Cover date: November 1963
Written by: Stan Lee
Drawn by: Jack Kirby
Inked by: Paul Reinman
Lettered by: Sam Rosen
"Congratulations! You are about to begin a book-length tale which you'll never forget! And now, let us follow the extraordinary X-Men as they answer an urgent mental summons from their mysterious leader, Professor X..."
And so they do. And so we get four full pages of them making their way from the town of New Haven (?) back to Westchester county, in uniform. Beast hops on a train. No, I mean he literally jumps ON TOP of a moving train. Angel gets waylaid (hah!) by a bunch of horny teenage girls who have the hots for him until Marvel Girl intervenes with her oddly referred to “teleportation” abilities to hurl them off into the distance. Cyclops and Iceman bring up the rear as they happen upon a construction crew who are about to be crushed by a lone-standing wall falling on them -- talk about shoddy construction -- before saving the day and hitching a ride in an ice cream truck (Iceman in the freezer case, obviously). Between the incompetent construction crew lauding them and the teenage girls in heat groping at Angel, there isn’t any evidence of that “world that hates and fears them” in view just yet.
Once they’ve reached their school, Professor X debriefs them about their next foe by projecting a video of his thoughts on a bare wall, which is very odd in retrospect, and something he probably never does again in the next 50 years of publication if I had to guess. At any rate, Xavier’s presentation reveals the Vanisher (oooh! ahhh!) in his absolutely ridiculous get-up demanding that some cops direct him to the bank so that he can rob it. They can’t believe it, so they do. Hey, in that outfit, who can blame them? The bank president and security guards don’t take him any more seriously than the police and hand over the money without incident until the Vanisher… vanishes! He’s teleported, as in disappeared and reappeared elsewhere, which makes it even odder that Jean’s power of telekinesis is still referred to as “teleportation.”
And so debriefed, and assuming that he’s a mutant, Iceman loses his mind and starts shooting “machine-gun ice pellets” at his teammates. Just because. And Jean reroutes them back at him telekinetically. The Professor has had enough of these childish games because such tactics will not help them to defeat the Vanisher. So instead, he introduces them to the Danger Room, where he requires them to practice other tactics that will also not help them to defeat the Vanisher. It’s kind of him to take Angel’s heart rate and blood pressure after his exercise though. Or maybe he just wants to put his hands on Angel’s naked chest? Who’s to say? But as we know from the first issue, Xavier has a naked 16 year old boy with “astonishing reflexes” running around the school in nothing but some boots a thin layer of powdery snow, so maybe those hormonal teenage girls in New Haven aren’t the only ones that Warren Worthington III needs to keep an eye on.
Meanwhile…. The Vanisher shows up at the Pentagon and reveals that he’ll be back to steal the government’s continental defense plans at a later date, before vanishing. Why he doesn’t just take them off the table while he’s there, I don’t know. The officials chalk it up to him being confident in himself and making them sweat. Fair enough. Anyone wearing that costume has to have a lot of confidence in himself. I believe this also happens to be the first naming of mutants as “Homo Superior,” by the Vanisher himself. So yeah, the costume again. But the name stuck. The Vanisher then sets himself up as some sort of underworld boss for no other reason than to give the X-Men something to do at the end of the issue. More on that later.
Back at the school, the X-Men are still training in the Danger Room. Jean is mentally lifting a great big red ball, but the strain makes her weak and she’s almost crushed by it, giving Cyclops an opportunity to save her. Aww. Here we go. The beginning of the most convoluted love story in the history of … history. Later, Xavier psychically gets in touch with plot-point-that-goes-nowhere-for-the-next-seven-to-thirty-years, F.B.I. Special Agent Fred Duncan, to stay apprised of the Vanisher’s movements, of which there are apparently none. So Xavier and the X-Men board some kind of weird “McDonnell XV-1 Convertiplane” that the government has supplied them. So still no “hates and fears them” business.
The Vanisher finally makes his play for the continental defense plans, handily evading the security officers (who are strangely dressed in brown corduroy suits and fedoras) by … you guessed it -- VANISHING! He reappears on the front steps of the Pentagon, where the X-Men are waiting. Jean somehow senses that he really IS a mutant. Is this foreshadowing to her telepathic abilities later on? Or is it just Stan Lee playing fast and loose with the rules of his own pseudo-science? My guess is on the latter. Long story short, the Vanisher makes short work of them by… VANISHING. He is the Vanisher, you know. It’s in the name, after all. The Vanisher is actually quite bright, though. Presumably realizing that vanishing is a rather defensive ability, he carries a gun. This time he uses it to shoot sleeping gas, of all things, at Marvel Girl who is probably the most formidable X-Man for his particular skill set and the fact that he‘s carrying around an attaché case full of documents that she could easily swipe from his clutches with her own “teleportation” ability.
So anyway, the X-Men lose the battle after the Vanisher vanishes, which causes all kinds of distress for them, the government, and the public after it makes the headlines. The Vanisher then demands $10 million(!), tax free, to not turn the documents over to the Communists. Go big or go home, I guess. And see? He is bright. He demands that the ransom be tax free. On the other hand, I don’t really know how taxes would be collected on ransom money, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it? He had the foresight to mention it nonetheless.
The X-Men have another one of their perpetual in-fights-with-super-powers, once again instigated by the hot-headed Iceman. This is the kind of thing you have to put up with a lot in fast-paced Silver Age comics to fill the action quota. Xavier clams them down and shows them super-high-speed video of the Vanisher’s mutant powers in action, for no apparent reason, because he’s already hatched a plan. The X-Men head back to Washington for a showdown with the Vanisher on the White House lawn(!) with his army of underworld thugs. Professor X handles things from here by telepathically making the Vanisher unable to vanish, remember why he’s there or what his plans are, and finally, who he even is. It makes you wonder why Xavier even recruited the X-Men when he’s so powerful. From what I remember, this ends up being something of a problem as the series moves along and certain contrivances have to be introduced to make him less powerful, or “dead,” or -- much later -- off in space with his girlfriend. In this instance, this leaves the X-Men to work clean-up duty with the mobsters that the Vanisher has recruited.
The End.
It’s odd that the Vanisher wasn’t used more in comics. By today’s standards, his powers are rather quaint and duplicated by numerous other characters. But he’s actually a pretty formidable foe for the X-Men (or anyone, I suppose) when he's introduced in the 60's, since he can just appear or disappear any time he wants. Perhaps it would be difficult to write a satisfying resolution each time, which is why, from what I remember, he rarely shows up. Gay-ass purple chain-mail with a cobra-shaped hood aside, he makes for a good villain.
‘Next issue: The X-Men face the greatest danger of all, when… but see for yourself in X-Men #3... You’ll be glad you did!”
Oh, Stan. Hyperbolic as ever. But then again, perhaps the Blob started out in the next issue with the same untapped potential that the Vanisher did in this one. We’ll see, but I won’t hold my breath.
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