Hello, my loves!

I’ve been on a reading spree! Work’s been slow, and the baby’s been a peach, so I’ve had a lot more reading time than I expected! Hooray for small victories!

Anyway, I managed to read: The X-Men 9-12 and Avengers #16-18. So, lets talk about them! I’m not going to give you in-depth summaries of each issue, but we will talk about them individually since now we’re starting to get introductions to a lot of new characters and I want to let you guys know which specific issues these characters show up in!

In X-Men #9, the team travels to Europe to help Professor X defeat Lucifer. We learn that Lucifer is responsible for the Prof’s paralysis, but are never told what actually happens. This is also the first (of many) time that the X-Men battle the Avengers. Fun, right? It’s actually pretty dumb. The Prof is below ground with Lucifer trying to stop him from blowing up the world with a bomb that is monitored by Lucifer’s heartbeat. Because of this, they can’t let the Avengers hurt him or the bomb will detonate. But instead of just TELLING the Avengers this, the X-Men fight them to stall while the Prof basically puts Lucifer in a coma and then he and Cyke dismantle the bomb just in the nick of time! Seriously. That’s what happens. Also, there’s no real winner in the battle between the X-Men and the Avengers, because it ends when Professor X telepathically explains the situation to Thor and he calls of the battle. Like, come on X-Men! Get it together. There’s no reason you couldn’t have done that from the beginning. But alas, this tends to be the pattern for fights between the Avengers and the X-Men. No one wants to stop for 2 seconds a talk it out…and you’ll see it happen over and over as we get further on in the project.

Also, can we talk about how, once the bomb is diffused, the X-Men just let Lucifer go?!? Seriously guys? He basically just almost blew up the whole world and you’re just going to let him go. Where’s the accountability? It’s bad enough you always let Magneto escape, but now you’re just letting the bad guys leave. This is my issue with ‘60’s comics, you guys. Everything is the worst threat they’ve ever faced, and then everything ends with absolutely no closure and the bad guy is never detained or captured. But enough about this issue, for one of my favorite characters is introduced in issue #10…

Welcome to The Savage Land, home of the Jungle King Ka-Zar and his adorable saber-tooth tiger Zabu! I love this issue! Basically, the X-Men are investigating a strange loin-cloth clad man who appears and saves a worker in Antarctica, and in the process find themselves in The Savage Land (which hasn’t been named as such yet, but, *spoiler alert*, it will be!) Almost immediately, Jean gets captured. (of course, because, duh guys! Girls are so much weaker than boys and are only allowed on the team to give the guys someone to drool over and rescue! Seriously! You’ll see it when we get to Avengers too!). While they’re trying to find her, Cyke, Iceman, and Beast (Angel’s off scouting the area) meet Ka-Zar and Zabu, who help them track down Jean and Angel and save them. And then, just as Cyke is making some speech about how Ka-Zar is their friend now, Ka-Zar basically shoves them out of The Savage land and caves in the tunnel behind them! It’s great! I love Ka-Zar so much because he just doesn’t care at all. Okay, enough about the Savage Land though, because next month starts our second book! So, without further ado, AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!

Okay, I lied. No Avengers QUITE yet. First we have to read X-men #11 so we know what happens that causes two wayward mutants to end up in the Avengers book! So, in X-Men #11, we meet The Stranger for the very first time! Remember him, because he’s going to show up in books all across the 616! Anyway, this is his first appearance and it’s a lot of fun. Just like with Namor, Professor X and Magneto are racing to recruit what they think is a powerful new mutant. Of course, Mags gets to him first, and the X-Men must battle with the Brotherhood. But during the fight, The Stranger becomes bored with everything, turns Mastermind into stone, and disappears with Mags and Toad. He grows to enormous size as the X-Men catch up and then leaves for outer space with Mags & Toadie to “study” their mutations; leaving our X-Men foe-less and Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch debt-less and free. Which brings us to…

Avengers #16: The new team! Avengers joins the reading list at this point because it is here that Iron Man, Giant-Man, and The Wasp decide to take leaves of absence from the Avengers and begin looking for replacements. And who do they select, but our very own Maximoff twins! (And Hawkeye…) This makes the team Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. And, since at this point, X-Men was only being published every other month and Avengers was being published every month, it’s on to Avengers #17…

In which our new team goes looking for the Hulk and finds Mole Man instead, we learn that Hawkeye is a dickhead, and that Wanda doesn’t need to fight, just stand around and look pretty for the guys! EWW!! Seriously guys, I hate ‘60′s Hawkeye!

In issue #18, Cap falls for a phony transmission supposedly sent from an underground resistance movement in Vietnam asking for help. (It’s really the Commissar setting a trap). The team takes off *Asia immediately, because it’s 1965 and Communism = BAD guys! Once there, we follow the  pattern from X-Men #10, so Wanda is captured right away and used as bait for the guys. After each of them tries, and fails, to beat the Commissar, Wanda finally gets to fight and even saves the day! But wait!! Not before Cap explains to her EXACTLY what to do…*grr* OMG, guys, I can’t even handle this shit anymore. It hurts my brain to read Jean and Wanda portrayed as damsels in distress when once we get to more modern books, these two are going to be major bad-asses. Like, WAY more powerful than any of these guys that always have to save them. It’s gross to read. I know some of you lovelies may tell me to get over it and get off my soap-box. After all, this was just the way things were in the ‘60′s. But I won’t. Just cause it “just was” that way doesn’t mean it isn’t SUPER hard to read as a modern reader who expects strong, independent female heroes. Just sayin’…

I know I said I also read The X-Men #12, but that’s the first half of a two part-er that introduces the X-Men’s massive (*wink, wink*) new baddie, so I’ll wait to talk about it until I’ve finished reading the whole arc.

So, until next time, my loves…keep searching!

(And a quick note: You can follow along with every post by following these tags: #thexmenproject and #searchingforgenosha)

Original Tumblr Post: here