#so I guess here have my ramblings about my first experience with the 60's comics

[twilightguardian]

X-Men Comic Journey/Fake Geek Reads Comics

Issues 1-10 (November 10th 1963-March 10th, 1965)

I don’t know why I’m doing this.

Well, I do. I’m a fake geek girl and I need to not be fake shit anymore. But I don’t know why I started now when for years I’ve been thinking of getting into comics and just never have. But when I get into something, I go hard. I doubt that it’s really novel or unheard of to have read the old issues or whatever. I suppose I wanted to document my journey as I go along. Voice my thoughts.

Also hey, it took them a whole year to even get 8 issues out. Now I don’t feel quite as bad for my own comic’s lack of progress!

I’ve been a fan of the X-Men since I was little, having a kid’s channel continuously on or flipping between the channels and would occasionally catch the 90′s X-Men cartoon. Rogue (hated Gambit, she was too good for him in my mind) was my favourite character, but I also liked Cyclops. I also have fond memories of X-Men Evolution and the live action movies. But I only ever consumed visual media of the series, and for a long time knew that the comics ran much longer. I heard tales of the kinds of storylines going on in them, how crazy they got and how you pretty much have to follow the series to understand them. Why not start at the beginning?

I had already watched Atop the Fourth Wall’s episode of the first 1963 issue, but I read it anyways and it’s... interesting.

From the first few pages I can already tell there’s going to be some growing pains for me; things I need to get used to. I grew up primarily reading manga, you see. It’s pretty minimalist most of the time with the dialogue barring certain exposition or explanations, and a lot of the time the art is flowing. The words keep to itself, for the most part, allowing the pictures to tell the story. Of course, that’s modern manga to 50-year-old American comic books. Still, this is the kind of cultural shift I have to deal with.

We meet the main cast of characters. Professor X, Iceman, Beast, THE Angel, and Cyclops, also known as Charles Xavier, Bobby Drake, Hank McCoy, Warren Worthington the Third (I’m sorry for your name dude), and... Slim? Summers. Wow, okay. So these characters aren’t quite who I know them as, for sure. Especially poor Hank.

Hank looks relatively normal, which is something I’m not used to since I’m more naturalized to his more blue, fuzzy appearance. Really, the only thing different about him is his large Hobbit feet and thick, stout build. His intellect is missing and while being rather polite overall, still gives off a sense of brutishness likely reminiscent of a gorilla.

Scott isn’t really a thing. Instead, he’s referred to as Slim, and he jokes around with the other three.

Bobby is supposed to be a younger teenager, while it’s presumed that the others are older. He has no interest in gazing at the new recruit, Jean Gray. Apparently these days Bobby is gay in the comics, though I doubt that’s the actual explanation in the first issue and not just... showing the general teenage immaturity of this otherwise 30-year-old looking cartoon doodle. His immaturity is further elaborated on both in dialogue several times and his general demeanor. He’s also depicted as just some human-shaped mass of loose snow.

None of them really have any defined personality to speak of. They’re all rough-housy boys who (aside from the child) all topple over each other for the new (female) recruit to pay them notice.

Jean herself is what I’d expect for a female character written in the day. Generic pretty and someone whom all the menfolk get stupid about and into fashion. Also, her powers are made so that she doesn’t have to do physical activity because that’s unladylike.

This is also the first appearance of Magneto and whoo-boy. He’s nothing but your typical moustache-twirling villain. Ouch. He doesn’t so much hate humans because they’re dicks, but more he’s the dick who thinks that evolution is a step-laddar and humanity is the old thing that needs to make way for the new hotness known as “superior”. Because that’s not pretentious or anything. 

It’s kind of eye-rolling if you even have any passing actual knowledge of evolution. Personally, I wouldn’t treat humans as a separate species, but I mention this because I know this is a running theme to this day. Creatures are classified as separate species when they are no longer to produce viable offspring with each other. The genetic differences become so great, the genes can no longer intermingle. It’s like saying your child has autism, or they were born with red hair while yours and your husbands’ hair is blonde. They’re suddenly a different species of human being!

Magneto is just fucking racist and so far in the comic there’s literally no reason for it other than he’s an evil dick. Especially not when, as we see, there’s a rather Fantastic Four-ish feel to the X-Men. They’re ‘public figures’ as a superhero group. They’re also rather well liked. The whole mutant persecution thing actually doesn’t even show hints of showing up until at least issue 5.

Whenever I talk about this, I get a lot of apologetics, which frustrates the hell out of me. ‘Oh, it’s the 60′s, what do you expect?’

I expect a modern-day grasp of how writing and storytelling works. I don’t care that silly things like the gang having a Journey to the Center of the Earth episodic moment. I don’t care that they have prat falls and their actual fight scenes are lacklustre and boring. I’m talking about consistency and other quite basic writing things that just aren’t there. Writing didn’t get perfected in the 21st century or even 20 years later. I am reading a comic from the 60′s. I’m expecting a bit of silliness. I expect also at least some decent storytelling and not... making shit up on the fly.