The X-Men must defeat Lucifer and his world-conquering somethingorother!
Exemplary Editing by: Stan Lee
Extraordinary Writing by: Roy Thomas
Exceptional Art by: Jay Gavin
Exhilarating Inking by: Dick Ayers
Exhausting Lettering by: Artie Simek
Originally Published June 1966
The X-Men have arrived in the great southwestern desert, ready to confront Lucifer, but they're not alone. Also taking exception to Lucifer's activities is Mack, a dude ranch proprietor who is worried about outsiders using "phony science fiction gimmicks" on his property. The X-Men spend a minute fending off his men before getting the best of them and sending Mack on his way. I've noted before the X-Men have trouble finishing off their foes, so at least they are able to defeat Mack's crew without calling the Stranger.
Did you ever get the feeling these books were prone to a bit of filler?
Unfortunately, the X-Men get caught in a riptide and are captured in a giant Tupperware container, of course.
Lucifer tells the captive Professor all about Dominus, his race's world-conquering machine, and the specially-designed robots that operate it.
See, there's this machine called Dominus, and Lucifer's people use it to control peoples' minds, but it can only be operated by these very important robots that may or may not be vulnerable to attack. I frankly don't know how Lucifer rose so high in his race's planet-invading force. Perhaps he's the Supreme One's nephew.
The X-Men escape their prison when Jean uses her telekinesis to flick the switch she saw one of the robots operating (the selfsame robots who are necessary to the operation of Dominus) and receive a vague mental instruction from Professor X., not to try to destroy Dominus. The X-Men suspect this, and debate among themselves whether this is one of Lucifer's tricks, and they should therefore yes attack Dominus.
This leads to the X-Men actually fighting each other over whether they should wreck the place.
Yikes. Sometimes I wonder what the X-Men are even doing with all those hours in the Danger Room.
Lucifer is somehow even less bright, because the only offensive he can mount against these intruders - who are badly fouling up his carefully-laid world domination plans - is to attack them with -- oh, brother -- the very robots who are absolutely vital to the whole Dominus thing.
They all get destroyed like a stack of POGs against a metal buzzsaw Kini slammer.
You can't necessarily blame Lucifer for botching this - Xavier, who had seemed to be in a trance, was planting instructions in Lucifer's mind to let the robots attack recklessly. Thus was he outfoxed, and this story mercifully ends with Lucifer being called back to his home planet.
Oops, wrong screencap.
Further Thoughts:
Well, we already knew Lucifer was a dud, but at least this time around we learned a bit about what he was about. Still, it does his credibility no favours, nor his supposed mental prowess, that his downfall was Professor X using his mental powers to make him make bad decisions with his extremely valuable and easily-destroyed equipment. As far as Dominus goes, I mean, did we need to see another battle between the X-Men and some idiotic robots?
I have said it isn't the purpose of this blog to mock the contents of the comics, but you've gotta call 'em like you see 'em. I've got to think Lucifer makes the everything about comic worse just by being there. He sucks, his plans suck, and the X-Men suck for having to make him look like a threat.
Lucifer truly is the dark horse of the X-Men stable, being such a lame character but having the critical story point of being the reason Professor X is in a wheelchair.
ReplyDelete"Did you ever get the feeling these books were prone to a bit of filler?"
A BIT, you say? One thing about the Silver Age and Marvel style is that no empty panel space goes uncovered if an "And how!" word balloon can be thrown in.