The X-Men go up against one PHAT* villain in their third adventure, and Marvel Girl learns the meaning of "telekinesis."
*Pretty Hefty and Terrifying
Written by: Stan Lee
Illustrated by: Jack Kirby
Inked by: Paul Reinman
Lettered by: Art Rosen
Originally Published January 1964
"Beware The Blob!" begins with the latest of the X-Men's many training sessions, and it looks like they're really starting to come into their own. Not just because they're improving in the use of their mutant powers, but because they're starting to display signs of having unique personalities and developing that all-important second dimension. Cyclops solemnly angsts about how his powers are an uncontrollable curse, Angel delights in sweeping Jean off her feet as a smooth-talking playboy, and best of all, the beatific Beast is starting to show signs of verbal alacrity to match his impressive physical prowess - that is to say, he's talking smart now.
Jean, for her part, still has the personality of "is female." She's a caring daughter-sister-girlfriend-mom all rolled into one for the team's convenience. All the boys privately slobber over her - and let's not sugarcoat it, that's probably accurate to what it would be like to be the only girl at a teenage mutant school in the 60's, constantly training and being put through physical paces and going on life-and-death missions and all that cool superhero stuff. But being that these teenage adventures are being depicted by men in their 40's, they sometimes read more like Mad Men-style institutional sexism and harassment than harmless teenage yearning. For what it's worth, a few generations later when Dennis Hopeless and Jamie McKelvie retold all of these stories as X-Men Season 1, they did a great job finding the right tone.
Most distressing of all in this issue is the single-most icky panel in X-Men history, and that includes comics written by Chuck Austen.
As I've said before... ew, ick, no, stop, gross.
I don't want to get too hung up on the sexism and perviness of these old comics (because then that's all we'd ever have time to talk about) but I don't want to not mention it either. It's shooting fish in a barrel to find flaws in old time comics, but it keeps our tools sharp, so much the better to go out and identify it in our modern era where the forms it takes are far more insidious.
The X-Men's Danger Room training sessions may become slightly repetitive over time, but there's a really good moment here where Jean is made to test her telekinetic abilities by looping this block of wood through various slots. I like the idea that the Danger Room isn't just a place where the X-Men avoid trapdoors and flamethrowers (thus training them against the deadliest game of Wipeout ever) but have to complete seemingly mundane tasks that exercise their powers in non-combat ways too. Who knows, there might be a moment later where Jean might need fine control of her telekinesis to defeat a bad guy and save her friends. Maybe. One would hope.
The X-Men are made aware of a new mutant somewhere in the vicinity and, without any further information, head out to look for him, eventually finding their man performing in the freak show at the circus: enter The Blob (and the beginning of the X-Men's turbulent relationship with circuses.)
The Blob is a great mutant. Don't laugh, I know he's not Magneto, but he's got his own thing going on. He's proven to be one of the more enduring characters over the years, usually as a henchman but often showing hidden depths. Sure, his power is that he's really fat, but that's the kind of physical mutation that you might expect more often than magnet-beam hands. The freak show scene goes to great lengths to demonstrate the ways the Blob's thick hide and unmovable feet could be advantageous. And the X-Men see that potential too, because they immediately offer him a chance to join up. He decides to come along because he wants to hit on Jean, which basically already qualifies him as an X-Man.
They bring Blob back to the X-Mansion to give him a trial and even offers him membership, only for him to basically reject them, feeling he's too good for those scrubs. The X-Men realize that this very disagreeable, very powerful guy now knows where they live, and that's a problem.
Anyone who read the solution to last month's Vanisher problem might see were they're going with this. For the second issue in a row. Oy...
While the X-Men conspire to erase the Blob's memory, he does something amazing: he rallies all the circus acts to go storm the X-Men's mansion and take it for themselves. Yeah! Down with the 1%! A real man of the people, this Blob. Honestly, Blob is starting to seem like the hero of the piece. Minus the attempted sexual assault. Okay, Blob is definitely no hero, but maybe he could be President of the United States someday.
Blob manages to get the upper-hand and get the X-Men tied up, including telekinetic Marvel Girl who recently dunked a surface-to-air missile in the ocean and whisked a flock of "chickadees" to the top of a theatre marquee with the power of her mind. Clueless how to proceed, Professor X mentally reminds her that she has these exact powers and talks her through removing her blindfold and getting a knife from the knife thrower act to cut her ropes and free the other X-Men, and... damnit.
As drawn, the Jack Kirby artwork might be intended to depict Jean realizing for herself that she could use her powers to escape. I guess for Smilin' Stan, 1963 was just too early for a woman to do superheroics without a man's guidance.
Woof.
In short order, the X-Men blast the Blob and his assembled circus folk with the memory-erasing ray Xavier has been building to fix the whole "Blob knows where we live" thing. With that, Blob (& co) is sent back to the circus, under the belief that he's just a freakishly fat guy and not a superpowered mutant, and while Xavier assures us that it's all temporary and no long-term harm has been done, but the trouble has passed.
And then that memory-wiping ray gun was hopefully immediately dismantled and the blueprints destroyed because it was too powerful a weapon to ever be used so capriciously. Just stop bringing potential enemies to your house already, Charles.
Further Notes:
As I've said, it's a relief to see the X-Men's individual personalities emerge. While each X-Person may only have one or one-and-a-half unique qualities that defines them, that doesn't make them "bad characters" by any stretch. I don't want to imply that you can't have enjoyable characters just because they don't have a great deal of emotional depth or psychological complexity - after all, most people you meet in real life don't, either. They just need to be engines for compelling action-adventure storytelling, with distinct flavours of hero that provide a unique, and consistent, perspective on the goings-on. For the most part, the X-boys fall into their own unique archetypes.
Like many "token female" characters, Jean has to carry the load of an entire gender and be everything to everyone. She won't be able to reach her full potential for many, many years, and even then it leads to her character's death, a heroic sacrifice that can be mourned by those who loved her.
Don't worry, she gets better (for a while.)
But let's stop well short of endorsing a Jean Grey-Prof. X ship. That's not a May-December Romance, it's a May-December of the previous year Romance. And the guy's her teacher. There are laws!
As I said, harping on flimsy characters and casual sexism in 60's comics is like shooting fish in a barrel, but I wouldn't feel credible if I glossed over that aspect entirely. The point of this blog is to appreciate the fun weirdness old comics but by no means to let it slide on the dicey features.
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