Beautiful Mutants 1975

X-Men #94 (August) The Doomsmith Scenario.

Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Bob McLeod.

What the hell am I going to do with all these fuckin' X-Men, Professor X asks himself now that there are thirteen of them hanging around the school, knocking things over and failing to flush the bog after they've been for a shit; and I'd put money on Wolverine being the worst offender on the last score. Anyway, Sunfire announces that he has no interest in sticking around - even though the X-Men are at last back in their own regular book - which is fine because it turns out that he's a massive dick. Marvel Girl, the Angel, Iceman, Havok, and Polaris also declare that they all liked it better in the old days when everything was better than it is now, and duly have their bags already packed so they too hit the road leaving just Cyclops to lead the new bunch, which is tidy. Cyclops puts them through their paces in the danger room, and just in time because Count Nefaria is up to his old tricks. This time the Count has captured a mountain full of missiles with the help of his Ani-men. The Ani-men are people with animal characteristics, but are probably marginally more convincing than the Porcupine and the gang Nefaria had helping him last time. Last time, according to Count Nefaria, was those many months ago even though it was actually 1966, not because time works differently in the Marvel universe or because Count Nefaria is a bad guy and therefore dishonest, but because X-Men is a comic book and the issues to which the Count refers were published in 1966.

Beautiful Mutants 1974

Captain America #172 (April) Believe It or Not: The Banshee.

Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema, Mike Friedrich.

On the trail of the villainous Secret Empire, Captain America and the Falcon encounter the Banshee at a Merle Haggard concert, little realising that the Banshee is also on the trail of the Secret Empire, so he is, to be sure, to be sure. Naturally they have a scrap, so they do, which is broken up when Professor X arrives with both of the X-Men. The Banshee escapes, so he does, and Professor X explains that the Secret Empire is currently waging war on mutantkind, so it is, hence the Banshee being as much on edge as a man whose Guinness has been drunk by the pub dog while he was outside checking on his potatoes. Also in this issue we learn that even Irish people enjoy American country music, so they do.

Beautiful Mutants 1973

 Avengers #111 (May) With Two Beside Them.

Steve Englehart, Don Heck, Mike Esposito.

Magneto is now so powerful that he can control people through the iron in their blood. This must be a power he either forgets during subsequent encounters, or else will feel embarrassed about using. Here he causes the X-Men and Avengers to fight, which would never happen otherwise. His plan is to detonate an atom bomb in hope of the resulting radiation creating more mutants for his proposed army, even though mutants are surely born rather than created, otherwise every caped fuckwit who ever had a balls-up in the science lab would be a mutant. Those Avengers who still have their free will save the day and Magneto is defeated by the Vision who points out that the Master of Magnetism can't count, supporting my hypothesis that he's a massive thickie. The X-Men recover to the realisation of the Angel still being missing and that they're now down to just three, not including Chuck.

Beautiful Mutants 1972

Amazing Adventures #12 (May) Iron Man: DOA.

Steve Englehart, Tom Sutton, Mike Ploog.

Professor X tries to contact the Beast, who duly responds with a heartfelt piss off, baldy - leave me alone, or words to that effect. Possibly his attitude is explained by Marvel Girl's comment that the Beast is the only one who has been allowed to leave by the Professor. They've been in hiding ever since X-Men #66. Regretting having turned himself into Chewbacca, Hank makes a latex face mask and fake hands and devises special strappy bondage underwear to correct his now Gorilla-like posture so he can disguise himself as himself, if you see what I mean. It's probably not worth worrying over whether or not this will work given how certain superheroes can fool even close family members as to their identity with just a pair of specs. Following this latest transformation, Hank gets angry more easily and so gets into a scrap with Iron Man and actually kills him - or so he believes, although this is an illusion created by Mastermind who wishes to recruit this new Beast to his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Beautiful Mutants 1971

Amazing Spider-Man #92 (January) When Iceman Attacks.

Stan Lee, Gil Kane, John Romita.

Bobby was the first to hop aboard the comeback special, here getting into the inevitable introductory pagga with Spider-Man before joining forces against a corrupt politician, or potential politician given that he hopefully lost the election after everyone read this issue - not that his behaviour would be much of an obstacle these days. If anything the racism and kidnapping would probably count as a qualification. Anyway, you can tell the comic biz was beginning to grow some balls regarding real world social issues, and this is a thoroughly satisfying issue of a comic I usually only read when there's a mutant involved because that's how I roll.

Beautiful Mutants 1970

X-Men #65 (February) Before I'd Be Slave.

Dennis O'Neil, Neal Adams, Tom Palmer.

It turns out that Professor X has been alive all this time and the guy we saw perish in If Either I or Someone Who Looks Just Like Me Should Die back in X-Men #42 was actually the Changeling atoning for his involvement with Factor Three by agreeing to take Chuck's place that he might devote all of his mighty brain to the doom that would be visited upon the Earth with the coming of the alien conquerors whom men call the Z'nox. I imagine this sort of thing happens about every four or five issues these days, but I'm sure it was a genuine shock back in 1970. The threat is specifically an alien race who have learned to steer their planet like some giant spherical spacecraft, and have come to Earth with conquest in mind, and so the lads go to investigate their beachhead at the south pole. It might be pointed out that Doctor Who already did this in 1966, but I suspect what I wrote back on page 33* still stands and you might just as well claim this is where George Lucas got the idea for Star Wars. Professor X knackers the Z'nox by combining all of the minds of Earth which, aside from foreshadowing Claremont's X-Men, might also be deemed an early use of the Force.

*: General denouncement of frothing fan-twats unable to conceive of the idea that certain tales might not have been inspired by an earlier episode of Doctor Who (a show which makes a point of borrowing from other sources), as I have encountered on a number of occasions, notably that Clifford Simak's novel All Flesh is Grass was somehow inspired by Terror of the Autons despite having been published five years earlier. Well, he must have been inspired by Quatermass, quoth the back-peddling fan-prick in question (because aliens in factories are involved), despite entire scenes in Terror being lifted directly from the novel by Simak, an American author who has expressly stated his dislike of television before we even get to the likelihood of obscure British telly turning up on ABC in the sixties. I assume this theory was informed by CULT BRITISH TELEVISION FROM WHEN I WAS LITTLE BEING THE PINNACLE OF ALL HUMAN CULTURE. This isn't what I've written on page 33 of Beautiful Mutants by the way, so I'm paraphrasing here.

Beautiful Mutants 1969

X-Men #57 (June) The Sentinels Live.

Roy Thomas, Neal Adams, Tom Palmer.

The Sentinels are up to their old tricks and kidnap Polaris even as we're still dealing with the Living Monolith. The sheer pace of the Neal Adams run is dizzying in comparison to what went before, and I expect the X-Men themselves will be glad of the rest once they get to issue #67.

The Female of the Species.

Linda Fite, Werner Roth, Sam Grainger.

Having already been seen joining the X-Men back in the first issue, Marvel Girl uses the obligatory origin pages to explain her powers, showing how she bakes a delicious apple pie for the boys or handles the housework using telekinesis; and this is written by a woman because, as Stan explains on the first page, it seemed appropriate to give one of the ladies a go seeing as how Marvel Girl is a girl and all, as the name implies. Germaine Greer's seminal feminist text The Female Eunuch was published a year later, which I'd hardly call a coincidence. Thankfully this was the last of these back-up features.