UNCANNY X-MEN #49: Who Dares Defy... The Demi-Men?

The X-Men grapple with Mesmero and his Mutant Conspiracy!

Originally Published October, 1968

To begin this week's adventure, Angel has returned to the X-Mansion because some kind of alarm is going off there. He investigates and finds that the disturbance is being caused by the Cerebro machine, which has been mothballed as the X-Men have been split and relocated, but still actively seeking out new mutant energy.

Now, hold up. I know this is not usually the part of the post where I editorialize, but this is going to be completely irrelevant by the end so I just need to point this out... the X-Men are being split up, and there's all this fabulous technology that has been engineered by the brilliant scientific mind of Professor X and they're just letting it sit unattended?? It's specifically designed to be used for the location and identification of mutants, and researching powers and everything, they don't think it might be helpful in the near future? Cerebro, the Danger Room, the machine that randomly summons the Juggernaut and banishes him on a timer? All just sitting there under tarps gathering dust! Damn. I blame Agent Duncan, Fred or Amos or whatever he's calling himself these days.

We learn that the individual responsible for this Mutant Awakening is a green guy called Mesmero, who is amassing an army of mutants to do his bidding. He proclaims himself a pupil of Magneto, which... maybe so, but we've never seen him before today, and we saw a lot of Magneto up until he plummeted to his death and there was never much implication he had any associates beyond Toad, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Mastermind. Mesmero is constantly referencing Magneto, though, to grab some credibility, although to be frank he's already bested Mags at managerial skills.

In San Francisco, where Beast and Iceman are stationed (working as daredevils), Iceman encounters a young lady named Lorna Dane, saving her when she walks out into the street in a kind of hypnotized daze. Gentleman he is, he brings Lorna back to his and Hank's bachelor pad, where the other X-Men soon arrive and chastise Bobby for bringing an outsider into their world.

Cyclops, Angel, Marvel Girl and Iceman seek out Mesmero's henchmen, almost getting killed in the process.

Beast stays behind to work on the portable Cerebro, as well as keeping an eye on Lorna. When she awakens, the machine activates and the group deduces that Lorna must be a latent mutant - which explains, apparently, her naturally-green hair, which she dyes brown.

Jean speculates that Magneto is behind all this, suggesting that they did not, in fact, see him crash to his watery death right before their very eyes. So I guess she's aware they're in a comic book.

With Beast's portable Cerebro ready to track evil mutants, the X-Men leave Lorna again, this time with Iceman, but Mesmero arrives at the house. Though Iceman has enough power to take care of the underlings, Mesmero uses his hypnotic power to enslave his body (while his mind is free to reflect on the proceedings.)

Then Mesmero reveals their intentions for Lorna...

...To worship her!

Now that's a cliffhanger!

Further Thoughts:

There is a lot to like in this issue - perhaps because when you have only 15 pages to work with, you're better off just serializing an extra-sized story than trying to cram a single adventure in. A lot of deft moves are made here, effectively ditching the Split X-Men premise, and introducing Lorna and building an intriguing air of mystery around her. She comes off as very unassuming but enough attention is a
paid to her that you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's a ton more effective than when they introduced Ted Roberts a few years earlier and dragged out his "big secret" and the payoff ended up being that his brother was smarter and better than him. (His brother turned out to be the villainous Cobalt Man, but only when hit on the noggin, and only after we met him.)

Likewise, Mesmero is introduced and immediately comes across like a Big Deal antagonist. The right kind of framing can do wonders, because on paper, how is Mesmero any better than duds like Warlock or Computo or Lucifer?

Credit must be given to the art team here, which is strange because this is the same Don Heck/Werner Roth collaboration that has collectively been responsible for the last few issues, and individually have each drawn the lion's share of X-Men comics to date. Heck's layouts are suddenly very experimental, with short, slim panels to invoke quick motion, close-ups and canted angles to warp perceptions and intensify emotion, plus all this cool lettering breaking out of the panels. The "Mutant Awakening" scene, Angel's investigation, and the scene of Bobby saving Lorna all deserve credit. Especially the latter.

It's rare so far to see things like this unfold without pulling back and showing Iceman thinking "Good lord! That girl - she'll be flattened by that car! My ice power can help that... as long as I can get there in time!" This kind of temporal breakdown isn't something you see a lot in these comics, but can be highly effective when deployed right. Don't you find your eyes glide faster over the page when there's more text (or when each panel seems to occupy a longer period of in-story time.)

It's a slight, but meaningful, marker in the development of comics as a storytelling and artistic medium. I need to point all this out because this period of X-Men is thought of as being "Bad, except there were two issues drawn by Steranko, and then finally Neal Adams came along." But I feel like, if Heck and Roth were capable of stuff like this, it was probably a matter of, either the writing didn't allow for it, or editorial didn't.

It's messy in places, with the blank spots of Mesmero's plan leading to a slightly disorienting read (if we're meant to know exactly what the mutant awakening is, I didn't catch it. Guessing it's some kind of deal where mutants awaken.) But, this particular issue does everything it needs to do very well - an intriguing Part One with a lot of notable artistic flourishes. It would be a gross exaggeration to say it belonged on any kind of "All-Time Greatest" List, but sometimes we don't celebrate works that are exactly what they ought to be as much as they deserve.

That said, I don't think Mesmero and his goons are referred to as "The Demi-Men" even once. So that's some wonky cover copy there.