relationship, given that his silver age relationship with Vera Cantor never went anywhere. And yet, when he becomes a visible mutant, he finds that he can no longer consummate their relationship, as she’ll discover his face is just a rubber mask. The premature end of the Beast feature leads the Linda Donaldson story to be wrapped up in Captain America, where we learn she was a spy for the Secret Empire.

Donaldson also shoots her colleague Dr. Carl Maddicks, who is also a Secret Empire spy.

But despite what we’re told in the story, he doesn’t die. He turns up in X-Factor as the father of Artie Maddicks, future Generation X member.

 

Amazing Adventures #12-17 (May 1972-March 1973)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Artist: Tom Sutton

Iceman doesn’t appear in these issues, but I’m including them because of their impact on the Beast-Iceman theory.

Mastermind, Unus, and Blob, having reformed the Brotherhood in the flashback in Avengers #103, try and fail to recruit Beast into their club in issues #12-13. They’re still hiding out in a circus since they last appeared in X-Men: The Hidden Years. They don’t recognize Beast and Mastermind has given Beast amnesia so he doesn’t recognize them. I think for the first time, Mastermind drops the “Evil” from the group name.

Issue #14 is a forgettable fight with Fantastic Four villain Quasimodo, who previously showed up in X-Men #48.

In issue #15, Beast finally lets Angel know what happened to him and they fight the Griffin. Angel makes quite the impression at the Brand Corporation. It’s odd that Iceman isn’t in this issue at all, but Angel’s physical mutation works thematically here. Beast finally subdues Griffin with Spider-Man’s help two years later in Marvel Team-Up #38.

In #16, Beast fights the Juggernaut, recently escaped from the Crimson Cosmos following a fight in Dr. Strange #182. Contrary to the end of this story, Juggernaut doesn’t die; he turns up in Incredible Hulk #172. Beast is heading to Canada with his ex-girlfriend Vera Cantor, who tracked him down because she needs the help of an expert in mutants. But cancellation of the Beast feature leads to this story being wrapped up in Incredible Hulk #161.

Issue #17 is just a reprint of the “Origin of the Beast” backup from X-Men #49-52 with a new framing sequence.

 

Incredible Hulk #161 (March 1973)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Artist: Herb Trimpe

Beast and Vera arrive in Canada, where Vera finally explains that she needed Hank’s help curing her boyfriend, Calvin Rankin, of his Mimic powers which are flaring out of control. Mimic is suddenly now draining life forces of everyone near him, which is why he’s hiding in the Canadian wilderness. Unfortunately, the Hulk is nearby, and when Mimic drains the Hulk, a fight begins. Mimic attempts suicide by absorbing the Hulk’s gamma radiation, but while that knocks Mimic out, it has no real effect on the Hulk. Everyone goes home, believing Mimic to be dead (and he stays that way until Marvel Comics Presents #56-61).

I believe this is the only story that positively identifies Mimic as being in a heterosexual relationship. Then again, it’s with Vera, who is possibly the most sexless librarian who ever lived. Around 2012, speculation was heavy that he is in a relationship with Weapon Omega.

Sometime after this story, Beast is kidnapped by the Secret Empire.

 

Marvel Team-Up #4 (September 1972)
Writer: Gerry Conway
Penciler: Gil Kane

Back to Bobby. Xavier calls in the X-Men to help find a scientist who he believes has been kidnapped by Spider-Man. When they realize the truth, they save Spider-Man’s life before he dies of toxins in his blood.

Oddly, the X-Men appear in their trainee outfits at the beginning of the story but appear in civies with no masks throughout the story. Bobby’s outfit is, um, quite something, with the open shirt and cock-ring necklace.

 

 

There’s a flashback to this story in Adventure Into Fear #20 (February 1974), in which Morbius escapes the Mansion and Xavier declines to send Cyclops to find him, because they have to deal with the Secret Empire.

 

Spider-Man Family Vol 2 #8 – Second Story (April 2008)
Writer: Nate Piekos
Penciler: Zach Howard

Bobby and Peter Parker race to get the last table at a Sushi restaurant.

Oddly, Bobby and Peter recognize each other out of costume – it’s established in Peter Parker, Spider-Man #18 that Spider-Man learned Bobby’s identity in Marvel Team-Up #4, but the inverse was not established. Perhaps they looked under Spider-Man’s mask when he was unconscious? I’m pretty sure this is just an error, since Spider-Man has never been open about his identity with the X-Men.

In this story, Bobby is on a date with a different generic, unnamed woman, but she apparently knows he’s Iceman, which also has to be an error. Honestly, it’s probably best to just ignore this story altogether.

 

Avengers #110-111 (April-May 1973)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Penciler: Don Heck

After defeating the X-Men, Magneto tries to take down the Avengers, who must recruit Daredevil and Black Widow to stop him from unleashing deadly radiation on the world in the hope of creating more mutants.

Bobby barely does anything in this story and the X-Men are all brainwashed or unconscious throughout. But there’s a bit to unpack here for continuity’s sake.

First, we learn that the new costume Magneto gave Angel in X-Men #62 was an energy-sapping device that stored Angel’s “youthful mutant energy.” When Magneto attacks the X-Men, he drugs Angel, strips him of his costume, and puts it on, and that restores the Magnetic powers that have been flagging since he returned in X-Men #60.

Second, Magneto is being aided by Piper, of the Savage Land Mutates. Presumably, he restored the mutates who reverted back into savages in X-Men #62. The Mutates also appeared in Avengers #105, but it was never explained how they’d been restored.

Finally, when the dust is cleared, no one knows where Angel is. The eventual explanation is that Magneto simply left him at the mansion when he kidnapped the rest of the X-Men, which seems…unusual. This was the first published story to acknowledge the mystery of the missing mutants, kicking off the Secret Empire story.

 

Incredible Hulk #172 (February 1974)
Writers: Roy Thomas and Tony Isabella
Penciler: Herb Trimpe

The US Army accidentally brings the Juggernaut back from the Crimson Cosmos and he teams up with the Hulk to escape their prison before they get into a fight. After Hulk removes his helmet, the X-Men suddenly show up and knock him out.

Iceman doesn’t appear on panel, but presumably he’s part of the team still, because Xavier says they’re specifically there to recruit Havok and Lorna to help find Angel. Maybe they thought Bobby wouldn’t make the strongest case.

 

Captain America #172-175 (April-July 1974)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Penciler: Sal Buscema

Englehart ties up the story he began in Avengers #111 by using it to close off another Captain America plot.

Professor X discover the mutant kidnappings are related to ongoing attempts to smear Captain America. It turns out a Hydra offshoot called The Secret Empire is trying to stage a coup using a flying saucer powered by mutant brainwaves. So, they kidnapped Havok, Lorna, Angel, Iceman, Beast, Blob, Mastermind, Unus, and Mesmero. Apparently, they didn’t need any other mutants, as they don’t add Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Falcon, or Professor X to their machine after they’re captured. And presumably, it was too difficult to capture Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Magneto, Namor, Sunfire, Toad, or Vanisher. (Boy it’s crazy how few mutants there were in the 1970s!)

Eventually, they’re defeated by Captain America, Falcon, Prof X, Marvel Girl, Cyclops, and SHIELD. The final scene strongly implies that the Secret Empire was led by President Nixon himself, but apparently Marvel backed away from that.

Iceman is unconscious throughout the entire story.

“It’s Always Darkest…” and “Before the Dawn” are the titles of the last two chapters of this story, and they give X-Men Epic Collection Vol 4 its title.

 

Marvel Team-Up #23 (July 1974)
Writer: Len Wein
Penciler: Gil Kane

Iceman and Human Torch have a misunderstanding and then team up to stop Equinox, who has flame and ice powers just like them. In the end Equinox escapes into a sewer.

Again, Iceman and Human Torch act like they’ve never met, even though they’d met several times in the silver age.

The X-Men politely ask Iceman to wrap up his fight with the Torch before dawn so they can go on a top-secret mission. We never find out what the mission was, but Xavier refers to it in Defenders #15.

Equinox’ story is wrapped up in Marvel Team-Up #59-60, where he’s cured of his out-of-control powers, and he doesn’t appear again for nearly twenty years.

A cutaway to this fight is seen in Code of Honor #1 (March 1997), a sort of version of Marvels covering the bronze age and told from the perspective of a Black NYPD officer.

This is Iceman’s last published appearance before the relaunch.

But, before we get to that, a quick rundown of other notable X-Men appearances set in this era:

 

X-Men Unlimited Vol 2 #10 – Second Story (August 2005)
Writer: Joe Meno
Artist: Homs

Cyclops takes the newly mutated Beast back to his hometown where he reconnects with his old girlfriend Jennifer Niles. In the original story, Xavier had made Niles forget Hank, but maybe she only forgot he was a mutant? Notable for the fact that Beast’s parents are once again the most accepting parents in the X-Men universe.

 

Spider-Man Family Vol 2 #9 – First Story (June 2008)
Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist: Derec Aucoin

SHIELD asks Jean Grey and Spider-Man to babysit Bruce Banner for an afternoon.

 

Incredible Hulk #162 (April 1973)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Artist: Herb Trimpe

Of note only because it’s the debut and origin of Wendigo, who goes on to be a regular Wolverine adversary.

 

Incredible Hulk #180-182 (October-December 1974)
Writer: Len Wien
Artist: Herb Trimpe

The Hulk is back in Canada fighting the Wendigo when Wolverine makes his debut. Later stories establish that Xavier was monitoring Wolverine’s fight.

 

Defenders #15-16 (September-October 1974)
Writer: Len Wien
Artist: Sal Buscema

With the X-Men still on their secret mission from Marvel Team-Up #23, Xavier asks the Defenders to help him stop Magneto, who has taken leadership of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (now joined by Lorelei). Ultimately, Magneto and the Brotherhood are turned into infants by Magneto’s creation, Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant.

Somehow Xavier has gotten himself to the middle of the desert in New Mexico on his own power.

Magneto tells us that after Avengers #111, the Avengers decided the only way they could imprison him was to encase him in a metal bubble and trap him in the center of the earth. This seems… incredibly inhumane.

Magneto says he remained trapped there for months (how did he eat, breathe, etc…), until the passing Kohoutec Comet caused enough of a shift in the earth’s magnetic forces to free him. When he escapes, he comes across alien machines that he uses to build his weapon, Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant. Magneto really seems keen on creating mutants rather than leading existing ones, doesn’t he? This is the fourth time one of his plots has hinged on that.

Anyway, Alpha has vague, constantly evolving powers, and Magneto uses him to haul the United Nations building into space and demand that it cede sovereignty of the world to him. Xavier convinces Alpha that Magneto is in fact the bad guy, so Alpha uses his power to turn Magneto and the Brotherhood into infants. He then announces that he has evolved past humans and mutants and leaves for the cosmos. He eventually is seen in Quasar #14-15.

As for the Brotherhood, ­X-Men #103-104 explains that Xavier takes the infants to Muir Island, where Moira focusses on trying to raise Magneto right. Later flashbacks in X-Men Vol 2 #2 and X-Men Unlimited Vol 1 #2, show how she tampered with his biology to try to eliminate his insanity. Erik the Red restores Magneto so he can distract the X-Men from his own plans, and Champions #17 confirms that he accidentally restores the other Brotherhood members in that process.

Xavier acting on his own is in keeping with a few other stories from this era. In Avengers #88 (May 1971), he worked with Tony Stark and Reed Richards to develop a trap for the Hulk. That seemingly leads to the founding of The Illuminati, along with Namor, Dr. Strange, and Black Bolt, as seen in New Avengers: The Illuminati (2006) and New Avenges: The Illuminati #1-6 (2007). He also helps Shanna the She-Devil fight Mandrill and Nekra in Shanna the She-Devil #5 (August 1973). X-Men Origins: Colossus (2008) establishes that Xavier was keeping tabs on Colossus and protecting him from the Russian government during this period. And then there’s:

 

Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4 (Feb 1975)
Writer: Chris Claremont and Len Wien
Artist: John Buscema

Professor X helps the Fantastic Four stop Multiple Man, who has been living in isolation on his Kansas farm since his parents’ deaths, and is suffering from mental health issues. Behind the scenes, the Professor sends Multiple Man to Muir Island, where he’ll be a background character until the 1990s. (Presumably, he wasn’t stable enough yet to join Moira’s team in Deadly Genesis). Madrox being somewhat queer is strongly alluded to in New X-Men #128 (August 2002) and Madrox #1 (November 2004).

Odd continuity: Madrox’s father worked at Los Alamos Nuclear Research Center and knew Xavier. Charles also knew of Madrox and his powers from the time he was born. So why did he never approach him before? It’s not like Xavier was shy about taking in teenagers. Seems pretty negligent that he left him alone on his farm from age fifteen.

Presumably, the other X-Men are still on the top-secret mission mentioned in Marvel Team-Up #23 but never seen. While all the X-Men are away, Beast drops by the X-Mansion in Captain America #183 (March 1975), where he’s the only one around when Cap calls trying to find Falcon (who recently learned he was a mutant). Beast gives Cap advice about giving Falcon space to come to terms with who and what he is.

 

Avengers #137-139 (July-September 1975)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Penciler: George Tuska

After Scarlet Witch and Vision get married, Beast joins the Avengers, and the new team face off against the Toad (yes, really), who’s stolen technology allowing him to mimic the power of The Stranger (yes, really).

Beast has had a bit of a personality transplant since we last saw him. He’s now fully accepted his ape-like appearance and has decided to live out and proud as a mutant with no secret identity. This is a bit of a turning point for mutants in the Marvel Universe, even though the Avengers have had mutant members before (Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch). Beast is the first X-Man to “come out” as a mutant – he’ll soon be followed by Angel in Champions. Beast is given provisional membership here, and becomes a full member in Avengers #151, leaving in Avengers #211 to join the New Defenders. Still, he’ll make occasional guest appearances in X-Men.

Where to find these stories: They’re all currently available on Marvel Unlimited. The key X-Men stories from this era are collected in X-Men Epic Collection Vol 4 “It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn” and in Marvel Masterworks The X-Men Vol 7-8. 

Next week: It’s the launch of the All-New X-Men, the era that quickly made X-Men the hottest book on the market. But Bobby misses all that, as he quits the team and moves out west with Angel instead. We’ll be looking at The Champions.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1 | Chapter 9: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 2

When X-Men was cancelled with 1970’s #66, the book went on hiatus for several months before being revived as a reprint title that ran through to #93, after which the 1975 relaunch with Giant Size X-Men #1 and X-Men #94 reinvented the team and kicked off the era when it was the hottest series on the market. In the intervening five years, the X-Men made a number of guest appearances in other Marvel books, and we’ll get to them soon, but first is X-Men: The Hidden Years, a series that ran from 1999-2001 and sought to answer the question, “What else were the X-Men up to in that five-year publishing gap?” And if you’re thinking, it can’t have been that important, or they’d have mentioned it by then, you’d be right. Still, while Iceman plays a fairly small role in the series, it does on the whole offer some more context to his ongoing struggles with the closet.

 

X-Men #94 – Backup story (December 1999)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

This was a promotional story for the new series that ran in the back of one of the main books.

Continuing straight after X-Men #66, Xavier launches his former students into a surprise training session against mental illusions. Bobby thinks this is another example of Xavier’s cruelty after the whole fake death story and quits. On his way out, he has a minor freak out on Lorna, having still not taken the hint that she’s not interested in playing his beard.

 

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #1 (December 1999)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

Iceman formally quits the group while the remaining X-Men (minus Havok and Lorna) are sent to the Savage Land to confirm that Magneto was killed in X-Men #63. Xavier is being a real jerk here, but in fairness, he’s not wrong about Magneto being alive.

Iceman tries to convince Lorna to quit with him and ends up getting in a fight with Alex where he accidently brains her with an ice cube. Lorna finally tells Bobby she’s not his girlfriend and never was. Humiliated, Bobby storms off. Having a fake girlfriend is a really hard trick to pull off.

 

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #2 (January 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

When Xavier senses the X-Men are in trouble in the Savage Land, he sends Havok and Lorna to rescue them. But the message is also heard by Iceman, who makes his own way to Antarctica out of guilt.

The timing on this story feels both weirdly slow and super compressed. Xavier told Havok, Lorna, and Iceman that the X-Men needed help last issue, so why is Bobby acting like he’s only hearing it now? How quickly did the X-Men get to the Savage Land anyway?

Anyway, after leaving the X-Men, Bobby wandered around Manhattan before showing up at Zelda’s apartment (which is styled like Rachel and Monica’s apartment on Friends) at 2am, and without a word of explanation just crashed on her couch. Ever the eternally patient gay-superhero-girlfriend, Zelda doesn’t question it, but does call him out for ghosting her weeks ago (she hasn’t been seen since X-Men #47/Marvel Holiday Special 1994), and is not at all impressed when he tells her about Lorna. It seems like Bobby really wants to tell Zelda something — like what he was doing wandering around (drunk?) in the Village at last call — but he just can’t find the words.

Right when he’s about to spit it out, he hears Xavier’s message and bolts. Was Xavier monitoring this conversation? Was Xavier trying to keep Bobby in the closet? Anyway, Zelda makes no further appearances anywhere.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #3-5 (February-April 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

The X-Men fight off a race of pterodactyl people in the Savage Land, Angel is rescued by a mute bird-woman named Avia, Magneto turns up alive and once again having psychic powers that he had in the Silver Age, and Havok and Polaris finally arrive in the Savage Land too late to join the story.

How did Magneto survive the end of X-Men #63? The same way that he survived at the end of Avengers #53, basically. He slipped into a convenient underground cave and a river brought him to a secret city in the Savage Land. In the end, a volcano destroys the secret city and the X-Men escape with Avia and Magneto on a gondola carried by radioactive hot air balloons. Magneto is lost in a storm and gets rescued by Amphibious in issue #10. Meanwhile, the Hank, Jean, and Scott are carried all the way to Africa, where they crash right at Storm’s feet.

Iceman doesn’t appear in issue #3 but makes it to Tierra del Fuego in #4. His pilot won’t take him further because of a massive storm across the South Atlantic. (How did he charter a flight to Argentina without Xavier’s help?) So Bobby tries to get the rest of the way to Antarctica on his own power.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #6-7 (May-June 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

Storm nurses Beast back to health and explains that new villain Deluge has usurped a rainstorm she created in an attempt to destroy the world. Cyclops spends this entire story unconscious so that he is still surprised to meet her in Giant-Size X-Men #1. Nevertheless, it’s strange that Storm, Beast and Jean never mention having met before.

Deluge starts with a strong concept – a youth from an uncontacted tribe who discovers the outside world and is outraged at the cruelty of people who left them in squalor – but buries that under a bland “destroy the world” plot and vaguely defined powers. The X-Men defeat Deluge, Storm goes on her way and the X-Men somehow get back to New York.

In the subplots, Iceman has finally reached the Savage Land and is found unconscious on the beach by Karl Lykos, who is still doing his creepy predator thing over him. He does not appear in #7.

And, Angel and Avia are found by fishermen who decide to sell them to a circus next issue.

Continuity note: When Hank suggests telling Xavier about Storm, Jean responds “He already knows about her, Hank… He knows about a lot of mutants he hasn’t told us about…” It’s not news that Xavier already knew Storm (they met when she was a child and Xavier confirmed he considered recruiting her for the original team in Uncanny X-Men #300), but it is news that Jean knows. But who else does Jean know about? Does she know about the team from Deadly Genesis? Does she know that Vulcan is Scott and Alex’s brother? Presumably she doesn’t know about Tessa, since if she did, the Hellfire Club would’ve found out she was a spy during the “Dark Phoenix Saga.”

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #8-9 (July-August 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

The X-Men team up with the Fantastic Four to go finally stop the Z’Noxx aliens that the X-Men turned away from invading earth in X-Men #66. They trap the Z’Noxx planet in the distortion zone. While they’re in space, Jean has a hallucination where she turns into Phoenix and murders the heroes.

Meanwhile, Havok and Polaris notice Iceman on their portable Cerebro and decide to go find him, and the conveniently amnesiac Iceman doesn’t recognize his rescuer, Karl Lykos (Sauron).

And, a Sentinel arrives at the home of 10-year-old Ashley Martin, who will go on to become a go-nowhere subplot. This is later revealed to be a stray Sentinel that has built itself from the scraps of five destroyed sentinels from the story that ran in X-Men #57-59.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #10-11 (September-October 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

Xavier takes Jean to Muir Island, where Moira can’t find any trace of whatever possessed Jean in space. Still, Moira takes Jean aside to press her privately on the details to see if she can remember anything. This fits nicely with the Hickman retcon, because presumably Moira knows about the Phoenix already and is trying to confirm her suspicions. The retcon also serves this scene well in that Jean is trying to confide in Moira about her worries about all the secrets Xavier is keeping from the team (including Muir Island), while Moira lies to Jean’s face about not being a mutant.

Xavier and Beast go meet Ashley Martin and are promptly attacked by the Sentinel. Ashley turns out to have vaguely defined “psychokinetic bonding” powers that give her control over the Sentinel. When the Sentinel’s core programming takes over and attacks her, she makes it destroy itself.

The remaining X-Men go with Candy Southern to rescue Angel. They find a boat full of self-proclaimed Freaks who are all low-level mutants keeping them prisoner. The X-Men are thwarted by the Freaks’ leader Kreuger. He wants to sell them to the Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants, which at this point is just Blob, Unus, and Mastermind, like he did with Angel.

Havok and Polaris still haven’t found Iceman, who’s still being taken care of by Lykos. Lykos is trying to use technology left behind by a German geothermal energy expedition to satisfy his own hunger for energy.

Issue #11 has a weird time jump, presenting a scene from the middle of next issue where Bobby and Lykos are under attack from someone, and when Bobby goes to help him, Lykos drains him and becomes Sauron. Meanwhile, the draining scene sure looks sexual, with Bobby brought to his knees in front of Lykos.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #12 (September 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

We finally see that it was Magneto attacking Bobby and Lykos last issue, in a confusingly presented flashback (it literally takes 20 pages to get to where we left off last issue!). He wants the geothermal energy machines for himself.

Havok and Polaris finally reach Bobby four issues after finding him, but Magneto beats them there. Iceman recovers his memory now that it’s no longer inconvenient to the plot. Sauron wipes all their memories at the end of the story so they don’t spoil his eventual return in the Claremont run.

Namor rescues Magneto from the beach in a scene repeated from Fantastic Four #102.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #13 (October 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

Blob tries to rape Marvel Girl under Mastermind’s illusions, but Marvel Girl sees through it. Mind control villains raping female protagonists is an unfortunate trope of the Marvel Universe, but Jean has generally avoided it (she/Phoenix also rejected Mesmero’s attempted rape in Classic X-Men #17). Mastermind’s failure to control Jean gives him the idea to use a longer-term strategy to control her (retroshadowing his role in the “Dark Phoenix Saga.” I also like to think this story prompts Mastermind not to try to rape her in the lead up to Dark Phoenix Saga, contrary to the implications of that story).

The Brotherhood makes the Cyclops, Angel, and Candy fight Mastermind’s illusions in a circus. Krueger returns, belatedly having realized that he was only paid with illusory money.

Bobby says the Savage Land natives said the X-Men left “more than a day ago”… That was issue #5. The timeline in this book is seriously wonky. It’s both incredibly slow to progress but seems like way too much happens in way too little time.

Meanwhile, Xavier shuts down Ashley’s powers using his mind and wipes her memory of the whole story. Nevertheless, he’ll end up moving in with the Martins for the rest of the series in a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere.

And in a subplot page, Angel’s uncle is about to marry his mother. Apparently this is happening right away and she hasn’t been able to reach Warren.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #14-15 (November-December 2000)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

The X-Men defeat the Brotherhood and convince the freaks to turn on Kreuger. Well, Jean may have telepathically influenced them to do that. But she also just tells the freaks to go get lives, which is maybe not the most helpful thing she could have suggested to a group of destitute mutants.

The X-Men put Avia in the sick bay, where she stays for the rest of the series.

Candy finally tells Warren about the wedding, so the original group (including Iceman, who hasn’t actually rejoined but wants to help out his high school crush Warren) go to try to stop it. Warren has never told the X-Men about his run-in with his uncle in Ka-zar #2-3 and Marvel Tales #30. Unfortunately, Dazzler has ditched the pink and orange studded leather getup from the original story.

Uncle Bert is the villainous Dazzler, who has scientifically derived light powers and murdered Warren’s father. Bert somehow survived falling to his apparent death in the original story and Warren apparently never noticed his uncle still being alive. And since that happened max a couple months previous, Warren’s mom seems to be moving on incredibly fast.

Warren says he’s never told his mother about being a mutant. That contradicts X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #12.

This whole story is stupid melodrama to the extreme. Warren can’t warn his mother that Dazzler is a supervillain who killed her husband because the shock would kill her. Meanwhile, Dazzler is poisoning her to take the family fortune for himself but can’t be bothered to wait until the wedding, so she dies a day early. In the end, Jean mindwipes Dazzler and has him turn himself in to the authorities next issue. I guess the point of this story was to explain what happened to Angel’s mother, who Warren just announced was dead in an issue of The Champions.

Warren’s doctor explains to his mother’s recent turn to religion by saying “Your mother has returned to the faith of her fathers.” Was Warren’s mom raised by two dads?

Meanwhile, Lorna meets Tad Carter in Salem Centre, beginning the “Promise” story. Tad Carter appeared in a five-page strip in Amazing Adult Fantasy #14, a story that served as a prototype for the X-Men. It’s a very obscure reference, but it was reprinted in the X-Men: Rareties TPB, and I suppose it’s nice that Byrne wanted to tie it directly into the mythos.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #16 (January 2001)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

The X-Men go to the Himalayas to track a new mutant, who turns out to be Yeti of The Lost Generation, a little-remembered book that Byrne had just finished working on. It’s kind of a reverse trailer for that series.

The X-Men recognize the Inhumans when they show up, which is surprising since they’ve never met at this point. Well, except for Medusa, who was briefly a team member in X-Men: First Class Vol. 2 #15.

Iceman has a little scene where Lorna chides him for not understanding romance. It kinda reads a bit like Bobby’s not caring about girls bit from X-Men #1.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #17 (February 2001)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

Kraven wants to hunt the Beast. Beast beats him, and Jean mindwipes him and sends him to confess to the police. A subplot has Beast brooding about a darker nature that took over during his fight with Kraven, retroshadowing his transformation in Amazing Adventures #11.

Lorna floats away to kick off the Promise story.

Bobby is still bickering with Alex, and this time it seems weirdly sexual. He threatens to undress Alex down to his ankles. Alex threatens to shove a carrot up his nose.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #18-19 (March-April 2001)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

We learn that the Promise are a group of mutants who were recruited by Messenger, whose plan is for them to wait out the inevitable mutant-human wars in suspended animation and awake to rule whoever is left. Only one of the members ever develops a personality in this story, but three characters are specifically tied to an issue of Yellow Claw from the Golden Age, for some reason. One of them, Craig, has illusion powers and tricks the X-Men into fighting each other into submission. Bizarrely, this scene also has Havok knock out Cyclops with his powers even though they’re supposed to be immune to each other.

Messenger’s base is built into a series of tunnels we later learn were built by the Deviants. Messenger puts Lorna, Havok, and Angel in suspended animation, but just chucks the other X-Men into the tunnels, where they stumble into Mole Man. A member of the Promise, Lucy Robinson, frees Angel so he can help her escape the group.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #20-21 (March 2001)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

The X-Men fight Mole Man, who’s still pissed about the time they beat him in the execrable X-Men #34 (and Fantastic Four Annual #3, but it seems even fewer people remember that).

Meanwhile, Magneto persuades Namor to invade the surface world, building up to the story that appeared in Fantastic Four #102-104 and will be largely repeated in the next few issues. Xavier tries to convince Magneto to stop the invasion and fails.

And Lucy turns out to have the power to compel people to do things, which explains why Angel was so eager to help her. Her surviving son is not at all impressed to see his mom show up thirty years after she disappeared.

Angel convinces her to go back and free the other Promise members, but Lucy can’t figure out how to open the time lock tubes. Xavier comes up with the simple solution of turning the clocks forward.

Messenger took off Alex’s clothes before putting him in stasis, a recurring theme (see also Living Pharaoh, Sauron…).

Havok goes to help stop the invasion but gets beat up by a bunch of angry humans.

 

X-Men: The Hidden Years #22 (May 2001)
Writer and Artist: John Byrne and Tom Palmer

Xavier gives Reed Richards the idea for the device he uses to stop Magneto at the end of Fantastic Four #104. This is the X-Men’s entire contribution to this story. I can only imagine it’s here to explain why the X-Men weren’t involved in a major battle involving their arch foe. If you’re wondering how Magneto escaped the prison Richards built for him, it gets an explanation in Amazing Adventures #9-10, where he uses his heretofore unspoken mastery of yoga to escape. Yes, really. After this point, Magneto drifts into becoming a generic world-conquering supervillain for other characters for the remainder of the Silver Age, the X-Men no longer having a book to fight him in.

The X-Men escape Mole Man and Iceman decides Xavier wasn’t so bad for lying to them. It’s not terribly convincing. The X-Men emerge on Monster Island, which looks like a radioactive wasteland post-Fantastic Four #1. That doesn’t match what the island looks like in other stories, even ones from this era. Beast recognizes the island nonetheless, since the team has previously been there in X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #2-3, and X-Men: First Class Special (which, yes, I know haven’t yet been written). It’s never explained how they get home, but I like to think Jean stopped by to say hello to Dragon Man while there.

Havok says he’s never experienced anti-mutant prejudice before, apparently forgetting his capture by Sentinels in X-Men #57-59.

The members of the Promise decide to go about their lives and are never seen again. It’s implied that Lucy Robinson did something to kill Messenger before he awoke.

The story with the Martins just ends, having gone nowhere. Ashley was never seen again. And Avia is sent back to the Savage Land off panel, her story never going anywhere either.

And Beast turns twenty, symbolically ending the X-Men’s run as “the strangest teens of all.” Warren notes that he and Scott are also about to turn 20. This has to be viewed with a little license, since Alex was at least 18 in his debut (where Scott took him to a bar to celebrate his graduating from college as a child prodigy), and Scott is clearly more than a year older than him. In fact, since Beast is at least two, probably three years older than Iceman, and Iceman turned 18 in the original silver age run, Beast should have turned 20 well before this.

And that ends The Hidden Years! Twenty years later I still have no idea what the point of it was, and literally none of the plot developments mentioned in it have ever been brought up since.

Where to find these issues: The whole series is available on Marvel Unlimited, or you can track down the two volumes of TPB that it was released in a couple years ago.

Next week: We’ll pick up where the original series left off, covering the hiatus period from 1970-1975.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1 | Chapter 8: X-Men: First Class Vol 2 Part 1

And now we come to the end of the X-books strange little 21st-century journey through the X-Men’s early school days. X-Men: First Class continues to offer fun little character pieces as well as ample evidence for Bobby’s homosexuality.

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #12 (May 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

Angel leaves the X-Men to join a secret society that lives in the Iguacu Falls in Brazil. And that’s about it.

Strangely, this issue has Warren’s parents turn up at the mansion knowing all about Warren’s wings and the X-Men. Perhaps everyone came clean after they turned up in X-Men #17-18 and then Xavier wiped their minds again after losing their son in Brazil, because they next turn up in the hiatus period unaware he’s a mutant.

The Fit: Between X-Men #19-20. This issue kicks off a multi-part story where Angel leaves the X-Men, all of which must be grouped together between issues of the original series. See notes for #15.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #13-14 (June-July 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men team up with a prototype of Machine Man to fight the Lava Men.

Before Machine Man pops up, Iceman is helping a very sweaty and shirtless Beast, who’s assembling a giant sloth skeleton in short shorts. Iceman accidentally breaks the skeleton when he tries to put on the skull and Beast chases him with a big rib. That’s right, after Iceman tries to give him head, Beast tosses him the bone.

 

During a scrap with Machine Man, Bobby says he can’t wait to haze the new kid after the way they hazed him when he joined. Bobby was the second X-Man recruited, so maybe he’s just referring to the fight he and Cyclops got into in their origin story. Nevertheless, hazing has a long homoerotic history.

Later, when discussing whether or not Xavier eavesdrops on their private thoughts, Bobby remarks to Hank, “Are you sure about that? Because he knew about Zelda and her friend—you remember…the thing…” Why on earth is Bobby being so cagey about talking about a double date?

Hank’s response, “Well, if you think something that loud, of course he’s going to pick up on it,” mirrors Jean’s excuse for outing Bobby in the Bendis run.

The Fit: Immediately after the preceding issue.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #15 (August 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men help the amnesiac Medusa escape the Wizard and Angel returns just in time to save the day.

Nothing much else to say about this issue.

The Fit: This has to fit between Fantastic Four #43-44, which are dated June-July 1965. The contemporaneous X-Men issues are #11-12, but the FF gap includes the Richards’ wedding, which is meant to be contemporaneous with the Sentinels story that begins in X-Men #14 and runs without break until X-Men #18. This is the final part of a four-part story that includes X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #12-15, and #13 alludes to Vera, who doesn’t debut until X-Men #19. So, the best fit is to shove the whole arc between X-Men #19-20.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #16 (September 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Patrick Scherberger

After they fight with their respective teams, Iceman teams up with the Human Torch to fight the Beetle and Scorpion, but their team-up ends when Bobby sees Johnny making a move on Zelda.

It’s fun to read this issue as a case of deeply closeted Bobby desperately trying to impress his boy crush Johnny. Sure, he talks a lot about girls, but that’s just to impress Johnny and cover for himself. Look at how cute they are in this picture.

When Bobby catches Johnny with Zelda, who exactly is he jealous of?

In the end, Xavier is certain Bobby was coming back to play with his X-Men crush, Beast. Of course he is. He’s been reading Bobby’s mind.

The Fit: This issue could go almost anywhere there’s a gap before Xavier’s death, even immediately following the previous issue. But it sure reads like it belongs earlier in the series, and definitely before Bobby and Hank’s road trip. I think it best belongs in the gap between X-Men #5-6, after Strange Tales #120 but before Fantastic Four #28. Zelda didn’t make her first appearance until X-Men #7, but that issue makes clear that Bobby is already a regular at her cafe and they’re already on a flirty, first-name basis.

 

 

Giant-Size X-Men: First Class #1 (October 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artists: Dean Haspiel, David Williams, Nick Kilislian, Michael Cho, Roger Langridge

A Halloween-themed anthology where the X-Men fight pod people in Antarctica, California, and North Korea.

We learn that the mysterious FBI Agent Baker who’s been liaising with the X-Men in lieu of Agent Duncan in this series is a sleeper for the Skrulls (though even he doesn’t know it). That was meant to tie in to the then-recent “Secret Invasion” story, but Baker never showed up again outside this series.

The only bit of importance in this issue for our purposes is that Beast chooses Iceman to accompany him on the investigation in Antarctica, after Xavier tells Beast he can take any X-Men not busy with exams. To be fair, Iceman is pretty uniquely suited to the environment. Can’t think of one less suited than Beast, though, who dutifully trudges out into the snow in bare feet without gloves.

The Fit: It comes shortly after the Medusa story in ­X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #15, since Beast still has Wizard’s anti-gravity ship, so let’s put it right there between ­X-Men #19-20.

 

X-Men: First Class Finals #1-4 (November 2008-February 2009)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artists: Roger Cruz and Amilcar Pinna

A four-part story in which the X-Men get ready to graduate from Xavier’s School while dealing with Jean’s “ambient dreaming.” This story takes place well after the original series, right before Beast leaves to join the Brand Corporation.

While trapped in Jean’s mindscape, Iceman makes his family home appear, and Hank dryly notes “I expect this is going to involve the babysitter you always mention when talking about your teen years.” Uh, isn’t Bobby still a teenager? And why would a teenager have a babysitter? Nonetheless, no babysitter appears because that was likely just a dumb skeevy story he tells guys to seem macho.

Still, we get to check in on Bobby’s other long-running subplot about his father being disappointed in him and trying desperately to mold him into a copy of himself.

Continuity Notes: Frederick, the deformed mutant we thought Scott killed in Vol 2 #10 returns, although Agent Duncan helpfully says once he’s captured that his radiation poisoning seems to be finally killing him.

There’s a running gag where Jean makes suggestive comments about Xavier’s lady scientist friend that he’s visiting in Scotland. This doesn’t go over well with Xavier, of course. It’s obviously a reference to Moira, although why Moira’s in Scotland when she’s supposed to be running the Muir-McTaggart research station in New York (per X-Men: Deadly Genesis) isn’t clear (though not a continuity error – there’s many reasons she could have needed to go to Muir, including checking in on Proteus). Classic X-Men #43 and Uncanny X-Men #273 did establish that Jean and Moira had met before she joined the X-Men, so maybe she’s actually picked up on his former feelings for her? She’s also been to Muir Island already in X-Men: The Hidden Years #10.

The X-Men are in their individual costumes, though Bobby is wearing a full-body outfit that looks like Cyclops’ uniform, rather than the just briefs look he tended to sport in the original stories.

If you’re saying to yourself, “Wait, didn’t the X-Men graduate in X-Men #7?” you’re not wrong. But that was high school. All through this series, they’ve referred to themselves as college students. So this is the X-Men receiving some sort of college diploma or degree. Bobby and Angel both say they plan to study business after graduation, which alludes to their eventual stint at UCLA in The Champions. Beast has a job offer from the Brand Corporation, which he’ll accept in Amazing Adventures #11. Jean and Scott plan to stay on at the school in part for Jean to get a better grip on her powers and to help lead the new class. All of this smooths the transition to the new team, but it undercuts the original stories where Bobby was resentful of the new class replacing them, Jean left after all, and Xavier was shocked that they left.

Xavier explains his transition plan for the new class of X-Men that he plans to recruit, and that he wants to shut the school to focus on the X-Men as adventurers. I believe that’s the first time this is made clear, but logical since the school had no students between X-Men #94-138.

Alex is said to be away from the mansion for the story – presumably he took Lorna with him, but she’s not mentioned. At the end, the X-Men do have a graduation ceremony, but Alex and Lorna aren’t seen at it (They may never have been a students at the school, given Alex already had his Bachelor’s degree, and their time there only briefly overlaps with Xavier being alive). I guess dropping Bobby’s love triangle story into this series at this point would have been awkward.

Immediately after the ceremony, Xavier sends the team on one last mission – to Krakoa, as seen in Giant Size X-Men #1 (again, Havok and Lorna are off-panel, but on the plane). The timeline doesn’t work with this, because although the camera keeps Beast off panel, we know that he left the X-Men and transformed into his ape-form many months before the Krakoa mission. Take the “One hour later” caption as literary license.

The Fit: Mostly immediately after X-Men: The Hidden Years, with the final pages immediately preceding Giant-Size X-Men #1.

And that would be it for the First Class era, except that one year later Marvel commissioned four one-shots set in the same era and striking a similar tone, which were packaged in a TPB called X-Men: First Class – Class Portraits.

 

Iceman & Angel #1 (March 2011)
Writer: Brian Clevinger
Artist: Juan Doe

Iceman and Angel spend Spring Break in New York, where they help Goom, The Thing from Planet X, find his slacker son.

Of course Iceman was excited to spend Spring Break at a resort with his crush, Angel. Once in the city, Warren immediately picks up two girls, to Bobby’s consternation. Interestingly, Bobby doesn’t seem even a bit interested in the girls, instead acting huffy that Warren is ignoring him. This all tracks.

Later, while arguing over whether Warren’s wings follow the laws of physics, Bobby remarks “Oh right, I forgot your mutant power is to go topless at the drop of a hat.” Just read that as not being a complaint.

Believe it or not, this isn’t Goom’s only appearance in the X-books. He also appears in Wolverine & The X-Men #17 and Uncanny X-Men Vol 3 #33.

The Fit: With one caveat, this seems like it should take place very early in the original run, before Iceman and Beast become a dynamic duo.

However, page one has a throwaway joke where Bobby says “Wolverine went to Japan” on break. That can’t be correct because Wolverine was never a student, and certainly never while Bobby was at the school. That would seem to indicate that this is not in continuity, BUT, this is also delivered in a distinctly colored panel that forms part of the title and credits, so it’s probably just to be taken as a joke that isn’t part of the story, like the “yearbook” pages in the original series.

Let’s just put it arbitrarily between X-Men #10-11. That’s before Hank and Bobby are a thing, and after the high school graduation in X-Men #7, so they’re college kids on break now.

 

Cyclops #1 (March 2011)
Writer: Lee Black
Art: Dean Haspiel

Cyclops spends his day off tracking down Batroc the Leaper and the Circus of Crime.

Iceman only appears in Cyclops’ narration about how the other X-Men think he’s too uptight.

The Fit: Cyclops is already a regular at the Coffee A-Go-Go, so let’s place it between ­X-Men #8-9 after First Class Vol 1 #6.

 

 

Marvel Girl #1 (February 2011)
Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov
Artist: Nuno Plati

After nearly injuring her teammates when her emotions get the better of her, Jean Grey takes a break from the X-Men and finally comes to terms with the death of her friend Annie.

Iceman and the other X-Men only appear at the beginning of the story where Jean tears into Warren and Scott for fighting over her and Bobby tells Hank “Remind me never to date Jean.” I don’t think he’ll need the reminder.

Continuity: Annie’s grave has a surname that ends in “EK,” but her surname is Richardson.

The Fit: It needs to go in the early days, before the Warren/Scott triangle fades away. The story isn’t entirely clear on this point, but Jean doesn’t use telepathy anywhere, so there’s no continuity problem needing explanation. Let’s put it in the gap between X-Men #3-4. Warren was being particularly dickish about chasing Jean in #3, so it works out.

 

Magneto #1 (January 2011)
Writer: Howard Chaykin
Artist: Edgar Delgado

On Magneto’s first visit to the United States, he encounters a mutant community in Brooklyn. The X-Men do no appear, but I’m including for completion’s sake.

The Fit: Uh…I suppose it goes in Magneto’s backstory before X-Men #1, but the inclusion of a visible mutant community in New York at this time is just… wrong. And it even undermines the point Magneto’s making in the story, where he chastises a mutant for not being part of the mutant community, which this Brooklyn neighborhood pretty much is the only example of. It also implies that Magneto’s first visit to the US is after the debut of the Fantastic Four and the other Marvel heroes, which has to be wrong. At the very least, he fathered Lorna Dane before that.

Presumably this story was commissioned to sort of tie in with the X-Men: First Class film that was about to come out, since Magneto wasn’t even in the First Class comic, and none of the other silver age X-Men were in the film (other than Xavier).

Where to find these stories: They’re all on Marvel Unlimited. They were also collected into TPBs a decade ago, although you can still find Finals and Class Portraits fairly commonly in bookstores and eBay.

Next week: We begin the end of Bobby’s school period with John Byrne’s X-Men: The Hidden Years.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2 | Chapter 7: X-Men: First Class Vol 1

The 2006-2007 X-Men: First Class miniseries proved to be such a surprise hit, that it immediately spawned an ongoing sequel (not to mention three other spinoff series), which we’ll cover the first half of this week. The rebooted series is a bit more linear in order, as we’ll see. The first eight issues slot neatly between X-Men #18-19.

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #1 (June 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

Xavier enlists Invisible Girl to be a mentor for Jean Grey.

The Fit: The X-Men have already met the Fantastic Four, and the Fantastic Four already know their identities, meaning it must take place after the wedding in Fantastic Four Annual #3, which takes place during the Sentinels story, so let’s place it in the gap between X-Men #18-19.

 

 

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #2-3 (July-August 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men go to Monster Island at Professor X’s request, only to find out that they were tricked by Mastermind.

Another cute story which pays off a favorite running joke where the petrified Mastermind is being used as a hat rack in the mansion. It also gives a slight explanation for why Mastermind went from a petty illusionist in the Brotherhood to being able to control Phoenix in the Hellfire Club.

The Fit: The gap between #18-19, after X-Men: First Class Vol 1 #3.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #4 (September 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Julia Bax

The X-Men have a two-week vacation, which Bobby and Hank use to go on a road trip where they bond over both feeling like outsiders in the X-Men.

This entire issue feels like a very coded story about a gay relationship.

Bobby’s original plan was to stick around the school. He doesn’t want to go back to his hometown where “rednecks hate anyone different.” He says if Professor X and Cyclops hadn’t gotten him out of that place, “I didn’t think I would have lived to see college.” This somewhat ambiguous line gets picked up on by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa in X-Men Origins: Iceman, where Bobby soliloquizes about young mutants who kill themselves out of fear in an obvious and tragic parallel to queer kids in the real world.

Prof X nudges Hank to spend the vacation with Bobby, in a kind of parallel with his earlier maneuvers to set up Scott and Jean in this series in particular.

So then Hank and Bobby steal Warren’s incredibly dick-shaped car for their road trip. And if you think I’m reading too much into the shape of this car, wait until they run out of gas and Hank has to get behind Bobby and push it. 

This isn’t a particularly plot-heavy issue, but every anecdote on the road trip seems to be coded. The first stop is a roadside attraction called The Devil’s Vortex, one of those houses full of optical illusions that make it seem like gravity is going wonky. So you know, everything is bent or queer. 

Their next stop is a casino in Atlantic City, which greets us with a sign boasting AC’s former tourism slogan, “Always turned on.” Hmmmm. We have to just hand-wave the fact that Bobby and Hank get into the casino and are allowed to play even though they’re below the legal gambling age of 21. Hank does at least look a little older usually.

Next, the boys eschew a hotel and pitch a tent on a camp ground.  The next day they stop in Appalachia to swallow some salty nuts.

After Bobby teaches Hank how to drive, they spend a page travelling down the I-95,  gossiping about Warren, and bitching about Scott and Xavier’s fashion senses.

Finally, they end up in Key West, Florida. It seems like Jeff Parker just read an interesting factoid about the cats at Ernest Hemingway’s house on the island, but Key West also happens to be significant gay tourist destination. Adding this all up, it really seems to lend credence to the theory that silver age Bobby and Hank were a couple.

The Fit: This is an awkward but not impossible issue to fit in. It references the preceding Monster Island story, so it has to follow. That puts it in the last available window before Roy Thomas had Hank and Bobby as a regular duo.

The biggest problem with the issue is that Alex Summers shows up in the opening sequence, picking up Scott for a road trip. But when he debuted in X-Men #54, all the other X-Men reacted as if this was the first time they were hearing Scott had a brother. Still, that was just stupid handwave-y dialogue to rationalize why we’d never heard of him before. But in fact, X-Men: The Hidden Years #1 (1999) had already said that Alex was “a secret Xavier has allowed [Scott] to keep.” But if why would Scott want to keep it a secret? Well, X-Men: Deadly Genesis #4 says that Xavier brought Scott and Alex to Muir-McTaggart in New York shortly after Alex was found, which is where Scott found out he was a mutant (though knowledge of both the facility and Moira is wiped from both of their minds). Perhaps this is where that event goes, with all the other X-Men helpfully on vacation. Maybe upon learning that Alex is a mutant, Scott and/or Alex asks Xavier to make the other X-Men forget about him, which explains why they’re so surprised to see him and why Scott already knows Alex is a mutant in #54. That fits with Alex’s character, as he was generally averse to mutant life in his appearances through the 1990s.

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #5 (October 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men fight the Hulk at the request of the US Military.

Nothing of particular importance.

The Fit: Again, it sounds like it belongs fairly early in the series, so let’s just place it immediately after the preceding issue.

 

 

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #6-7 (November-December 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

An extraterrestrial lifeform or computer briefly takes away the X-Men’s powers right before the Sentinels attack. The Sentinels decide not to bother since they’re no longer mutants. Then their powers are rebooted but stronger, just in time to save Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.

Kind of a strange two-parter, but the gimmick is fun. Oddly, the X-Men recognize that a Sentinel attack shouldn’t happen since they destroyed the Mastermold in X-Men #16, but then when they learn that Mastermold had a backup production line, they don’t do anything in the story to shut it down. Perhaps they found it between issues? Or, they never found it and this is the backup in Australia seen in Avengers #102-104.

Beast is at this point comfortable enough to walk into Bobby’s bedroom in his underwear.

Continuity note: When the X-Men’s powers are boosted, Angel has healing powers, a reference to his “healing blood” powers from the then-recent Chuck Austen run (which haven’t really been referenced since).

The Fit: This has to follow the Sentinel story and the fight with Magneto that immediately follows it, but also before Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch join the Avengers, so immediately following the previous issue between X-Men #18-19 is the most likely fit, and probably before X-Men: First Class Vol 1 #3. It’s not a perfect fit, because the Sentinel story is contemporaneous with the Fantastic Four wedding, in which Wanda and Pietro are guests, but if you squint everything can still fit. Maybe they haven’t officially joined yet? Maybe they have and Wanda and Pietro simply haven’t fully moved to New York when this story picks up? Maybe they’re just on a break?

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #8 (January 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men team-up with the Man-Thing when they realize that the extraterrestrial from the previous issue had an effect on the Nexus of All Realities when they sent it back to space. (Also guest starring Lizard).

Very little Bobby here. In the alternate reality he gets taken to, he becomes the Ice Giant and fights Thor on behalf of the Frost Giants, whom humans have banished from the planet. It’s interesting to see Bobby’s persecution complex play out like this, as he chooses yet another persecuted identity beyond “mutant.”

Continuity Notes: The X-Men are pulled into various alternate realities, including one where Jean has become Dark Phoenix and killed all the mutants in the “Mutant Wars.” You’d think everyone here would have remembered this when the Phoenix actually showed up, but maybe their memories of these alternate worlds faded quickly, like dreams.

The Fit: Immediately after the preceding issue.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #9 (February 2009)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Julia Bax and Colleen Coover

Marvel Girl and Black Widow team-up with Black Widow to stop Hydra.

Iceman doesn’t appear in this issue.

The Fit: Has to come early in the series, before Wanda joins the Avengers, and it appears also to be before X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #6-7, when she and Pietro have moved “to the coast.” Let’s place it between X-Men #11-12, after X-Men: First Class Vol 1 #8.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #10 (March 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

When the other X-Men are sick, Cyclops goes on a solo mission against a psychopathic mutant and kills him.

Iceman is barely in this issue, and nothing remarkable happens to him. But having Cyclops’ first intentional kill happen in this series is a hell of a thing. (Cyclops had previously killed Jack O’Diamonds in his origin story, but that was arguably not his fault).

The Fit: There’s no specific place this needs to go, so we may as well place it immediately after the preceding issue, between X-Men #11-12.

 

X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #11 (April 2008)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Nick Dragotta

Iceman, Marvel Girl, and Beast team-up with the Continui-teens when Mysterio gets reality warping powers from swamp water at the Nexus of All Realities.

Nothing really of note for Bobby, but there’s some interest in the fact that one of the Continui-teens either is gay or believes his friend is.

The Fit: This is a self-cancelling story that’s more of a joke about the idea of trying to reconcile this series with the 60s continuity, but if it goes anywhere, it goes after X-Men: First Class Vol 2 #8, between X-Men #18-19.

Where to find these stories: They’re all on Marvel Unlimited, and they were all collected in long out-of-print TPBs: X-Men: First Class – Mutant Mayhem collects issues #1-5, plus the X-Men First Class Special; X-Men: First Class – Band of Brothers collects issues #6-10; and issue #11 is found in X-Men: First Class – The Wonder Years.

Next Week: We wrap up our look back at Bobby’s school era with the final chunk of X-Men: First Class, including a look at Bobby’s rocky relationship with his first crush, Angel.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1 | Chapter 6: Silver Age Flashbacks Part 2

We now come to the first of two major continuity implant series set in the Silver Age, X-Men: First Class. The continuity status of this series is not entirely clear, but I’ve always enjoyed it and I don’t think it does any specific damage to other stories. First Class actually does a nice patch to continuity, addressing the fact that while a sort of folk memory has arisen of the original X-Men as high school kids, in reality, they graduated in issue #7, never seemed to take any actual classes, and were actually in their twenties for most of the run despite being headlined as “the strangest teens of all.”

One way First Class deals with the inconsistency around the X-Men’s graduation in X-Men #7 is to assert that from that point forward, the Xavier School is a college program, which is consistent with what Angel tells Candy Southern in X-Men #31. This also helps explain when Beast would have gotten any of his many degrees, given that he doesn’t appear to have actually had time to go to college anywhere else in his history.

As I go through the various First Class series, I’ll try to fit the issues into the continuity where I can. Unfortunately, the issues don’t always follow in consecutive order, so it takes a bit of creativity to make them all fit.

X-Men: First Class #1 (September 2006)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The original X-Men fight a telepathic primordial hive-mind creature that’s under threat from climate change and eventually make peace with it.

The framing device is Bobby writing a letter to his mom explaining what the X-Men do, and he ends up not sending it, because that would blow all their secrets. Note that adult Bobby is revealed to have a habit of writing letters he doesn’t send in X-Men Unlimited Vol 2 #9. Bobby writes about how much he likes Hank and how much he sees Hank as a fellow outsider. Their relationship will get much more attention in this series, particularly in Volume 2.

He also says of Jean that he’s really close to her, but “don’t go thinking I’ve actually got a girlfriend.” This is the beginnings of a closet strategy that will carry Bobby through for decades — lamenting that he simply has no options when it comes to dating women.

The Fit: This issue clearly fits in the earliest days of the team. Let’s arbitrarily say it belongs between X-Men #2 and #3.

X-Men: First Class #2 (October 2006)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men travel to Florida and fight the Lizard.

The frontispiece of the issue has a note from Bobby about how “that Kat girl down at Café-A-Go-Go likes the Bobby.” I consider these materials to be like the covers — not strictly part of the story or continuity.

The Fit: The Lizard debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #6 (Nov 1963), the same month as X-Men #2, so let’s say it follows First Class #1 between X-Men #2-3.

 

X-Men: First Class #3 (November 2006)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men fight their way out of a nightmare projected by Professor X.

A deeply odd issue, and maybe nothing in here is meant to be taken at face value, but at least one interesting plot point is that Bobby notices that in the dream scape he and Hank share a bedroom. Is this something he fantasizes about?

Interesting continuity point: The X-Men note that there are no other staff at the mansion because all systems are automated and all supplies are delivered. I mean, that does explain things in a sort of handwave-y way, but boy would I like to see these helper robots running around the grounds some time.

The Fit: Based on the villains we see, it likely takes place between X-Men #18-19, after the Sentinels fight and after Xavier has the Stranger take Magneto away again. That makes the chess game Xavier plays with Magneto more poignant, because Xavier feels guilty. It also explains why the X-Men conclude that the only mutant who could be projecting these illusions is Xavier – they’ve discounted Mastermind, because he’s still petrified by the Stranger (and as we’ll see in a few issues).

X-Men: First Class #4 (December 2006)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

When the X-Men realize that they accidentally loosed a demon in X-Men #33, they enlist the help of Dr. Strange to send it back.

Not much to be concerned with this issue.

The Fit: Awkward. If it’s after #33, then it must also be after the Factor Three story that ends in #39, so the characters should be in their individual costumes. Maybe they were in the wash. Even in the silver age the X-Men went back to their student costumes occasionally, particularly in the hiatus period. Also, the characters all act as if they’ve never been to Greenwich Village before, but that was Bobby and Hank’s standard hangout since X-Men #7. It’s best to just hand-wave those lines aside. As we’ll see in this series, the team do start to hang out in the Village at the Coffee @-Go-Go (an already outdated update of the Coffee A-Go-Go) after this issue, but future issues should also take place well before this…. We’ll place this between X-Men #39-40.

X-Men: First Class #5 (January 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men team up with Thor to fight the Vanir and Ymir the Frost Giant.

Cute story. Bobby is very excited to meet Thor. Wouldn’t you be? This builds on how Kirby drew Iceman to be impressed with Thor in X-Men #9.

 

 

 

The Fit: And we’re back to the early days of the title, because this has to take place before X-Men #9, when the X-Men meet Thor in a fight with the Avengers. So let’s say it’s between #8-9.

 

 

 

X-Men: First Class #6 (February 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz and Paul Smith

The X-Men deal with a group of Skrull imposters who are trying to discredit mutants so that humans snuff them out before they become a big enough impediment to a Skrull invasion.

The Coffee A-Go-Go has been updated into an internet café called the Coffee @ Go-Go, and Zelda is now a barista. Bobby again acts very excited to see girls and clueless about how to flirt with them.

The Fit: No real markers for continuity here, so let’s say it immediately follows the preceding issue between X-Men #8-9.

 

X-Men: First Class #7 (March 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

Angel dates Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver’s not taking it well.

A cute little story that honestly helps to smooth the transition between Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch’s Brotherhood days and joining the Avengers. It’s also nice to have a whole issue just focused on a very teenage story.

A cute running gag has Jean calling them the “Brotherhood of Mutants” (the current name of the group), and Bobby interjecting “Evil Mutants” (what they were originally called from the 60s to the 90s) – the name change reflects the fact that the characters aren’t supposed to believe they’re evil.

We finally see Mastermind stuck as a statue in the mansion, following his fight with the Stranger in X-Men #11. Oddly, Jean refers to him by his real name, which she shouldn’t know at this point (it never came up in the Silver Age – why would it? And Jean/Phoenix didn’t recognize it when he used it during the lead up to the Dark Phoenix Saga).

The Fit: It has to take place shortly after X-Men #11, when the Brotherhood disbands, and before Avengers #16, when Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch join the Avengers. Those two issues both came out in May 1965, so there’s only a very small window for this story to appear. Let’s put it in the gap between #11-12.

X-Men: First Class #8 (April 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Roger Cruz

The X-Men team up with Gorilla Man to save Xavier in Africa.

Nothing much of interest Bobby-wise here. The story seems to be hinting that Xavier was in Africa looking for Storm, which is consistent with many stories that suggest he wanted to recruit her before Giant Size X-Men #1.

The Fit: It makes sense that this is the trip Xavier was on in the previous two issues, so lets say it follows the previous issue between X-Men #11-12.

 

 

X-Men: First Class Special (May 2007)
Writer: Jeff Parker
Artist: Kevin Nowlan, Nick Dragotta, Colleen Coover, Paul Smith

A collection of shorts that feel even more slightly out-of-continuity than the usual series.

In the first story, Bobby and Hank visit a museum where the meet a mutant with the appearance of a gargoyle, Alistair. It’s cute. It could fit basically anywhere in the Silver Age stories, if you forgive the fact that Alistair never turns up again. Let’s place it between X-Men #11-12 after X-Men: First Class Vol 1 #8.

The second short is a comedy bit in which we learn Bernard the Poet is a mutant who can cause hallucinations with his slam poetry. It ends with Xavier suggesting that Bernard abandon performance poetry and focus on writing. Unfortunately, this doesn’t fit anywhere, because it’s meant to take place before Bobby and Zelda are a couple, and Bernard appears throughout that story.

The final story has adult Scott telling teenage Kitty about the time Jean Grey adopted Dragon Man, only for the X-Men to eventually take him to Monster Island. We should probably take the story within the story at face value, although Scott could just be making something up (it doesn’t seem like him though). It probably best fits between X-Men #29-30.

Where to find these issues: They’re all on Marvel Unlimited. They were also all collected in trade paperbacks as well as a hardcover edition ten years ago.

Next Week we’ll take a look at the first half of X-Men: First Class Vol 2.

Previous Posts: Introduction | Chapter 1: Lee/Kirby Part 1 | Chapter 2: Lee/Kirby Part 2 | Chapter 3: The Roy Thomas Era (1966-1968) | Chapter 4: The End of the Silver Age (1968-1970) | Chapter 5: Origins and Flashbacks Part 1

X-Men Origins: Jean Grey (August 2008)
Writer: Sean McKeever
Artist: Mike Mayhew

In a continuity insert, Jean nearly injures Bobby in the Danger Room by deflecting a missile toward him, which gives her a crisis of confidence that leads her to skip an unspecified mission against Magneto.

 

 

 

 

Excalibur: XX Crossing (July 1992)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Ron Lim, Dwayne Turner, Jae Lee, Malcolm Jones, Steve Lightle, Rick Leonardi

A time-travel story where the six members of Excalibur are each pitted against a time-displaced member of the original X-Men.

Iceman, who’s been reduced to a barely verbal cave person, spars against Ky’lun, but doesn’t seem to actually fight with him, instead simply lobbing snowballs at him and giggling. One reading of this scene is that he’s flirting with Kylun. It won’t be the last time that a change in Iceman’s mental state would reveal his desires.

Eventually, all the heroes team up against the one-off villain Sidestep, who was trying to impress Dr. Doom, and we are told that the X-Men return to their home timeline with no memory of what happened.

 

X-Men: Endangered Species (June 2007)
Writer: Mike Carey
Artist: Scott Eaton

A flashback to the original team apparently posing for a class portrait on the front steps of the mansion.

 

 

 

 

 

Uncanny X-Men #289 (June 1992)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: While Portacio

And here we see the actual class portrait, as Storm gives new member Bishop a tour of the mansion and a crash course in X-Men history. Bobby is for some reason giving a parody of the Vulcan hand signal from Star Trek. I said this would be comprehensive!

Compare the scene from Endangered Species and the photo in this issue below. (We’ll get to yet another group photo from this same shoot soon.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Classic X-Men #17 (insert pages) (January 1988)
Writer: Chris Claremont
Artist: Kieron Dwyer

The new pages inserted into Uncanny X-Men #111 include a random group shot of the Silver Age X-Men during the early days, as well as a shot of Hank leaving the team in Amazing Adventures #11. In the group photo, Iceman is standing in his usual arms akimbo pose.

 

 

 

 

X-Men: Prelude to Schism #1-4 (May-June 2011)
Writer: Paul Jenkins
Artists: Roberto Delatorre, Andrea Mutti, Will Conrad, Dalibor Talajic, Clay Mann

As the X-Men prepare for an unspecified threat to Utopia, Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, and Wolverine reflect on their pasts and how they all see Cyclops’ leadership of the mutant nation.

You forgot about this mini that ended up having nothing to do with the “Schism” story, didn’t you?

Flashbacks in issues #1, #2, and #3 expand on the fight with Magneto in X-Men #1. Issue #1 also includes a scene of all the original and new X-Men returning to the mansion after Giant-Size X-Men #1. Issue #3 includes a strange scene of the original X-Men in what looks like a school hallway, but given the number of people seen it has to be after Havok and Lorna are living there, so probably immediately after X-Men #66. And issue #4 has a flashback of Iceman and Angel fighting Blob and Toad, which probably lives somewhere in the hiatus period based on Angel’s costume. All of these are inconsequential.

But issue #1 includes a generic danger room scene that ends with Bobby rat-tailing Scott in the change room afterward, setting up a homoerotic rivalry that we’ll see more of in just a second.

Also, generally, the silver age flashbacks put the X-Men in the version of their uniforms from X-Men: First Class, corroborating that series’ continuity status.

 

 

 

World War Hulks: Spider-Man vs Thor #1-2 – backup stories (July 2012)
Writer: Audrey Loeb
Artist: Dario Brizuela

Following events in the “World War Hulks” story, Cyclops and Iceman have become hulks and while they fight each other, they reminisce about a long fight they had in the Silver Age ostensibly over Bobby constantly pranking Scott with his ice powers.

Bobby and Scott’s rivalry gets homoerotic really quickly. There’s a real element here of the little boy who pulls the girl’s hair because he secretly likes her and doesn’t know how to express it. We already saw last week how early on Bobby appeared to idolize and crush on Scott in the early days. Here it’s coming to the fore.

Eventually, Xavier chastises Scott for not making an effort to make friends with Bobby, who as the youngest member is obviously having a hard time fitting in. So he invites Bobby to hang out, which only makes matters worse as Scott ignores him and spends the whole time flirting with Jean.

When he overhears Bobby calling home to complain about how lonely and out-of-place he feels at the school, and getting an unsympathetic reaction from his dad, Scott empathizes with Bobby. They make up, but Bobby still tapes a kick me sign on Scott’s back. In the present day, Hulk Iceman writes “SMASH ME” on Hulk Cyclops’ back, which feels apropos – after all, being a Hulk is meant to amplify repressed emotions. So here’s Bobby literally saying he wants to smash Scott’s behind.

The continuity on this one isn’t perfect. Chronology Project sprinkles the scenes across the whole Silver Age and the end of the fight just after the Factor Three story in X-Men #39, because that’s the earliest point at which Scott and Jean are a couple. But that doesn’t really work for Bobby, because at that point, he wasn’t really the group outcast anymore – he was constantly going out with Hank. A better fit is before issue #7 (the first Coffee A-Go-Go issue) and to just hand-wave the parts where Scott is hanging out with Jean. After all, it can’t be that romantic if he’s brought Bobby along. This story serves a useful bridge between the early stories where Bobby was the kid who got no respect and the post-Stan Lee stories where he was generally more accepted as an equal.

 

Untold Tales of Spider-Man #21 (May 1997)
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artist: Pat Oliffe

The Silver Age X-Men team up with Spider-Man to stop “The Menace,” a bank robber who claims to be a mutant terrorist to drum up anti-mutant hysteria. In a scene at the Coffee-A-Go-Go, Bobby acts a little over-the-top in his interest in girls and in poor Zelda particularly.

 

Still, Hank refers to Bobby as “My dear Iceman,” at one point in the fight scene, so there’s at least a little evidence for my theory that Bobby and Hank were a couple.

 

 

 

Untold Tales of Spider-Man Annual ’97 (May 1997)
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artist: Tom Lyle

The Silver Age X-Men are among many heroes that team up to stop the villain Sundown. Nothing terribly important to report here.

Both of these issues fit between X-Men #7-8.

 

 

X-Men Gold Vol 1 #1 – Second Story (September 2013)
Writer: Louise Simonson and Stan Lee
Artist: Walt Simonson

An anthology of stories celebrating 50 years of X-Men. This reprises one of those tropes from the early days where the boys all race to the Danger Room with the winner being able to take Jean on a date. These stories must have been groan-worthy in the Silver Age and they’re even worse now. Bobby again is a little crude in playing up his heterosexuality, but then again, he does seem preoccupied with Hank’s butt in the opening splash.

 

X-Men Giant-Size #1 and X-Men Vol 3 12-15
Writer: Christopher Yost
Artists: Paco Medina and Dalibor Talajic

The “First and Last” story. The Evolutionaries attack the X-Men’s base on Utopia island in the present day, causing the original X-Men to suddenly remember their encounter with them in the Silver Age.

In flashbacks, we see the X-Men fight the Brotherhood until a prototype Sentinel shows up and everyone retreats. Interestingly, Magneto is already aware of the Sentinel program, but Xavier was not, making this retroactively the first Sentinel story. Back at the Mansion, the Evolutionaries arrive and explain that they are 2.5-million-year-old austrolopithecus that were rescued and evolved by the Eternal Phastos and set to guard each new species as it evolves. Their plan is to find someone who will lead the entire mutant race, and then wipe out all of humanity so that humans can no longer compete with them. Unimpressed with the X-Men, they turn to Magneto and the Brotherhood. They attempt to recruit Emma Frost, who’s been sent to an insane asylum by her parents, so she can use Cerebro to recruit all the other mutants in the world. But when Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch defect over Magneto’s insane plan, the Evolutionaries retreat and charge Cyclops with the responsibility of saving mutantkind. But then they wipe everyone’s memory of the entire story, so it seems kind of unfair that they hold him to that promise.

There isn’t much to stick to this story, although it is canonically the first time Bobby meets Emma Frost, who later would be a big part of his coming out process. She spends most of this story in a drug-induced daze. This is the third retcon of Xavier trying to recruit teenage Emma into the X-Men – Xavier refers in this story to a scene included in X-Men Origins: Emma Frost, and then later there’s a story in X-Men: Deadly Genesis #5, when she’s already working at the Hellfire Club. He presumably doesn’t recognize her when they meet in X-Men #129 because of her extensive plastic surgery.

This is also the fourth continuity insert story that wipes the Silver Age X-men’s memories of the events and we’re not even counting the time-travelling All-New X-Men yet!

 

Marvel Heroes and Legends #1 (October 1996)
Writer: Stan Lee and Fabian Nicieza
Artists: Sal Buscema, John Buscema, John Romita Sr, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, Marie Severin, Ron Frenz

A tribute issue retelling the wedding of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman from Fantastic Four Annual #3, showing alternate battle scenes that weren’t shown in the original issue. In the X-Men’s chapter, they end up fighting Batroc, the Executioner, and the giant monster Grogoom.

Iceman’s main character beat is that he complains about all the bigots who run away when the X-Men try to rescue them, which is fitting. He also gets another arms akimbo panel.

Not on Marvel Unlimited.

 

X-Men Unlimited #42 – third story (April 2003)
Writer: J. Torres
Artist: Takeshi Miyazawa

Probably a non-continuity story, but in this short, it’s Jean’s birthday and all the X-Men have each gotten her gifts. Bobby made an ice swan that doesn’t look right, Hank baked a cake that looks meh, Warren bought her diamond earrings, and Scott gave her a team photo (possibly from the same shoot referenced above), which she declares is the best present and gives him a kiss. All the boys are jealous, including Bobby, who I guess is just acting. Then the Professor gives Jean her new miniskirt uniform, contradicting the story where Jean says she designed it. Kinda creepy for Xavier to give Jean a miniskirt and ask her to go try it on so they can all look at it, to be honest.

 

Avengers: Domination Factor 2.4 (December 1999)
Writer/Artist: Jerry Ordway

Members of the Avengers and Fantastic Four are time-travelling to key moments in their histories after being tricked by Loki into retrieving slices of a golden apple. In this issue Scarlet Witch relives the X-Men/Avengers crossover from X-Men #45/Avengers #53. Iceman contributes nothing new.

Not on Marvel Unlimited.

 

 

 

Uncanny X-Men #297 (February 1993)
Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Brandon Peterson

Iceman doesn’t actually appear in this issue, but the story has a generic image of the silver age X-Men at Harry’s Hideaway, and Beast reminiscing about the time he wrote a term paper for Angel, only to confess to the Professor that Angel cheated, leading to embarrassment that made Bobby laugh out loud. The only clues to where these vignettes go are that Beast says the term paper story was in “junior year” (presumably of their college program, so toward the end of the series), and that the X-Men should be old enough to drink at a bar (though sliding time means the silver age X-Men wouldn’t be old enough to get into a bar in New York, so presumably they have fake IDs or Harry’s doesn’t card).

This is the only story where we see the silver age X-Men hanging out at Harry’s Hideaway in Salem Center (which was a Claremont invention). Since the backup in Classic X-Men #4 suggests that Harry is gay or queer, this would again be an early opportunity for Bobby to meet another queer person.

 

Marvel Holiday Special 1994 (December 1994)
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Artist: James Fry

When Metoxo the Lava Man attacks, Bobby and Hank reminisce about the first time he attacked Manhattan and they taught him the meaning of Christmas.

This continuity implant is meant to be the missing story of “Beast and Iceman vs Metoxo and the Lava Men” that was solicited but never appeared in X-Men #49. There isn’t really much to this, but it does give us one last chance to see Zelda before Bobby finally ghosts her. Like in Untold Tales of Spider-Man, Busiek takes the Bobby-Zelda relationship more-or-less straight, and as with Marvels, it’s part of a pattern of treating silver age stories with a sort of reverence that doesn’t really call for alternative interpretations.

The framing device, and the short X-Men Christmas story that also appears in this book take place between Uncanny X-Men #319-320.

It’s not on Marvel Unlimited.

***UPDATE: Dec 1, 2021***

Savage Hulk Vol 2 #1-4 (Jun-Sept 2014)
Writer/Artist: Alan Davis

I somehow forgot about this strange little series, and it hadn’t yet been input to Bobby’s entry on the Marvel Chronology Project when I wrote this page, so here we are.

In yet another story that picks up immediately after X-Men #66 (see below and X-Men: The Hidden Years), the still weak Xavier is suddenly obsessed with the idea that he can cure Bruce Banner of being the Hulk with the gamma device the X-Men retrieved in that story. But when they go looking for the Hulk, they stumble into the Abomination instead, and wind up in the middle of a scheme by the Leader. In the end, the Hulk and the X-Men bust loose, and Hulk destroys the machine out of frustration that it didn’t seem to work.

Bobby doesn’t do a whole lot in this story, but he does take the opportunity to comment on Abomination’s appearance.

 

X-Men & Spider-Man #1 (November 2008)
Writer: Christos Gage
Artist: Mario Alberti

Confusingly listed as “X-Men/Spider-Man” on Marvel Unlimited, this mini followed a team-up between Mr. Sinister and Kraven across four eras of X-Men history starting with the silver age in this issue that picks up immediately after ­X-Men #66 and before X-Men: The Hidden Years can start.

Kraven announces to the public that Spider-Man is a mutant, which makes the X-Men worry that he could become a target of anti-mutant sentiment, which has run hot since the X-Men have been blamed for the Hulk and US Military tearing up the Las Vegas strip in X-Men #66. Since they don’t know how to find him, the X-Men just head to Greenwich Village and hope Jean can telepathically recognize his alter-ego among the youth who hang out there. Sure, why not? By blind luck, he happens to be on a double date at the first club they go to.

Bobby is still publicly pining for Lorna (who, along with Alex, is mysteriously absent this issue). When the X-Men urge him to get over her, he says it’s no use as no girl could be better than her – a convenient excuse not to have to flirt with other women. Eventually, he ends up dancing with Gwen Stacy, when she and MJ are trying to make their dates jealous and Warren is too dickish even for them.

Kraven and Blob attack and the X-Men fight them off. In the end we learn Kraven was hired to collect blood and DNA samples from the X-Men for Sinister, setting up the miniseries plot.

 

Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics Magazine #3-4, 11 (April-December 2001)
Writers: Erik Larsen, Tom Defalco, Eric Stephenson
Artists: Erica Shanower, Tom Scioli, Keith Giffen, Al Milgrom, Frank Fosco

This is a tribute series to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s run on the FF and follows their sort of loopy Silver Age plot logic. Basically, it’s a 12-issue cat and mouse game with Dr. Doom. In #3, Reed Richards decides to try to draw out his unknown adversary who’s been stealing powerful weapons, by positioning an ultimate weapon near the Baxter Building. And that ultimate weapon? A pair of Sentinels the X-Men just happen to have in storage (lord knows where or when they were acquired or why they’re lime green throughout the issue). Unfortunately, Dr. Doom has already figured out that was Reed’s plan, and broke into the X-Mansion to sabotage the Sentinels and the X-Men’s Danger Room robot Colosso. The Sentinels go on a rampage in New York City until they explode. A coda to the story appears in #4.

The X-Men then cameo again in #11 in the big showdown against the cosmically powered Doom.

Nothing really big to report about Bobby, but boy do I never want to see Iceman with lips again!

Where to find these stories: Unless otherwise noted, all of these issues are on Marvel Unlimited, which is probably easier than tracking down multiple out of print TPBs and omnibuses.

NEXT WEEK: We begin looking at the long-running X-Men: First Class series, which attempted to build up the school dynamic that never really existed in the original stories but became part of the folk canon of the series. You can find the entire series on Marvel Unlimited, and it’s been reprinted in TPBs and volume one was released as an OHC.