The X-Men #4

"The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!"
Cover date: March 1964
Sensational script by:  Stan Lee
Dynamic drawings by:  Jack Kirby
Imaginative inking by:  Paul Reinman
Legible lettering by:  Art Simek

"You are gazing at a sight which few homo sapiens have ever been privileged to witness... the awesome Danger Room where Professor Xavier trains his homo superior mutant students for the dangers which await them!"



The intro quoted above describes a scene that is getting less and less rare with each issue, and we’re only four in. The usual feats are performed and the usual fights are picked by the ever-charming Iceman. There are some notable developments with Iceman though. First, he forms his first ice slides. Second, we find out when one of the obstacles he goes up against melts his snowy covering that he does actually wear a pair of trunks underneath it; and the boots over it of course. Why the boots are visible when he’s powered up but the trunks aren’t is a bit of a mystery. I kind of enjoyed the idea of him running around, balls flapping, while fighting evil mutants. It amused me. Oh well. The scene wraps up with Professor X presenting the X-Men with a cake to celebrate the first anniversary since their classes began. Wow, time in the Marvel Universe really moved fast in the 1960’s. Even then, a year is pushing it quite a bit. We’re four issues into a bi-monthly comic, so we’re only six months beyond the first published issue. Maybe Xavier is counting the time that he was teaching only the boys before Marvel Girl showed up in the first issue. Either way, in hindsight it seems and odd thing to explicitly mention when comics for the last 30 years have gone out of their way to not make note of any specific passage of time.


The scene shifts to another group of mutants sitting around the table eating. We are introduced to the first incarnation of the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.” It’s important to note, unless I’m missing something while flipping back through the issue, that they are never specifically named that through dialogue or narration, except in the title of the issue and on the cover. It’s always been strange that Magneto would form a group of followers and dub them “evil,” but that isn’t the way it’s presented here, fortunately. I’m guessing that they are referred to that further down the line -- I know Magneto or Mystique (who led her own version of it in the 1980’s) retroactively said it was meant to be “ironic” -- but it’s interesting that it they don’t specifically call themselves that here. At any rate, the inaugural members go on to play larger roles in the future. Mastermind is the catalyst for the X-Men’s -- perhaps comics’ -- greatest story ever published. Or a couple of them actually. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch go on to play bigger roles as part of the wider Marvel Universe as members of the Avengers. And the Toad… well, he goes on to an illustrious career of French-kissing Magneto’s asshole for the next decade and then doing almost nothing for the rest of his existence. When we are introduced to the Brotherhood here, their personalities are already largely formed. The Toad is Magneto’s lackey through-and-through. Mastermind is performing parlor tricks with his powers and trying to woo the Scarlet Witch, in his own crude way. The Scarlet Witch doesn’t take any shit from the rest of the group, and is mixed up in things beyond her control. And Quicksilver is cocky and arrogant, but not necessarily on board with being part of this group. Mastermind and Quicksilver get in a fight over the honor of the Scarlet Witch. The Toad says he’s going to tell the master (Magneto) when he gets back. Which he does the next time we see them.

Magneto, meanwhile, shows up at the offices of a large shipping line and demands that they hand over a decommissions naval vessel. Which they have no choice but to do. Magneto takes off with the unmanned ship, controlling it with his own magnetic powers. Coincidentally, Angel is on some kind of test flight, notices the unmanned boat, takes it for a remote-controlled target ship, and then heads back to Professor X to have his heart rate and blood pressure tested (again). He makes an off-hand remark about seeing the ship and it sets Xavier off on some paranoid trip because he’s unaware of any nautical artillery tests at the present time. As if he’s supposed to be.

Meanwhile, Magneto returns to his lair and his minions, the Toad dutifully tattles on the others, and Magneto tells them they had all better shape up if they’re going to rule the world in the name of mutant kind. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch want no part of this and decide to leave, until Magneto reminds them that Wanda owes him a debt of gratitude for rescuing her from the Eastern European village that is so stereotypical in the Marvel Universe, when it’s residents want to do her in for being a real witch because they don’t understand that she’s a mutant. I’m sure if she’d just explained that to them, everything would have been just fine. Right. I never realized that’s how the two of them got mixed up with Magneto in the first place, since they end up in a part of the Marvel Universe that I don’t follow too closely, since their ret-conned connection to Magneto doesn’t come for another decade or two. Wanda and Pietro decide to stay to pay off her debt. And Magneto reveals his plan to take over and entire country.

Xavier reads about the “Tiny Republic of Santo Marco” being shelled by a mysterious naval craft, puts two and two together and assumes it’s the “Evil Mutants.” A bit of a leap in logic, I’d say, considering that he hasn’t yet met the rest of Magneto’s gang. Or really have any reason to believe that Magneto is involved at all. Call it a hunch, I guess. Xavier’s powers seem to have some level of ESP associated with his telepathy in these early issues that I assume will be quietly dropped as writers begin to understand the difference. Professor X sends a mental alarm to his students, and when they report for duty, they find him in a trance, mumbling to himself. In reality, he’s on the “mental plane,” teleconferencing with Magneto. Magneto, incidentally, seems to have some telepathic abilities of his own, early on. I’m not sure this ever gets explained away at some later date, but it’s probably quietly dropped as well. That or John Byrne’s OCD for explaining away every incongruous moment in continuity drags it into a pointless story in his X-Men: The Hidden Years almost four decades later. Magneto asks him why he and his students stand in his way to conquer the world for mutants. Xavier insists that they must work toward a golden age on earth, with humans and mutants living side-by-side. Magneto believes that humans should be slaves to mutants, and so on and so forth. The opposing philosophies of Xavier and Magneto are laid out explicitly for the first time.

Meanwhile, Magneto and his Brotherhood are on his ship off the cost of Santo Marco. Taking over the government is easy with the help of Mastermind who creates the illusion of an army marching through the streets. Once he’s in control, he has no trouble replacing his illusionary army with a real one made up of the citizens of Santo Marco, proving that people really do yearn to be crushed under the boot heel of tyranny. In a few panels, we are shown what a tyrant Magneto is, but then Xavier and his students show up at the border in a car. Knowing that they will be coming for the big showdown, Magneto has already given orders that they are to be allowed into the country. How brilliant of him. They make a battle plan and attack Magneto’s castle. One by one, the Beast, the Angel, and Cyclops are defeated by the Brotherhood. Marvel Girl and Iceman haven’t been doing much of anything, so they’re able to step in and revive their fallen teammates until a river of boiling oil starts chasing them down the hall. Xavier wheels through it and reveals that it’s just an illusion by Mastermind. Understandably, they keep falling for Mastermind’s trickery since they’ve never actually met him before. I’ll give them a pass for this issue.

Without even bracing for a fight, Magneto prepares his escape; first a bomb to try to kill the X-Men, and in the event that that isn’t successful, a nuclear bomb to destroy the country of Santo Marco and everyone in it. Wow. I already addressed the issue of Magneto being not so much a mutant revolutionary as a psychotic would-be despot in my recap for issue one, so I won’t go into it again, but his plan is nuts! And he definitely means business with his disregard for human life (vs. mutant life) in his earliest days.

So Xavier, using some of that ESP he’s been exhibiting, senses that there’s a trap but Beast isn’t paying attention and sets it off. Xavier somehow hurls himself out of the wheelchair into the path of the blast out of a need to protect his students. The students he recruited as an army to fight in his place. But whatever. He’s being conveniently selfless here and gets knocked unconscious by the blast. Magneto and his Brotherhood make their escape down a slide in an escape tunnel to their ship, but not before Quicksilver runs back and disables the fuse on the nuclear weapon. He’s already showing signs of switching to the side of the heroes, no matter how big of a prick he is. Or, as he indicates, he’s down for mutants ruling the world, but a little queasy about the idea of nuking an entire country. Good for him. He’s practically an Avenger already!

The final panels reveal that Xavier is critically wounded from his act of heroism and that his mental powers have been deadened. This is a good idea from a storytelling perspective, because he was so powerful in the preceding two issues that the X-Men were relegated to fighting off carnies and mobsters while Xavier saved the day.

These early issues are actually much, much better than I remember them. They’re dated in the same way that all Silver Age comics are, in their theme, storytelling style and dialogue. But they are a lot of fun and you definitely feel as though your time was invested well in reading them. There’s a lot of action. There’s a lot of character development. And all of this in one issue for 12 cents. Aside from the more modern style of art (but then again, you can’t beat Jack Kirby) and the more sophisticated dialogue (for the most part), I really don’t see much appeal in modern X-Men comics compared to these early issues. Sure, there isn’t much that seems to matter here, no matter how high the stakes of the storyline and despite the debut of some long-running characters, but then again, I really couldn’t tell you much of what happened or what mattered in the recent Second Coming crossover that I read not more than a month ago. Go figure.

Then again, we haven’t seen them fight the Frankenstein yet. So maybe I’ll shut up now about how great these Silver Age issues are.