The X-Men must do battle with a legion of robots bent on the destruction of mutantkind! It's not a great day.
Doctor of Story: Stan Lee
Dean of Layout: Jack Kirby
Master of Art: Jay Gavin
Bachelor of Inking: V. Colletta
Tired of Lettering: Artie Simek
The X-Kids are all done rehabbing in the aftermath of their encounter with the Juggernaut, so the Professor offers them all a vacation, feeling somehow certain that there will be nothing in the near future that requires the X-Men's superheroic attention. We're treated to one of those timeless X-Men leisure sequences where the mutants all gear up for a weekend on the town, walking us through their various techniques for hiding their mutancy - as well as letting us in on the status of Scott's and Warren's rivalry for Jean.
That's actually a nice wrinkle that - spoilers! - doesn't really amount to much over the years besides harmless yearning. Shame. Maybe someday a writer will come along and construct a sturdy love triangle between, Scott, Jean and a third party to be named later.
Unfortunately, at that very moment (isn't it always??) Dr. Bolivar Trask - perhaps the world's most militant anthropologist - is hosting a press conference warning of the threat of mutants. His remarks make the front page, catching Xavier's attention. The Prof responds with the most daring action you can imagine - by organizing a televised debate on the subject.
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| This guy looks like he knows how to party. |
What follows is actually a fascinating scene. The Prof is shown stating his case on TV, urging moderation and trying to tamp down the hysteria, as viewers at home dismiss him as an out-of-touch intellectual who is calling them ignorant. Like, holy shit, was this written last year?
Trask, however, isn't having it. After briefly, offhandedly (perhaps baselessly?) implying the Professor, who is apparently a widely-regarded public figure in the scientific community, is a mutant himself (perish the thought!) and not even addressing his arguments, Trask unveils his new creation: the Sentinels!
Don't you just hate when that happens?
Okay, so, the Sentinels have been online for approximately half a second and immediately go rogue, kidnapping Trask so he can teach them to create more Sentinels. They take their programming to its extreme: they were created to protect humans, and can't really protect them until they are numerous enough to rule them, ipso facto, they want to control the world. Honestly, it's hard to argue with that logic, especially with a laser-beam chest pointed at you.
Beast, Iceman and Cyclops arrive to battle the one Sentinel left behind, and fare poorly until it mysteriously keels over. The Prof mentally scans it - being that it's a robot, he can only kinda-sorta read its thoughts (better than nothing I suppose.) He hears it mutter something that sounds like "Master Mold," but they are no closer to learning what felled it. However, once they rendezvous with Angel and Marvel Girl, they are at least able to track the other Sentinels to their hidden underground base, where we are left in a... to be continued! situation.
Further Thoughts:
Mmm, yeah. The Sentinels. Fifteen-foot-tall blue and red robots with laser fingers, programmed to protect humans and neutralize mutants, who can't walk a step in any direction without causing property damage. The most elegant solution to the mutant question, obviously.
Before I started this blog, I ran a straw poll on Twitter asking my followers what they felt was the defining characteristic of the X-Men franchise. "Metaphor for prejudice" won the poll handily, over conventional superhero adventures, shenanigans with aliens, and time-travel. And the Sentinels are a big part of that. That may seem a bit hard to believe since they're giant robots with lasers in their chests, but they're a literalization of exactly the kind of fear, paranoia and hate that is meant to underlie the entire X-Men experience, the kind of institutionalized oppression that is often in fashion. Sure, they're ostentatious, wildly impractical, and probably very expensive, but as a symbol they still resonate today - all that's left is for the President to declare "And we're gonna make the mutants pay for our Sentinel program!"
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