The Island That Walks Like A Man!

 

It was hard to imagine in 1975 that Krakoa--the evil mutant island mass created by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum which inadvertently paved the way for the creation of the new X-Men--would have such staying power, especially when taking into account the circumstances of (what we thought was) its final fate. Yet in one form or another, Krakoa continues to endure to this day, as Marvel's writers find means of providing it with new life and direction; for our purpose, however, we'll spotlight Krakoa's existence in the twentieth century, when his future was still uncertain, if even considered.

Krakoa's sheer size, of course, enabled it to overwhelm the original X-Men, as they investigated readings of a new mutant detected by their Cerebro unit:

But the horror of their situation wouldn't be realized until the lone person to "escape" the fate of his friends, Cyclops, returned with an all-new team of X-Men formed by Charles Xavier and discovered that he and Xavier were little more than pawns, following the commands of a community intelligence that took its shape from the very ground they stood on.

All of that directed power, and no one thinks to target this thing's "eyes." Then again, does an intelligent, mobile island need vision in the conventional sense?

Finally, following a plan devised by Xavier, the X-Men shift tactics, pooling the talents of team members both current and new to remove the threat of Krakoa from the world, in the fullest sense of the word.

Fifteen years later, we would discover that the Stranger had at some point intercepted and secured Krakoa for study on his laboratory world where other beings whose paths crossed with Earth at one time or another had also been sequestered. In the meantime, Krakoa would find new life in Marvel's imaginary stories excuse me, parallel-world book, What If--in not one, not two, but three tales, where you can be sure that the X-Men, in one way or another, pay the price for their encounter with the Island That Walks Like A Man.

Rogue Storm!

 

We might as well dive in here and start with a bullet list of why the X-Men suddenly find themselves in what may be a no-win situation:

• Arcade--the colorful mercenary who fulfills his contracts by trapping the soon-to-be-victim in his larger-than-life complex named Murderworld, where death is one's only escape--has made the mistake of insulting the armored menace known as Dr. Doom and now finds himself a prisoner and possibly marked for death!
• Miss Locke, Arcade's henchwoman, manages to conscript the X-Men by presenting them with an offer they can't refuse: rescue Arcade from Doom, or their loved ones whom she's taken hostage will be killed!
• One of the X-Men, Wolverine, is adamant about not giving in to Locke's demand--proposing that the X-Men instead leave Arcade to Doom and attack Locke's complex in force, retrieve their people, and destroy Murderworld!
• The X-Men's field leader, Storm, counters with a plan that splits the team into groups--one to deal with Locke and retrieve the hostages, while the other heads to Doom's castle in New York's Adirondack mountains to free Arcade.

Having already gone over the merits of the positions of both Storm and Wolverine in a separate post, it's time to set things in motion and see where the chips fall in regard to whether the two teams of X-Men will be successful in their dual tasks. But after getting a look at two of the issue covers, frankly the odds don't look good for anyone but our villains!

 

Something Fatal This Way Comes

 

Can YOU

Name This Marvel Villain??

(With a tip of the hat to Scott Edelman for providing the drawing!) 

Don't Miss These Fabulous First Issues!

 

It's naturally very eye-catching when an iconic comics cover is paid homage by other artists or is otherwise recreated for a specific purpose. To date, the PPC has thrown the spotlight on Avengers #4, where Captain America makes his first post-war appearance and joins the team (while retroactively becoming an "original" Avenger in the process); 1962's Incredible Hulk #1, with its recreations restricted to the series itself; Fantastic Four #249, featuring a memorable pose which inspired similar drama elsewhere; June, 1938's Action Comics #1, which surely received more play than the few covers we featured; and of course Fantastic Four #1, which may hold the record for the sheer number of homage covers created for a single issue (and a diverse lot it is).

So it may come as a surprise to find 1963's X-Men #1 added to the list--a cover by artist Jack Kirby which, like the original lineup itself, I didn't find to be especially compelling.

Taking into account that Kirby's work here (like that found on just about any comics cover) is designed to grab the interest of the buyer, it could still reasonably be judged as if it were an accurate representation of what happens in the story, a balance which ideally should be struck if at all possible. For the most part, the cover's simple premise of the X-Men going up against Magneto provides just that--but how well do the abilities of these new heroes against this villain draw us into the story? Well, the guy with the eye-beam is certainly impressive, and it looks like we've got a barefoot acrobat--plus there's a snowman whose aim appears to be way off. There's also a female who appears to be little more than eye candy--though for Stan Lee's Son Of Origins of Marvel Comics from 1975, as well as the Marvel Milestone edition from 1993, the decision has been made to give her an action pose rather than have her appear to be simply hanging back without joining the battle.

As for the winged character, he has little choice but to pick up a makeshift weapon to use, since his power of flight offers no recourse against Magneto--but it's unclear how he expects to make any headway against this villain with a pole when his partner's force beam isn't doing the trick. In the story, however, he's not even doing that--so what can he do to add to the team? Other than force his teammates to come to his rescue, not much.

So what approach can other artists take to bring new life to this sort of cover? In the series itself, Dave Cockrum takes a stab at giving the new X-Men their shot:

And in another offering, John Byrne returns to the original lineup, though obviously we're catching the members at different points in their lives.

It looks like our acrobat is fated to swing to the attack and little else, no matter who's rendering him. Both covers, however, avoid Kirby's choice of having the villain's back turned to us and instead show us the full menace of what this team is up against, a noticeable improvement. (And in the process, giving Iceman a better target!)

If it's possible to make this issue's cover far more dynamic, however, Alex Ross shows us the way:

Our villain may be taking up more cover space, but there's visibly less of Magneto than before, though Ross follows Kirby's presentation which makes the X-Men, after all, this first issue's focus. I'd be curious as to who the colorist is on this work (assuming it isn't Ross), since the choices of colors here add so much to what we see. In addition, Ross's approach touches on the notion that the effect of Iceman's power need not be limited to tossing snowballs (or anything else, for that matter)--instead, he could choose to substantially reduce the temperature inside Magneto's field to the point of weakening or even incapacitating him.

In other efforts, when Hasbro's action figures of the X-Men arrived in 2014, a new cover of this issue wasn't far behind:

Artist Gerald Parel gives us another idea of how Kirby's original concept could be further enhanced, in this variant cover for the Facsimile issue--while DeviantArt artist Mikeyzou adds a contemporary polish.

And to inject a bit of artistic "wizardry," artist Blair Campbell shows us Hogwarts' version of our heroes:

Finally, Byrne presents this battle in a way that could have given Marvel its first wraparound cover, had the masthead and captions been included. (And believe me, I gave it a try--anyone else care to take a crack at it?)

The Return Of... Captain America!?

By the fall of 1964, Captain America was well on his way to becoming a legend with a new generation of comics readers, just as he had been twenty years earlier during the Golden Age of comics--resurfacing in March of that year in the pages of The Avengers, and going on to "test the waters" in Tales Of Suspense as a co-feature of that title with Iron Man. As you might imagine, his rollout in that mag was designed to garner the most attention possible for what would subsequently become Cap's first series of stories for Marvel Comics:

And as was the case a little over a year earlier in Amazing Spider-Man, the master of disguise known as the Chameleon would be the villain to usher in Cap's first appearance in a new title. I must admit to always finding it curious how an under-the-radar character like the Chameleon nevertheless received such high-profile exposure from writers, and whose duplicity could end up causing so much trouble; but that said, he can, after all, convincingly become just about anybody, even though he's far more old-school than a character like Mystique who doesn't have to rely on prosthetics and wardrobe changes.

In this case, all he needs to do is to lay his hands on a Captain America costume (presumably right down to the uniform's chain-mail) to pull one over on Cap's fellow Avenger, Iron Man, and send him after the real Cap under the belief that he would be instead facing the Chameleon who's up to no good--and voilà, you have hero vs. hero.

And yet, a reprint of a story from late 1963 suggests that Cap's first appearance in the '60s predated even the Avengers tale:

...if you don't read between the lines, that is.

You Will Become One With The Brood

Even your humble host here at the PPC isn't audacious enough to catalog all of the instances where the crippled founder of the X-Men, Charles Xavier, has regained the use of his legs only to eventually find himself once more confined to his wheelchair... then at some point, back on his feet again... then having to dust off the wheelchair again... etc., etc.  To say nothing of actually dying, only to somehow return hale and hearty, which would then start a cycle of its own. (I frankly have no idea of Xavier's current status in comics--he may have bitten the dust around the same time as his film counterpart kicked the bucket, which probably made sense for as long as the movie franchise was sustained.)

As far as his legs being "healed," that particular ball began rolling fairly early in the book, thanks to Xavier indulging his own brand of inventive genius when the situation called for it (courtesy of writer Roy Thomas).

I always felt that having Xavier confined to a wheelchair provided him with a distinctive profile that made him stand out among the pack and drew more attention to his mental abilities (i.e., I don't have to fight you on your terms, Mr. Villain). It's possible that Stan Lee may have felt the same, given that, just two issues later, Thomas sees to it that Xavier is forced to shelve his leg braces indefinitely until he could work the bugs out.

Since Xavier could have fallen anywhere in the building, at any time, I shudder to think just how many sets of metal tentacles he ended up installing throughout his school, and right under the noses of the X-Men.

Yet what appears to be the first instance where Prof. Xavier was able to ditch the wheelchair for good (at least that was the idea) occurred following the X-Men's life-or-death conflict with the alien hunter race known as the Brood, and the team had raced back to Earth fearing that their mentor had also been targeted as they had been: by being forced to carry inside them a Brood egg, which, when hatched, would absorb both the host body as well as its genetic potential and abilities. The X-Men escaped that gruesome fate--but would Charles Xavier?

When Charles Met Magnus

There are few stories which document the life of Charles Xavier in his younger days when he still had the use of his legs, but one of them stands out in terms of helping to define one of the most important relationships of his life--the first meeting between himself and the man the world would come to know as Magneto. It's a story which comes to print after writer Chris Claremont had begun to establish Magneto with more depth as a survivor of Auschwitz, an experience which had a profound impact on the direction his life would take. Now that the "prequel" films have given their own account of that initial meeting between these two men as well as their early relationship to some degree, this story from 1982 may now seem as if it's lost some of its luster--but at the time, it was one more piece of the puzzle that was slowly being assembled for a revamped character whose personal history had been thus far ignored.

One thing both versions of their story have in common:
trouble tends to find them more often than not.

The cover of the issue obviously takes some liberties with Magneto, since he has no fearsome costume nor helmet to his name as of yet. Nor is he even "Magneto," having adopted the name Magnus in order to hide his identity from the Nazis after leaving Auschwitz. The war of course has been over for twenty years by the time his path crosses with Xavier in Israel in the spring of 1962, where he's taken a position as a volunteer at a hospital which administers mental care for survivors of the Holocaust. Magnus is an assistant to Dr. Shomron, a psychiatrist who has brought in his friend Xavier for consultation on a case involving a catatonic young woman--Gabrielle Haller, who some of you may recall from Magneto's trial in Paris--and already, Xavier is finding during their otherwise pleasant introduction that there's more to this man than meets the eye.

I, Magneto!

It wasn't long after artist Dave Cockrum returned for a second run on Uncanny X-Men that the title's 150th issue hit the racks--and forty pages of Claremont/Cockrum, combined with a battle royale between the X-Men and their deadliest foe, translated to an early Christmas for X-Men readers in 1981.

At this point in time, Magneto hasn't been seen nor heard from since he faced the X-Men in the heart of a volcano in the Antarctic. The X-Men's mentor, Charles Xavier, fears that Magneto is active and planning; but it's the X-Men, along with the leaders of the world's governments, who learn the extent of those plans, when Magneto makes his move--and his demands.

Show of hands: Does anyone think Magneto's audience is just going to fold?

The X-Ceptional Artistry of Dave Cockrum

Taking a look at X-Men #97 couldn't help but remind me of artist Dave Cockrum's initial stay on the title--an assignment which, in tandem with writers Len Wein and Chris Claremont, helped to reignite the team and define the "new X-Men" not only for those readers who rediscovered the book after its overlong hiatus, but also for new readers who responded to a diverse, secluded group of heroes and their struggle to exemplify and defend one man's dream of coexistence.

As I reacquainted myself with Cockrum's work on that issue, I found myself sifting through my memories of his contribution as a whole during those formative two years--and it seemed appropriate as a follow-up post to gather a few samples that, for me, highlighted his outstanding work on X-Men during that time that contributed so definitively to the imprint he left on Marvel Comics.

Mr. Cockrum passed away eleven years ago to the month, at the young age of 63. His legacy includes not only the respect and admiration of his peers, but a body of work that more than speaks for itself.

Mr. Cockrum's portrait by Michael Netzer

My Brother, My Enemy!

OR: "Airport '76!"


By February of 1976, it was becoming clear that X-Men was the book to read, with new Marvel artist Dave Cockrum quickly gaining favorable word-of-mouth at achieving the impossible: helping to revive the dormant X-Men series and breathing new life into the team line-up (or, boiled down: making the X-Men sellable). There are a number of Cockrum-pencilled issues that I could wow you with to back up that statement, but this one always comes to mind for me:

A well-written story by Chris Claremont, to be sure--but to my mind it demonstrates so well Cockrum's feel for these relatively new characters as well as his ability to take a plot and make it explode into life visually, while dealing in a diverse group of characters like the X-Men in a way that helps to build our growing interest in them issue by issue. And as if Cockrum didn't have enough to do handling the X-Men, he also begins in this issue to deal in the Shi'ar, with a telepathic "dream" represented in a stunning two-page spread that's as much of an eye-opener to the reader as it is to Charles Xavier.

After a nightmare that awakens you screaming, I'm not sure the way to calm yourself afterward is to pour yourself a beverage that's loaded with caffeine, but what do I know. Yet the events to come aren't likely to bring Xavier any solace; in fact, even now, two former X-Men currently residing in the Diablo range in California will find themselves drawn into the conflict that has shaken him to his core.

The revisions of the X-Men continue, as Lorna Dane is now introduced as Polaris and upgraded with a dazzling new effect as well as a new costume. (Her magnetic powers had already been restored and enhanced during a link-up with Storm, designed to sever the Earth's magnetic force and nullify gravity in order to send the mutant island Krakoa hurtling into space.)  As for the identity of the attacker who obviously has plans for both Lorna and Alex Summers, the man known as Havok, that will remain a mystery for awhile, though his facade will be impossibly familiar to the X-Men. Regardless, it's clear that he's targeting Xavier, for reasons unknown--and it seems likely that both Polaris and Havok might well turn out to be his assassins.

This Ancient Evil!

By the time writer Chris Claremont had introduced the dreaded N'Garai in the pages of X-Men, we'd already become familiar with these "elder gods" in a previous story in Giant-Size Dracula, which had the building blocks of that race of demons but instead referred to them as the Triad--where one of their number, Y'Garon, separated from his "brothers," sought to bring them into our world. In these early stages of the concept, Claremont appeared to be undecided as to not only their name, but how these gods would cross over, initially making use of a "Sa'arpool" that required a sacrifice of human blood in order to fully open the gateway between worlds. The problem with that approach, however, is that it would be established there were only three such pools in existence; ergo, if you keep destroying them in your stories, then very soon your elder gods' menacing days will be over.

One Sa'arpool was destroyed in the Dracula story; another, opened by Kulan Gath, was sealed in a 1979 tale in Marvel Team-Up that featured Spider-Man, Red Sonja, and, this time by name, the N'Garai. But it was four years earlier when Claremont would "introduce" and formalize the existence of the N'Garai, when one of their number comes very close to wiping out the X-Men.

It's a great time for X-Men readers in 1975, as the new X-Men team is just starting to catch fire and the Claremont/Dave Cockrum team has things well in hand. Upcoming developments would include the return of the Sentinels, the introduction of the Shi'ar, and of course the first appearance of Phoenix, while Claremont was just starting to explore the X-Men individually and we began to see them more as characters in their own right instead of costumed replacements. In this issue alone, we see the first appearance of Moira MacTaggert... the roots of Storm's claustrophobia are alluded to... and Wolverine's own mysterious past begins to surface as he cuts loose (and then some) for the first time in front of his teammates as well as Xavier.

At this moment in time, the team--and its leader, Scott Summers, in particular--is reeling from the death of one of their own, the man known as Thunderbird, killed while on a mission to stop nuclear armageddon. And as Scott continues to beat himself up over it and finally erupts in a mixture of rage and anguish, he inadvertently provides the means for the N'Garai to walk the Earth once more.