UNCANNY X-MEN #20: I, Lucifer!

Ugh, it's freaking Lucifer again. Let's get this over with.



Expertly Edited by: Stan Lee
Skillfully Scripted by: Roy Thomas
Perfectly Penciled by: Jay Gavin
Ideally Inked by: Dick Ayers
Laxly Lettered by: Artie Simek
Originally Published May 1966

Uncanny X-Men #20 begins with an interesting proposition: What if the Blob and Unus the Untouchable met? Would they almost definitely team up to rob banks while pretending to be the X-Men?

The X-Men are miffed at this bad publicity, and not just because of the breach of the informal understanding both gave to relinquish their lives of crime. It couldn't come at a worse time for the X-Men, because Cyclops has literally just quit, overwhelmed by his feelings for Jean Grey and doubting his abilities to be a leader or a lover with his uncontrollable optic blasts threatening everyone in sight.

Now that, my friends, is quality melodrama. But I do have to question to rationale for just walking out and thinking a note would suffice for an explanation. Inconsiderate, is what that is.

As it turns out, the meeting of evil pro wrestler Unus and evil carnival sideshow act The Blob was not a random chance encounter between their two related industries. In fact, the whole thing was a set-up by ... you gotta be kidding me... Lucifer. The villain so fearsome he literally does nothing in his previous appearance but duck a gunshot from Prof. X and get mentally paralyzed. Lucifer helpfully narrates for us how he set the team-up in motion from a distance, mentally manipulating the two. He explains that this is a test of his awesome power, but listen, I just don't buy that they needed any convincing. Get these two in a room together and it's like they've known each other their whole lives.

Cyclops, in his self-pitying stupor, happens upon the duo and before long, the other X-Men are by his side, leaving the total running time of Cyclops' retirement shorter than the average Buzzfeed video.

The fight between the X-Men and the Blob-Unus team is actually pretty good, complicated by a crowd of onlookers who are all riled up, don't like mutants, and don't know what to make of any of this.

Xavier learns that Lucifer is behind all this, but this time Lucifer strikes first, hitting him with a long-range mental whammy that paralyzes him (turnabout, fair play, etc) but enables him to mentally show Jean the story of his first encounter with Lucifer.

Many years ago, as a young seeker with an exoticism fetish, Xavier found himself in a small village in the Himalayas with a dark secret: its population were under the mental control of an unseen force (Lucifer) using technology from... another world!

That's right everybody, Lucifer is a frickin' alien!

And he has a boss!

Somehow, finding out that Lucifer is only a flunky makes him seem that much less threatening. Even less than his beatnik beard does.

Xavier leads an insurgency and Lucifer leads him into his deadliest trap... dropping a cement block on him from the ceiling.

It was a big block.

Having explained more or less what is at stake - Lucifer would dominate the population of Earth if his mental machines are able to reach their full potential - Xavier directs the X-Men to build a beam distorter to disrupt Lucifer's hold on him so that he can join them in battle with his deadliest foe. With that, the X-Men take off in their spiffy new private X-Jet, on course for the "Western Desert," where Lucifer lies in wait, ready to unleash the ominous but very vague threat of... Dominus!

And before you ask, yes, the beam distorter does resemble an overturned fishbowl complete with water filter.

Further Thoughts:

We already knew Xavier and Lucifer had a past, and that Lucifer was responsible for Xavier's paralysis, but seeing the exact moment is a bit of kind of an anti-climax. You would think it would involve some of this vaunted alien technology and not a loose boulder.

Finding out Lucifer is part of an alien race bent on world domination does seem a bit out-of-left-field. Nowhere in the X-Men's orientation literature does it mention the part about protecting the Earth from extraterrestrial invaders, along with fighting evil mutants and protecting a world that hates and fears them, although I guess you could read it as part of that latter clause.

Later artist and co-plotter John Byrne would lament that the X-Men was supposed to be a "specialty" book, dealing specifically with mutant threats, whenever collaborator Chris Claremont would inject alien sci-fi aspects into the title. But you can't argue with Charlie when he says "This was definitely part of the reason I started the X-Men in the first place." He would know.


Steve Ditko had similar complaints about Stan Lee putting mystical elements in Spider-Man. Assuming this issue was plotted by Stan Lee before handed to new scripter Roy Thomas, it's all part of Stan's preference for a sci-fi/fantasy universe where everything but the kitchen sink could be incorporated: mutants, aliens, robots, magic Juggernauts, whatev. Whether this is makes for a brilliant all-in sci-fi/fantasy superhero universe or a frustrating mess of random junk depends on your own POV. I happen to think the Kitchen Sink approach works for the X-Men. (Not so much for Spider-Man.)