REDUX: UNCANNY X-MEN #2

The X-Men endeavor to find out what, exactly, can stop the Vanisher. The answer may surprise you!

This is a Redux! For the original version of this post, click here.

Originally Published December 1963

The X-Men are hanging around downtown by themselves, presumably having too much caffeine and thinking about themselves when all of a sudden they receive a summons from Professor X to return to the school at once. Beast goes by train...

While Angel takes a detour that sees him being mobbed by a flock of fangirls. Jean, ever protective of her prospective suitors, elects to use her power to rescue Warren from these "chickadees," depositing them on a nearby theatre marquee for their own safety.

Jean Grey's greatest power has always been spite.

While, in yet another groan-inducing nod to Iceman's predilection for all things frosty, he and Cyclops hitch a ride with an ice cream truck.

It's been two issues and I do not yet find this guy's antics endearing.

Inside, Iceman earns a demerit for speaking after the Professor shushes the X-Men so that he can mentally project his briefing on the latest mutant threat to mankind's happy status quo - the Vanisher!

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think you really should know where a place is if you plan to rob it.

This style icon The Vanisher appears to be a 60-year-old man in a skintight snakeskin getup, massive cowl, and an illustration on his torso that either represents a snake or, and I'm not trying to be crass here but this is the truth, a fart. And the audacity doesn't end with his fashion sense as the Vanisher is brazen enough to ask the Police for direction to his latest heist. The coppers oblige, given that, apparently, there is no law against saying you want to rob a bank.

True to his name, the Vanisher grabs the cash and gives Johnny Law the slip by disappearing into thin air.

Honestly, good for him.

The Professor decides to get proactive and sic the X-Men on the Vanisher, either because he highly regards the sanctity of law and order, or because people like him may be giving Mutants a bad name and inspire the Government to pass oppressive legislation against them. Xavier ushers his pupils into the Danger Room - the booby trapped dungeon of death he has specially installed in his basement - to train their powers against a foe they can't catch.

Meanwhile, the Vanisher consolidates his influence, openly declaring his intention to steal secret military defense plans and hold them for ransom and daring Joe Military to try to stop him. His unbridled charisma draws every hood in the underworld to his cause - somehow believing that because the Vanisher himself is untouchable, they too are at no risk of reprisal. Vanisher, for his part, permits them to become his underlings, feeling that the place of these lowly Sapiens is in service to a Homo Superior like himself.

After indulging in a little bit more teenage teammate friction while training, the X-Men are summoned, via Professor X's contact in the Department of Special Affairs Fred Duncan, to the office where Vanisher has successfully snagged the satchel containing these defense plans.

Maybe they needed a fifth guy with a gun.

The X-Men and Vanisher play hot potato with the satchel but predictably are barely able to lay a glove on the Vanisher.

The whole thing becomes something of a high profile failure as the Vanisher's victory makes the front page, with the X-Men's failure to protect the nation's capital as the subhead.

As the Vanisher prepares to collect his bounty, and the X-Men sulk over their defear, Xavier suggests - somewhat ominously - that perhaps this is a problem that brute strength alone cannot solve.

The X-Men meet the Vanisher again, this time with Xavier in tow. Vanisher gives out a good guffaw that this infirmed older gentleman should pose any threat to his power.

But the laughter doesn't last long...

And in only a manner of moments, the Vanisher's entire identity, his ability, his whole self is callously stripped away from him in an act of pure existential horror by the most powerful mutant mind on Earth. Iceman notes that the one-threatening crook is now reduced to the helplessness of a child.

With a few pages to go, the X-Men have a brief dustup with the assembled crooks, and mop them up quickly.

As the whole incident is cleared up, the X-Men wheel their mentor away, who notes, somewhat ironically, that the greatest power on Earth is that of the human brain... which is certainly true if that brain is capable of mindwiping all your problems away.

Further Thoughts:

And in only two months of existence, the X-Men learn that the most vicious, fearsome mutant villain of all is their own mentor.

Okay, no, this rather capricious and extreme brand of justice is presented as a "good thing" even though it's essentially a horrifying flavour of "might makes right." If you were the analytical type you might see only the sinister implications of the Professor's ability, but since we're supposed to see the Vanisher as a flat-out villain and this as an unqualified, untainted victory for the Good Guys. What in the future would be the impetus for a massive world-changing Event Comic Series that promised to reveal shocking details and change the status quo forever was just a ha-ha freeze frame roll credits in the 1960's. I'm honestly not sure what I prefer.

Of course, it completely breaks the X-Men to reveal that anytime a villain gets out of hand their mentor can just come in and fix him with the withering psychic glare of doom, defeating them more completely than Beast's feet or Angel's wings or Iceman's sno-cones ever could. It divests the reader from the X-Men themselves so that anytime the X-Men have even a modicum of difficulty with a threat - as they should, for conflict's sake - you wonder why Xavier doesn't swoop in and save the day, since he seems to have no qualms about doing so. Even tucking the implications aside, it's not exciting or imaginative to have that option.