Hello my darlings! It’s time for some more mutant madness. After the excitement of FCBD, and pulling myself away from my new books and my new obsession with Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men, I’ve read through six more issues getting us about a quarter of the way through 1968. But things are going to be a little different now.

Recently I’ve realized that part of the reason I’ve been finding it so hard to keep consistent with these posts and my reading is that I really just hate the Silver Age. I understand why others love it but to me it is just so boring and so frustrating. So, I’m going to do my best to power through the rest of the Silver age as quickly as possible so we can get to one of my favorite X-Men periods: Claremont!!! So, these posts may be a little less detailed as far as storylines go, and much more about my thoughts and impressions along with quick recaps. (At least, I’m going to try to do that. But lets be honest, brevity is NOT my forte.)

So with that, let’s check in on our Maximoff twins over at Avengers Mansion in issues #48-50. Er, at Garrett Castle. As you may remember, when we last left our mutants they had been captured by Magneto (!!!) who returned to Earth and wants to re-form the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Wanda and Pietro are refusing to join him. While all this is happening, Dane Whitman has woken up and broken out of the room Mags locked him in. He has apparently been improving the Black Knight (BK) armor and weapons and he plans to take up the mantle as a super-hero to make up for his uncle’s wrong doing. So, he dons the armor and takes off to get the Avengers to come rescue Wanda and Pietro. But of course all superheroes are idiots, and especially Hawkeye now that Cap is gone, so they attack BK before he can tell them why he’s there and they all fight. Eventually they stop fighting after Goliath is forced to grow to his full 25 ft. height (which will be important later) and BK tells them where the twins are, but refuses to help  them since they attacked him. They get to the castle, but Mags and the Maximoffs are gone.

As the Avengers (At this point it’s just Hawkeye, Wasp, and Goliath. Cap has quit and Hercules has gone to Olympus to try and make up with Zeus. He has his own plot thread going on through all of this that I’ll talk about at the end) head back to HQ to regroup, Mags takes the twins to his secret base to try and persuade them to join him. He’s telling them that he’s changed his ways. He no longer wants to use violence, and just wants to protect mutants. He says he’s going to be addressing the UN and brings Wanda and Pietro with him. Basically, he’s insisting mutants be given their own sovereign nation with a seat on the UN Security Council or there will never be peace between mutants and humans. He’s set it up so the council HAS to say no (because it’s an insane idea) but will look like the bad guys doing it. He’s trying to play on Pietro’s bitterness towards humans. When the council says no, Mags tries to attack them but is thwarted by the just-arriving Avengers (They saw his address on TV and rushed over). During the fight, some guards aim their guns at Magneto. He uses his powers to make them fire at the mutants and then directs one of the bullets to hit Wanda’s temple, effectively sending Quicksilver into a rage strong enough to make him side with Mags and attack the Avengers. He then leaves with his unconscious sister and Magneto! This is how Wanda & Pietro’s stories tie up for now, and we spend the rest of this issue and the next one on Herc’s storyline. So lets jump in:

While all of this has been going on, Hercules has returned to Olympus to try and get his father to lift his exile. When he arrives, all the gods are gone and most of Olympus is in ruin. Hercules is attacked by a Titan named Typhon who Zeus had banished long ago. Typhon has destroyed the Temple of Promethean Flame which banished all the gods to the Land of Shadows. He and Hercules fight, and then Typhon calls forth a monster to kill Herc. Obviously, this doesn’t work, so Typhon instead banishes Herc to the same realm as the gods. Once there, Hercules finds Zeus and the others and explains what happened and who banished them. Since Herc is half mortal, Zeus is able to send him back to Earth. Meanwhile, Typhon has also gone to Earth to conquer it. He runs into the Avengers who are out looking for Herc and they fight. It’s looking bad for the Avengers until Hercules shows up and they manage to defeat Typhon. Hercules says he needs to take Typhon to Olympus to be dealt with by Zeus. Once he’s there, it becomes clear to him and to the Avengers that he will be staying in Olympus for now, and so the Avengers are down yet another member. So, our mighty team is now just Hawkeye, Wasp, and Ant-Man. I say Ant-Man because Hank Pym can no longer change into Goliath thanks to him growing to his 25 ft. height a few issues ago.

Overall, these were good stories. It’s interesting to note that Hawkeye’s temper seems to be back now that Cap has left. He’s sulking about Cap quitting and he and Hank are fighting constantly. Also, Hawkeye mentions that Natasha has taken off “on vacation” without telling him, so it seems his temper has also ruined that relationship. Janet’s costume changes twice during this arc. She wears a bright pink costume that essentially makes her look like a Playboy Bunny with wings for a second, but then it changes again to a blue and yellow outfit that’s surprisingly adorable. And, more important to our mutants, I liked this story-line about Magneto basically manipulating Quicksilver into joining him again. It was paced well, and given the seeds of bitterness we’ve seen in Pietro recently, it made sense character-wise. We’ll see how this plays out Avenger’s wise soon. But for now, it seems our twins may be headed back over to the X-men book for a bit. And speaking of X-Men books:

Issue 40 is a silly stand-alone story about Frankenstein’s monster. Basically, some explorers found him in ice in the arctic and brought him back to New York and are thawing him out. Apparently Xavier knows the monster is real and has always thought Dr. Frankenstien must be a mutant. He also apparently gets premonions now and can project his thoughts onto the wall like a movie projector. (This is why I hate the Silver Age.)

Anyway, they go to the museum to try and stop them from waking up the monster, but they’re too late. They fight the monster, but the Prof is being so dumb. He keeps holding Iceman back and won’t tell any of them why or what the plan is. The monster runs way and tries to go south on a ship, but again the X-Men stop him. They eventually corner him on the ship and Iceman uses his powers to try and encase him in ice again. Instead, the monster blows up because he’s not actually a monster, but an android sent to Earth all those years ago by an alien race from a tropical planet to test how humans would respond. The android went nuts and the aliens chased it to the arctic, where it jumped into the water and froze. Seriously. This is the stupidest story ever. But wait…it gets worse. After saving the day, Xavier MAKES THE SHIP’S CREW FORGET EVERYTHING. This is because according to Xavier, the X-Men don’t search for personal glory or something. I mean…come on!! There is absolutely no reason for this. In fact, it works against their whole mission. They want to protect the world and show that mutants aren’t all bad. But then every time they save the day, X makes all the witnesses forget. WTF? How is the world ever going to know the X-Men are good guys if they never take credit for the victories? Guys, I’m sooooo done with this. This is moronic. Can we just move onto the next moronic story-line? K, thanks!

Issues 41 & 42 aren’t as bad as the previous story, but they’re close. In these issues, NYC is attacked by Grotesk, the Sub-Human. He’s the last remaining member of an ancient race that lived under the earth. Atomic weapons testing caused all of his race to die out from radiation sickness and left him deformed. He’s here to get vengeance by stealing a machine that apparently causes man-made earthquakes and turning in all the way up to make the Earth crumble and killing everyone on it. So, Bobby and Hank learn all this when they encounter him in the subway while on dates with Vera and Zelda. They rush back to the mansion to tell the rest of the gang and find the other’s training with a VERY grouchy Xavier. He’s testing Scott, Warren, and Jean and is being a huge dick. They call him on it, but he just gets more angry and refuses to listen to Bobby and Hank when they arrive. He leaves for his office and takes Jean with him. He’s told her some secret the others don’t know and she’s helping him with secret experiments. After this useless cutaway so that the reader can learn about these secrets, he and Jean go right back out to tell the boys to go stop the Sub-Human. They go,  they find his hide-out, and Angel and Iceman go back to get Jean to help while Cyke and Beast continue on and fight Grotesk.

Jean refuses to come with the boys and also refuses to let them see Xavier who is not there. Angel gets rightfully pissed off and starts yelling at Jean. Xavier shows up and says that NONE of them can go help Cyke and Beast. He orders them to stay but won’t tell them why. Cyke and Beast get totally beat up by Sub-Human and then head back to the school as well. Jean again refuses to let anyone see Xavier or leave the room, so she and Scott get into a fight. Suddenly she says that NOW the Prof wants them to meet up with him. Apparently he’s decided to stop Grotesk alone but he fails and Grotesk turns on the machine. The X-Men show up and try to help. They’re losing big time until Marvel Girl and Xavier slow down the machine. Grotesk tries to make it go faster again and it blows up, killing him! Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your feelings of the man) Xavier is also caught up in the blast. The X-Men rush  to his side to save him, but he tells them that he was dying anyway from some total mystery illness that he couldn’t cure. He uses his dying breath to explain Grotesk’s motives (even though the kids already know  them because like every other villain over, Grotesk told them about it at length) and then he dies.

Guys. Seriously. This is why Professor Xavier is just a huge dick. He was dying for some time and only told Jean. First of all, that’s shitty. He should have told them all. And if he wasn’t going to, he shouldn’t have told Jean and made her keep that secret. Also, this feels so rushed. This storyline of him keeping secrets and Jean working on experiments with him just started in this arc. And secondly, him dying is not a legit reason for him trying to stop Grotesk alone. He has NO good reason for this. If he and the X-Men had attacked together from the start, and he had clued them into what Grotesk was doing, they probably could have stopped him before he even turned the stupid machine on. And X probably wouldn’t have been caught up in the explosion. It’s so frustrating and so stupid. It’s also a little on the creepy side that he only tells Jean, the only female on the team, and has her in his office working on experiments with him. Before this reveal, it would be pretty easy to assume they were having some sort of affair, which is totally gross. Scott even thinks to himself that the reason they’re spending so much time together alone is because the Professor is in love with Jean. Guys, Xavier is at LEAST in his 40’s at this point. And Jean is like, 20. And his student. Eww. I seriously hate this arc. And to be totally honest, I’m kinda psyched that X is dead for now (Come on, it’s X-Men. You already know he’s going to come back at some point.)

But, moving on. In the back of these three issues they have continued the “Secret Origin” storyline about how Xavier met Scott. Last we saw, Scott was running away from some cops and found a cabin with a mutant inside. This is Jack Winters or “Jack O’Diamonds”. Jack has hands made of pure diamond and also can influence other mutants with his mind. (minor telepathy basically) He essentially forces Scott to help him break into the nuclear power plant he used to work at. There was an accident there that gave him his powers and he thinks that if her repeats it, he can make himself diamond all over and thus be invincible. Basically what happens is they break it, Scott refuses to kill anyone so Jack leaves him behind and starts up the machine he’s looking for. The experiment works and he’s now a “Living Diamond”. Xavier shows up and he and Scott manage to stop the Living Diamond, but Jack dies in the process. X recruits Scott to his school as his first student and tells him about the dream and the X-Men. There are more continuity issues with Xavier’s powers (he seems to be telekinetic also since he’s opening locks  and such with his “mental powers”).

So my darlings, that’s all for now. As I’m sure was evident, I didn’t really enjoy these arcs (at least the X-Men ones) that much. Here’s hoping it gets better now that Xavier is dead. Also, I promise I won’t ALWAYS be this negative. Just today since X-Men is being dumb. I just keep telling myself that Silver Age X-Men ends in 25 issues and I can suffer through until then. And with that my loves, I’ll end this not-at-all-shorter-like-I-said-it-would-be post. Until we meet again, keep searching….