Cover layout by Gil Kane, featuring only the new X-Men team lineup.
The completed original art for the cover, with the new team pencilled by Kane and the old team pencilled by Dave Cockrum; all inks by Cockrum.
Half a century after its original release, there’s little doubt that the subject of today’s post was the most historically significant mainstream American comic book released in 1975; indeed, it’s arguably in the very top tier for the entire decade of the Seventies. But in April, 1975, it arrived with very little fanfare — at least in the relatively isolated comics-reading world of your humble blogger, who at age seventeen still wasn’t tuned in to what little fan press there was at the time. I don’t recall seeing any house ads for Giant-Size X-Men #1 ahead of its release, and the only promotion of the book I’ve been able to locate in any Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page published around then is a brief mention in the column that ran in the company’s March-shipping issues, reporting how artist Dave Cockrum’s being chosen to illustrate the project represented the realization of the “fan dream of a lifetime”. That may well have been the only heads-up I had that this book was coming out at all, prior to seeing its soon-to-be-iconic cover by Cockrum and Gil Kane staring out at me from the spinner rack.
But once I did see that cover, it was pretty much a no-brainer that I’d drop two quarters on the book. Not so much because of how terrific that cover was (though I’m sure that didn’t hurt), but rather because it was, simply, a new super-team title (or, if you prefer, a revived and revamped old one). If the superhero genre was my favorite of all comic-book genres in 1975, then super-team comics comprised my favorite sub-genre. Put a bunch of costumed characters together under a group umbrella, and I was definitely going to check it out (unless it was DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes, against whom I had an unfortunate prejudice that I couldn’t get past until the advent of the Paul Levitz-Keith Giffen era in the early 1980s). In that sense, the April publication of Giant-Size X-Men #1 was, for my younger self, no more or less a special event than were the other super-team launches that appeared over the course of 1975 — a group that included not only Marvel’s introductions of the Invaders and the Champions, and reintroduction of the Inhumans, but also DC’s revival of the the OG super-team, the Justice Society of America, in All-Star Comics.
Cover to Amazing Adventures #15 (Nov., 1972). Art by Jim Starlin and Joe Sinnott.
Cover to Captain America #173 (May, 1974). Art by Gil Kane, John Romita, Frank Giacoia, and Mike Esposito.
Not that I want to give you the idea that I was indifferent to the X-Men, either as an overall concept or in terms of their original roster of characters (all of which had been created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in 1963, of course). While I hadn’t been a regular reader of the team’s series in its earlier incarnation, I had bought and enjoyed a scattering of individual issues (mostly from the brief Roy Thomas-Neal Adams run of 1969-70). And I’d also been a regular reader of the Beast’s short-lived solo series, which had run for six issues of Amazing Adventures in 1971-72. Finally, I’d enjoyed seeing the X-Men show up as guest-stars here and there across Marvel’s line, such as in Captain America, where they’d played a significant supporting role in Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema’s “Secret Empire” saga of 1973-74.
But even if I hadn’t been keeping up with the X-Men’s activities since the cancellation of their title in early 1970, I could hardly have forgotten about them, since they’d maintained a consistent presence in the spinner racks for most of the past half-decade. As many of you reading this are likely already aware, the sales reports for the latter issues of the X-Men’s original run (most of which were produced by the Thomas-Adams team) had shown enough improvement to convince Marvel’s then-publisher, Martin Goodman, to un-cancel the series and bring it back… though only as a reprint title. And so it was that, only six months following the release of the mutant heroes’ last new adventure in issue #66 (Mar., 1970), Marvel had brought out the all-reprint X-Men Annual #1 — which was followed just two months later by the equally all-reprint X-Men #67.
Cover to X-Men #67 (Dec., 1970), reprinting issues #12 and #13. Art (newly produced for this issue) by Marie Severin and Joe Sinnott.
Cover to X-Men #93 (Apr., 1975), reprinting issue #45. Art (repurposed from its original presentation) by John Buscema and either George Tuska or John Verpoorten.
From that time on, all the way through January, 1975, a “new” issue of X-Men had shown up on stands every other month, pretty much ensuring that the habitual comic-book buyer would at least be cognizant of the property’s name — even if they hadn’t started reading comics themselves until after the team’s original run met its untimely end. Given that sort of dogged hanging-on in the marketplace, it seems inevitable in retrospect that Marvel would bring the X-Men back in brand-new adventures eventually… it was just a matter of when.
Intriguingly, the publishing initiative that ultimately resulted in the return of the X-Men evidently wasn’t originally conceived of as involving the team at all. As Roy Thomas — who served as Marvel’s editor-in-chief through most of the gestation phase — recalled in a 1981 interview published in The X-Men Companion: I (Fantagraphics, 1982):
What happened is that when Al Landau… was the president of [Marvel’s parent company] Cadence back in that ‘73, ‘74 period right before I left, there was a meeting that he and [Marvel publisher] Stan [Lee] and I were at — I suspect also [production manager] John Verpoorten, maybe one or two other people — in which Landau mentioned that it would be a good idea to have an international team of some sort. You see, he had his own company called Transworld, which at that time was reselling Marvel’s work overseas by the page. And he knew that if we, for example, had big markets in three or four countries and we had a team that had three or four characters in it, one from each country, we’d have a terrific hit on our hands overseas… He mentioned this general, vague idea just in passing, without pressing for it; I countered that I thought it was an excellent idea and I thought we should do it with The X-Men.
Once he’d received approval to move forward with the “international X-Men” idea, Thomas enlisted writer Mike Friedrich and artist Dave Cockrum as the project’s creative team. For whatever reason, however, progress became stalled around that point, and by the time things began moving again, Friedrich had moved home to California from New York; as a consequence, he seems to have fallen out of the loop, being replaced as writer on the planned new series by Len Wein. (Many years later, Friedrich would recall for Alter Ego #24 [May, 2003] that he “was pretty pissed-off” at the time that happened; however, since that incident prompted him to take the plunge and found his own comics publishing company, Star*Reach Productions — “one of the better career moves of my life” — he ultimately had no regrets.)
Once momentum was regained, Wein and Cockrum began developing characters for in earnest; but while the international aspect of the “new” X-Men team remained a major part of the concept, the notion of including particular nationalities in the interest of serving Al Landau’s Transworld operation seems to have ceased to be a guiding factor fairly quickly. As Cockrum put it during a 2000 convention panel discussion (which was transcribed and published in the aforementioned Alter Ego #24):
Yeah, well, we knew about that part of the idea, but by the time we were choosing characters, FSSHT, out the window, you know. So we have a Russian, we have a Kenyan, and we might’ve sold some in Germany and Canada, but that whole concept just went out the window. We just got caught up in the enthusiasm of what we were doing.
Around this same time, a major personnel change occurred at Marvel, as Roy Thomas stepped down as Marvel’s editor-in-chief; his replacement (at least for Marvel’s color comics) was Len Wein. What this would ultimately mean for the X-Men was that the very busy Wein, after co-creating most of the new characters who’d debut in the revamped team’s first outing, and plotting the next two stories as well as fully writing that first one, would give up the X-writing assignment much sooner than he’d likely originally anticipated.
But we’ll have more to say about all that later in the post. Right now, let’s finally crack that iconic cover open, and take a look at what’s inside..
Interestingly, the story’s opening splash page is essentially a straight-up reprise of the cover art, giving one the impression that Cockrum really wanted to take his own solo shot at the concept for which Gil Kane had taken point on the actual cover. Beyond the expected stylistic differences (Kane’s version is a good bit more pow! in your face!, for better or worse), the main point of departure is that Cockrum’s version of the new team lineup includes Banshee and Sunfire, neither of whom made it onto Kane’s cover layout; in addition, we only get one Cyclops here, rather than two, and the head-shot of the Beast reflects the current, rather than the “classic”, version of the character.
Our story gets properly underway with the next page…
The first of the prospective new X-Men that we’re introduced to is Kurt Wagner, soon to be better known as Nightcrawler. Though a brand-new character in 1975 as far as professional publication was concerned, Nightcrawler had nevertheless held a place in the imagination (and the notebooks) of Dave Cockrum ever since 1968, when he and his first wife had dreamed the character up while the artist was serving with the U.S. 
Navy in Guam. Originally conceiving of Nightcrawler as being a bona fide demon from Hell, Cockrum had abandoned that idea after Jack Kirby brought out The Demon for DC Comics in 1972; he’d subsequently pitched the character as a member of a proposed super-team called the Outsiders (see concept art at left), who would operate in the same 30th-century milieu as DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes (a feature that Cockrum drew from 1972 through 1974). That version of Nightcrawler would have been an extradimensional alien (see character sketch and description at right); but, as it turned out, DC editor Murray Boltinoff rejected the Outsiders en masse, allowing Cockrum the opportunity to port Nightcrawler over to Marvel, where he and Wein re-imagined him as a German-born mutant.
Cover to Hulk #181 (Nov., 1974). Art by Herb Trimpe (with touch-ups to the Hulk by John Romita, per the Grand Comics Database).
Detail from John Romita’s character sketches.
Wolverine is unique among the super-heroes featured in this story, in that he was neither an already well-established character nor a freshly-hatched newbie appearing here for the very first time. As I’m fairly sure everyone reading this already knows, the man we’d eventually (though not for a long while yet) come to call Logan had debuted just nine months previously, showing up in the final panel of Hulk #180 (Oct., 1974) before going on to make his first full appearance in issue #181. Both of those issues were written by Len Wein and pencilled by Herb Trimpe; nevertheless, according to virtually all accounts, the basic idea for the Wolverine character originated with the book’s editor, Roy Thomas, who asked Wein to develop a Canadian character with that name, while the visual was designed not by Trimpe, but by Marvel art director John Romita.
About that much, everyone seems to agree; however, just about every other detail concerned with Wolverine’s creation (e.g., who decided that he was a mutant, or that he was short, or should have claws) is a matter of contention. For us to dig deeply into all that here seems unadvisable, as it would likely make what’s already destined to be a long post maybe twice as long; fortunately, there’s already an exemplary article available online that lays out all the relevant information in a comprehensive and, I think, even-handed way: Zach Rabiroff’s “Logan’s Run: Roy Thomas, Len Wein, and the Curious Case of the Wolverine”, which was published by The Comics Journal in 2024. (As a supplement to that piece, your humble blogger also recommends a very enlightening blog post by Tom Brevoort, which like the TCJ article came out in 2024: “When Was Wolverine Wolverine?”, which details just how long it took for many of the elements now considered essential to the character — what he looks like under the mask, the organic nature of his claws, his healing factor, etc. — to be introduced.)
Detail from John Romita’s character sketches.
Detail from Gil Kane’s cover layout.
Before leaving this topic, however, we’ll make note of one significant change made to the character’s visual that transpired between the publication of Hulk #181 and the release of Giant-Size X-Men #1. As originally designed by John Romita, Wolverine’s mask was somewhat catlike, with whisker lines and small pointed ears. But Gil Kane, either intentionally or by chance, altered that design, eliminating the whiskers and making the “ears” into longer, wider flaps. Dave Cockrum, who was still working on the art for “Second Genesis!!” saw what Kane had done and liked it (as presumably did Wein), and proceeded to incorporate the changes into his own rendering of the character. As Cockrum put it during the 2000 convention panel we referenced earlier:
Gil Kane drew it wrong at some point and we thought, “Gee, he looks sort of like Batman. That’s kind of neat.” So we kept that look.*
Cover to X-Men #28 (Jan., 1967). Art by Werner Roth and John Tartaglione.
Irish mutant Sean Cassidy, code-named Banshee, had made his debut in X-Men #28 (Jan., 1967), wherein he’d attacked the team — though only under duress from the sinister organization Factor Three. Created by Roy Thomas with artist Werner Roth, the character had originally been conceived of as female by Thomas — something which would have been more in keeping with the figure of Irish legend from which the Banshee’s name and powers had been derived — but the young writer had been overruled at the time by Stan Lee, who worried that having a whole team of (mostly) male heroes go up against a single female would make the former look like bullies. (Of course, Marvel would eventually introduce a female Banshee of sorts, in the form of Sean Cassidy’s identically-powered daughter, Siryn.) Since his debut in 1966, Banshee had made only a handful of appearances prior to GSXM #1, most recently in Captain America #172 (Apr., 1974).
Before we move on to the next scene, we should note that the three people shown taking in the Grand Ole Opry along with Sean Cassidy and Professor Charles Xavier are Dave Cockrum, Len Wein, and Glynis Oliver (who, in addition to being this story’s colorist, was also married to Len Wein at this time).
Ororo — or Storm, as we’d come to know her best — had her roots in character concepts Dave Cockrum had been tinkering with since well before he became attached to the X-Men revival project. These roots were rather more tangled than those that had ultimately yielded the final, Marvel version of Nightcrawler, however, involving at least three (and probably four) distinct heroes for whom Cockrum had worked up sketches before Storm finally emerged from his and Len Wein’s creative process.
All but one of those characters had been members of the Outsiders group Cockrum had pitched to DC, and can be seen in the group shot featured earlier in this post. They included a caped man with weather powers named Typhoon, a green winged flying woman called Quetzal, and a Black woman named Trio who evidently hailed from the same world as the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Triplicate Girl (aka Duo Damsel) and had the same powers.
In various interviews over the years, Cockrum specifically noted the influence of Typhoon and Quetzal in his and Wein’s development of Storm. For Typhoon, the connection came down to his power set and cape; Quetzal, meanwhile, bequeathed Ororo her long, flowing hair and distinctive cat-shaped eyes. As for Trio, your humble blogger hasn’t been able to locate an interview or other source where Cockrum specifically mentions her being part of the mix of elements that went to make up Storm; still, a number of other comics historians and commentators have noted visual similarities between the two characters (besides the obvious fact that they’re both Black women, there are correspondences in their respective costume designs), and so it seems reasonable to think that Trio did figure into the process somehow.
And then there’s the fourth and last of Storm’s forbears, the Black Cat. This character seems to have been original to Cockrum and Wein’s X-Men brainstorming, though of course elements of earlier, still-unused characters from Cockrum’s notebooks could have figured into her development. (We should also note the existence of an earlier Black Cat, a white superheroine published by Harvey Comics in the 1940s). As the artist recalled in 1981 for The X-Men Companion: I:
When I did up the original X-Men designs, one of the characters was called the Black Cat. Take a look at Storm without the white hair and without the cape, and that’s essentially the Black Cat. She had dark hair which was sort of like Wolverine’s, tufted on top with the ear effect. And she could transform either into a cat — I preferred the idea of a house-cat and a panther — and she could also half-transform into a humanoid cat…
She was a very striking-looking character. This was before the project got shelved. It got shelved, time passed, and in the interim there must have been two dozen female cat characters. You had Tigra and the Cat. It seemed kind of stupid to go on and do another cat character what with all the other ones running around, and so we dropped the whole shtick.** We were hassling and arguing and trying to figure out how we could work her in, and we had already planned to use Typhoon from the Legion of Super-Heroes. But we couldn’t figure out what to do with the black girl, we really liked her, we wanted to use her, and Roy just threw out, “Why don’t you make her Typhoon?” And everybody’s mouths were hanging open. I ran out of the room and drew her with long white hair and a cape on, and came back in and that was it. Everybody said, “Yeah! Yeah!” and her working name was Typhoon for awhile… We started saying, “How about Storm, isn’t that more feminine?” and everybody liked it better, so that’s what we settled on.
The white hair was evidently just about the last visual element added to the character concept, and one that Cockrum later claimed caused some mild consternation; as he related during the same 2000 convention panel we quoted from earlier:
…we took the cape off Typhoon, and made it black instead of blue, and gave her all-white hair, and then Len’s going, “Are you sure? Aren’t they going to think she’s somebody’s grandmother?” [laughs] “Trust me, Len. She’s not going to look like somebody’s grandmother.” [laughs]
Cover to X-Men #64 (Jan., 1970). Art by Sal Buscema and Tom Palmer.
Sunfire, aka Shiro Yoshida, had first appeared in X-Men #64 (Jan., 1970), near the end of the series’ original run. Created by Roy Thomas and artist Don Heck, this “child of the atom” was one of the relatively few Marvel mutants of the era whose origins were explicitly linked to their parents having been exposed to nuclear radiation; in Shiro’s case, his mother had been in Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the bomb on the city. This background helped explain Sunfire’s fervent Japanese nationalism, as well as his generally abrasive personality; still, those traits probably made it a little hard for some readers to warm up to the guy (it did for me, anyway). Since his debut, Sunfire had made guest appearances in Sub-Mariner, Avengers, and Iron Man, which at least helped keep him from being forgotten by Marvel fans, regardless of whether or not they liked him all that much. Along with Banshee, he was the only existing “international” mutant hero who’d appeared prior to Giant-Size X-Men #1, so his inclusion here was virtually a given.
In a 1981 interview for The X-Men Companion: I, Len Wein had this to say regarding the creation of Peter Rasputin, aka Colossus:
Actually, the initial inception of the character was done as a character for the Legion of Super- Heroes, when Dave was doing that book. He never had a chance to use him. We were at a party at Marv Wolfman’s house years ago and we were standing out on the balcony talking about characters, and he had wanted to make some changes in the Legion while he was drawing it, and he came up with this idea of doing a Russian character. We talked about possibilities, and he described the power and Colossus was the name I suggested to him at the time. Russian Colossus, and all that. He was going to use it there and never got a chance to, so we decided, “Well, we’ve created a character, might as well use him elsewhere.” So we put him into The X-Men.
For his own part, Cockrum acknowledged that the basic idea of Colossus preceded his involvement with X-Men; though in his recollection, there was at least a germ of a concept well before he began his stint on the LSH. In a 2003 interview, he said, “Colossus had been loosely based on a character I came up with in college, named ‘Mr. Steel’.”
Before we continue, we should note that the current scene represents the debut of not just one mutant superhero, but two; the second being Peter Rasputin’s younger sister, whose name we’d eventually learn was Illyana…. though it’s all but certain that no one involved with Giant-Size X-Men #1 had yet conceived the notion of rapidly aging her up and turning her into a teleporting sorceress named Magik.
John Proudstar, who’ll soon also be answering to the name Thunderbird, was another character whom Dave Cockrum had first conceived of in the days before he turned pro. His initial costume design (shown at right) was rejected by the artist’s collaborators; as Cockrum later explained in a 1998 interview for Comic Book Artist #6:
When I brought in the first design, everybody said, “He looks like an Air Force pilot!” I had this strange helmet on him that was an Indian design but nobody liked it, so I went back and re-did it.
Cockrum’s re-design would, for better or worse, place much more emphasis on Thunderbird’s Native American heritage.
According to both Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, it was always taken as a given that Cyclops, aka Scott Summers — the field leader of the original X-Men ever since their 1963 debut — would continue to serve in that capacity for the new team. As Wein put it in 1981 for The X-Men Companion: I:
We just wanted to tie the new series to the past, something to make it recognizable as the X-Men. Cyclops was the only great character among the old X-Men because of the eyeblasts, and the sense of tragedy about the character. And Dave had this new visor in mind he wanted to use, and I really liked it, and that was almost why we kept him: the new visor, because it looked so good. Great-looking character. Very simple costume, but with that visor, very effective.
A couple of decades later, in an interview for Alter Ego #24, Cockrum added:
He was meant to be the leader of the group and was a very strong character. He was always a straight arrow. I don’t remember if it was Roy or Len who suggested that I modify his costume. The feeling was, if he’s going to be the leader, that he needed to be more
dynamic-looking. So I redesigned his visor and his boots. You remember the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still? I loved Gort, the robot character, who wore a visor. It’d open up and you’d see a little light dancing in there. That’s the sort of effect I wanted to use on Cyclops. I gave him a bigger visor so I could achieve that effect.
Here we see not only all the original X-Men (minus the absent Hank “Beast” McCoy) who’d made their first appearances alongside Prof. X and Cyclops in issue #1 (Sep., 1963) — that would be Bobby “Iceman” Drake, Jean “Marvel Girl” Grey, and Warren “Angel” Worthington III, if you need a scorecard — but also later recruits Alex “Havok” Summers (Scott’s brother, whom readers met as Alex in #54 [Mar., 1969], but didn’t suit up as Havok until #58 [Jul., 1969]) and Lorna “Polaris” Dane (who first showed up in #49 [Oct., 1968]). (UPDATE, 4/5/25, 2:00 p.m.: As pointed out by Blake Stone over on the April, 1975 “Marathon” thread at the Marvel Masterworks Forum, Lorna Dane didn’t actually acquire her Polaris code name until some months after this, so I jumped the gun a bit in using it in the context of this issue. I stand corrected.)
Unable to regain control of the plane, Scott is forced to sit back and wait until the long flight back to Westchester is complete. Upon his arrival at the X-Mansion, he hurriedly explains to Charles Xavier what’s happened to the team (or at least as much as he knows), but then…
Whatever Sunfire’s reasons for returning so quickly to the team following his abrupt exit may be, they’re never revealed, as far as I know — which makes the whole “I’m gone! I’m back!” business rather baffling in retrospect. Perhaps it’s one of those circumstances where some vital information was lost as the story moved through the usual “Marvel method” stages of plot-art-script; or perhaps Len Wein meant to get back to this mystery, and simply never got around to it before leaving the book. Your guess is as good as mine.
The division of the team into smaller units is right out of Super-team Story Structure 101, calling all the way back to the first joint adventure of the members of the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics #4 (Mar.-Apr., 1941). This was a device with which Len Wein was well familiar, having used it frequently during his 15-issue stint as the writer for DC’s Justice League of America in 1972-74.
Of course, in most of the JLA stories in which Wein had used the “smaller units” structure, the individual segments were longer than the one-page versions we’ll see play out over the next four pages…
…but even in this abbreviated form, the venerable device of splitting a super-group into smaller teams serves as a very efficient means of demonstrating each individual hero’s power set, as well as of further distinguishing their individual personalities.
Now that all of the pairings have reached their mutual destination — the mysterious temple — it’s time to see what’s inside. Unfortunately, the door is sealed tight, and roughly one foot thick, by Cyclops’ estimation. But, no worries — it’s simply an opportunity for the new team members to receive what Cyke calls their “first practical lesson in the art of being an X-Man!”
The newbies rush forward to free the veteran X-Men; but no sooner have the captives been detached from the weird green tubes they’ve been hooked up to than the temple begins to collapse in on itself. The heroes make it out unscathed, but only just.
“Krakoa… the Island That Walks Like a Man!” is an obvious nod to the sort of giant-monster fare that used to fill Marvel’s fantasy and science fiction anthology comics in the company’s pre-Fantastic Four #1 days; for that matter, it may even be a direct callback to that 1961 Lee-Kirby classic itself, given that in the premier adventure of Marvel’s original super-team, the FF had flown a private jet to a mysterious island and fought a monster there.
Somehow, Dave Cockrum has knocked off a panel featuring thirteen, count ’em, thirteen superheroes attacking a single foe at once and made it look not only good, but easy. But, of course, he’d had practice with that sort of thing with his best-known regular gig prior to this one (they don’t call them the Legion of Super-Heroes for nothing).
According to remarks made by Len Wein in Alter Ego #24 (May, 2003), he and Dave Cockrum worked out the basic plot of Giant-Size X-Men #1 in the Marvel offices over the course of several days, but were having some trouble coming up with an ending; finally, however, they had a breakthrough, which Wein indicated probably originated with a third party — his editorial assistant, Chris Claremont.
Here’s Claremont’s own version of events, as recalled in a 1981 interview for The X-Men Companion: I:
I was working as Len Wein’s associate editor. Len and Dave Cockrum were evolving the new X-Men concept. And they’d be sitting in Len’s office… I would be sitting there just outside proofreading. I’d wander in and say “Can I listen?” and they’d say “Sure.” They’d evolved the whole first issue of Giant Size [X-Men #1] except the ending. They needed a way to get rid of Krakoa utilizing the powers of the X-Men. I was thinking about it and I thought, well, we’ve got Lorna Dane…
(To be continued.)
Bobby and Alex’s squabbling over Lorna calls back to an ongoing subplot from the latter years of the original X-Men series; while it doesn’t mean much in this story (or, for that matter, any stories in the near future, seeing as how none of these three characters will be sticking around for the long haul), it’s a nice bit of service for old-time fans.
The X-Men now quickly clamber on board Iceman’s raft, after which the Summers brothers, Cyclops and Havok, combine their powers to propel the raft away from Krakoa “with the speed of a hurtling hydroplane!” And just in time, too…
And now, we’ll let Chris Claremont finish telling us about his contribution to the resolution of our story, picking up where we left off earlier:
…I thought, well, we’ve got Lorna Dane, who has since become Polaris, here, and her power is magnetism, so why don’t you just have her slice across the magnetic lines of force, the gravimetric lines of force? And then the speed of the Earth’s rotation on its axis would just squirt it up and away it would just go. In a sense Krakoa would stay in place while the Earth just rotated around its axis and revolved around the sun away from it. And off he goes into the wild blue yonder. It would be like taking a bar of soap and watching it go Pfffttt! right into the air. Len thought it was a great idea and Dave came up with the visuals and that was that.
(I frankly have no idea whether the science behind all that is remotely plausible, even by superhero comic-book standards, but what can I say? I bought it in 1975, and I guess I’m still willing to roll with it.)
Iceman does as Cyclops bids, just before the icy vessel is sucked down into the whirlpool — and though the team gets banged around a bit, the domed raft holds together. After several minutes,the globe breaks the surface; then, after Cyclops has burst the frozen walls with his eye-beams, the X-Men are greeted by…
And that’s that for “Second Genesis!” — a landmark story which I think still holds up very well as a piece of entertainment, half a century on. While I can’t say that it changed my life in April, 1975, my seventeen-year-old self was definitely impressed enough to want to come back for the advent of “the Doomsmith”, whoever (or whatever) that might be.*** And so, I was all but certain I’d be picking up Giant-Size X-Men #2 when it hit the stands in three months time…
Cover to Giant-Size X-Men #2 (Nov., 1975). Art by Gil Kane and Klaus Janson.
Except, of course, things had changed by July, and while there was a GSXM #2, it was an all-reprint issue, re-presenting Thomas and Adams’ “Sentinels trilogy” from X-Men #57–59… and so I didn’t get it. After all, the new story I’d been looking forward to reading — the official title of which turned out to be “The Doomsmith Scenario!” — had already appeared a month earlier, in X-Men #94, which carried forward the new X-Men series in their existing title, picking up the numbering where the last reprint issue (published in January) had left off.
Decades later, in an interview for Alter Ego #24, Chris Claremont — who of course was in a position to know — offered some insights into Marvel’s shifting publishing strategies during this period:
The original publishing plan was to bring out The X-Men as a giant-sized quarterly comic book… The general consensus was that this format would present the series in a back-door pilot format in order to get a sense of what commercial potential The X-Men had. And also construct a publishing plan that was conducive to both Len and Dave’s schedules. As editor-in-chief, Len didn’t have that much time to devote to writing comics, and Dave was not the fastest penciler in the universe. It was felt that this format would allow Dave to present the work in a form that allowed him to maximize the greatest visual potential. It also would allow Dave to stay on the series for a longer amount of time.
What happened was that at the time when Len decided to leave the editor-in-chief position, there was also a rethinking of editorial publishing policies. The decision was made to go from a quarterly format to a bimonthly format. At that point, the second giant-size issue was already penciled, except for the last dozen pages or so. It required a chunk of revamping.
The “rethinking of editorial publishing policies” mentioned by Claremont seems to have ultimately encompassed the whole “Giant-Size” line. Along with Giant-Size X-Men, another new title — Giant-Size Invaders — had its lead feature relaunched in a standard-format comic after only one issue. The very last of the line to feature new material, Giant-Size Man-Thing #5, shipped in May; and while there would continue to be new issues of Giant-Size Avengers, Giant-Size Conan, and the like published (and even a few issues of brand-new titles like Giant-Size Daredevil and Giant-Size Iron Man), all of these books simply repackaged old stories By October, 1975, the Giant-Size brand, which Marvel had introduced with considerable fanfare (and almost as much confusion) back in February, 1974, was dead, having gone the way of the “100-Page Super-Spectacular” — DC Comics’ analogous, and roughly contemporaneous, stab at developing a more expensive (and hopefully more profitable) comic-book format, which had itself expired at the end of 1974.
But, of course, well before that, Marvel had to deal with converting the single extra-length story originally planned to appear in July’s Giant-Size X-Men #2 into two regular-size issues of X-Men, the first of which would ship in June. As Chris Claremont put it later, the situation called for “a chunk of revamping” — and as it turned out, Claremont himself would be considerably more involved in that process than he had been as the associate editor and plotting kibitzer for “Second Genesis!”… though that’s a story we’ll leave for further exploration in another post, two months from now. I hope to see you then.
*This was a change that, frankly, didn’t really seem to call for an “in-universe” explanation — though that didn’t stop Roy Thomas from providing one forty-eight years later, in X-Men Legends (2022) #2.
**Four years later, Cockrum would be involved in the creation of yet another Black Cat — the costumed thief Felicia Hardy, whom the artist designed for writer Marv Wolfman, and who first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #194 (Jul., 1979).
***This was in spite of the fact that Giant-Size X-Men #1 included, along with its all-new 36-page lead story, 14 pages of reprint material. For the record, this consisted of three back-up features from the original X-Men title, each of which offered a primer on the powers of one of the original team members: “Call Him… Cyclops!”, written by Roy Thomas and 
illustrated by Werner Roth and John Verpoorten, which had first appeared in X-Men #43 (Apr., 1968); “I, the Iceman”, written by Arnold Drake, with art again by Roth and Verpoorten, which had originally been presented in issue #47 (Aug., 1968); and, finally, “The Female of the Species!” (featuring Marvel Girl), written by Linda Fite, with art by Roth and Sam Grainger, which had first run in issue #57 (Jun., 1969). Your humble blogger already owned only the last of these stories — and as it turned out, Marvel had cut one of that feature’s five pages, which meant I was spending money on just four 
pages of material I had no use for. Even so, I wasn’t exactly unhappy that reprints weren’t going to be a regular aspect of the “New X-Men” reading experience, going forward.
Of all the comics I had as a kid that I read until the cover fell off before it ultimately rotted into a pile of mildew in a box in my parents’ basement, this one hurts the most. If only I’d had the mind of a collector instead of a reader…Oh, well. Who needs a retirement fund anyway?
Something I’ve been curious about for a while – just a little over a year earlier in Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4, Len Wein had introduced the new mutant character of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, and even sent him off in the care of Professor Xavier at the end of the issue. Yet he’s nowhere to be seen here. Chris Claremont eventually revealed that he’d been packed off to Moira MacTaggart’s facility on Muir Island, but all that was still a ways off in the future. Did Wein ever explain why he didn’t bring his own very recent mutant creation into the new team of X-Men? Did he just not fit the international concept? Or did Wein & Cockrum feel like his powers didn’t really fit well with the team they were building? Just something I’ve wondered if Wein ever addressed. It just seems obvious that if a guy was writing a new team of X-Men, he’d include a character he himself had created very recently and already had living with the X-Men, so Wein must’ve had a reason he didn’t.
Hey, I have hardly ever sold off *any* old comics but I dumped GS X-Men #1 at a weekend con for $40 to a dealer because it meant nothing to me. It’s not like it was a Jim Starlin Warlock or anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m not sure everyone would agree that ‘the basic idea for the Wolverine character originated with the book’s editor, Roy Thomas’. Roy and his own HouseRoy John Cimino are certainly promoting that idea, but I don’t think even Zach Rabiroff’s article that you linked to goes far enough in the debate regarding credit for his creation.
The main points defining Wolverine at the outset were that he had claws, he was Canadian and short-tempered to the point of being pyscho – as much a danger to his team-mates as their enemies. That pyscho element is usually credited as going back to the earliest iteration of Ben Grimm in the Fantastic Four (“Bah!”), but I’d go back to Angel in Simon & Kirby’s Boys Ranch as the real prototype. I think with the fractious Thunderbird and Sunfire on the same team as well, you almost had too much of a good thing so it’s no surprise that they both got dropped in short order.
The claws: ever since John Romita Sr took over Spider-Man from Ditko, he seemed to deliberately avoid characters firing anything from the palms of their hands as being too much like Spidey’s web-shooters, and always went with some sort of weapon/blast coming from the backs of the hands, like the Shocker, The redesigned Widow’s web-line, the Prowler’s compressed air-blasts, the (wingless) Falcon’s hawk-line (in the shape of a claw!) and later the Constrictor and probably many others that I’ve missed. He was also fond of characters based on animals. If Logan’s popularity stems in large part from his claws, I think credit there must go to JR Sr. The other element of his appearance is the face beneath the mask, and it does appear that that was the work of Dave Cockrum (and the making of Hugh Jackman)?
Being Canadian: no disrespect, but I was never a big fan of Len Wein’s writing. He seemed fond of the recycled idea, or re-using old elements of stories. Earlier in the Hulk’s run, Steve Englehart had relocated the Hulk to Canada for a few issues (possibly initiated even before then, as Archie Goodwin had set him in the direction of Niagara Falls). This was apparently prompted by Herb Trimpe’s desire to draw some backgrounds that weren’t all deserts, and this is where the Hulk first encountered the Wendigo. I was not surprised that Wein chose to recycle the idea for a re-match. Maybe it was Wein or Roy Thomas who had the notion of introducing a third party government agent to enliven the fight, but the fact that he was Canadian seems only an outcome of the story’s re-used setting, not a particularly original idea. If Wein had chosen to rework an old story set elsewhere, that might well have decided his nationality.
All in all, I didn’t and still don’t particularly like the Wolverine character. He has always felt like an assemblage of various not very original schticks rather than rounded and three-dimensional, and that may be down to the number of creators who could be listed, and who’ve contributed to his personality, both pre- and post-creation: Goodwin, Englehart, Olsen, Wein, Trimpe, Romita Sr, Thomas, Cockrum, Claremont, Byrne, Miller, BWS… and again, probably others that I’ve missed. That may be true of a lot of characters, but I just found it more noticeable here compared to earlier Marvel characters who were more clearly the creation of one person (possibly two, your mileage may vary).
Maybe later I might have something to say about Giant-Size X-Men #1 itself. ‘So, apart from that, what did you think of the play, Mrs Lincoln?’
Just a point of clarification, mike: I certainly didn’t mean to imply that I endorsed Roy Thomas’ current claims regarding being credited for the creation of Wolverine; rather, I was simply acknowledging that his basic assertion that “I asked for a character named Wolverine to be included in the Hulk book” was never contradicted by any of the other people involved with the matter — i.e., Len Wein, Herb Trimpe, John Romita — while they were alive. Perhaps I could have worded that better in the post, but that was the intent.
Or maybe I should have paid better attention to what you actually wrote. I think I was still running Zach Rabiroff’s article in my head, with the several differences of recollection therein. Anyway, another excellent piece. Thanks Alan!
Awesome! I learnt so much! Thank you Alan.
I didn’t know Gil did the original layout without the original members present
I don’t recall seeing Romita’s character sketch of Wolverine – or the pose is just lifted by Herb in the last panel of #180…wow!
and…
I didn’t know Man-Thing #5 was the last GS with original material
You could write a book about the things I don’t know (we;;, you just wrote a column!)
Alan, do you still have your original issue in your collection?
I also really enjoyed Tom Brevoort’s post (I’d read it previously and recommend everyone to click that link) on the chronological development of Wolverine – it was authored at the time that arguments raged about Roy Thomas’s sudden claim to creation rights of Wolverine; I really appreciated Tom’s approach that the character was developed by many and Claremont & Byrne deserve credit for turning a fairly flat punching bag for Hulk into the much-loved ruffian we all know today.
Spider, I do indeed still have my original issue in my collection — it’s the very one you can (hopefully) see peeking up from the bottom of the blog’s header banner. (I say “hopefully” just because I know that the banner displays differently on different screens and in different browsers, orientations and so forth.)
I have previously zoomed in on those headers – very sharp books AS!!!
Regarding Wolverine, Dave Cockrum had just come off the Legion of Super-Heroes at DC, and I thought he was just continuing his version of Timber Wolf over at Marvel:
https://images.app.goo.gl/BqEP4uTcovVzM5Hv8
Good point.
Another wonderful recap of both the story and the background behind the story of a comics classic. Of course, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, at this point 50 years ago, the only convenient place for me to get comics was at the Treasure Island (San Francisco) Navy Exchange, which for reasons entirely unknown to me never included any Giant-Size mags on the racks, so I’d have to wait until X-Men #94 arrived to get my first taste of the new team. Interesting that Michael Friedrich was originally slated to write the series. I wonder how that would have worked out. His major run at Marvel was on Iron Man, aside from scripting Starlin’s plots on Captain Marvel and Englehart’s plots on a few issues of Captain America & the Falcon. I found his Iron Man reasonably entertaining most times but it was only at best average, not the sort of thing that ever made me think, “wow! That was great! Gotta read that again!” Of course, I wasn’t familiar with any of Claremont’s work at all when he came onboard, but he acquitted himself very well, sticking on the title far longer than usual for Marvel writers circa ’72 – ’85 and seeing the title rise to become Marvel’s bestselling title with multiple spin-offs during his tenure. Things worked pretty well for him too! But none of us could know what lay ahead when the All New, All Different X-Men arrived on the scene in 1975. Also notable on Kane’s cover, Wolverine appears at least a bit more prominent than the other newbies but not so much in Cockrum’s symbolic splash page. If Wein had stayed on, I suspect he would have played up Wolverine more than Claremont & Cockrum did, Wolvie having to wait until Byrne’s arrival to start his climb up into ever escalating prominence.
As to the current story itself, well, it worked to introduce the new members – those who stuck around for many years and those who were out pretty quickly. When I finally did read the story, I wasn’t particularly blown away by it, although I can’t say if it would have struck the same way if I had read it when it was brand new 50 years ago and may have been revved up by the excitement of new stories staring the X-Men, albeit a new version of the team. I’d only gotten maybe two or three issues of the original run, as well as X-Men Annual #1, all lost before I got #94. I had been collecting the reprints semi-regularly since whichever issue reprinted X-Men #27, featuring the Mimic and the Super Adaptoid (#77, I think). I’d also gotten a couple of the Beast’s solo stories and the gang’s appearances in Marvel Team-Up and CA&TF. I suppose it was pure coincidence that this very same month, the Beast would begin his long tenure with the Avengers, ultimately appearing in nearly as many issues of that team as he did in the original X-Men before he got so much more beastly and hairier. But now, the X-Men were on their way to an era of greatness that built on the promise of the Thomas/Adams era and the best of the early Kirby era.
For what it’s worth (yeah, I’m listening to Buffalo Springfield right now), the reprint issue of *X-Men* featuring the Mimic and the Super-Adaptoid is indeed #77, but the story it reprints originally appeared in #29.
You may be thinking of how the Mimic “re-entered” in #27.
The X-Men in *Marvel Team-Up* #4 aren’t in costume, and suggested that the Mod Squad had come to Marvel…although it was later explained to be a homage to the first two issues of *The Fantastic Four,* when the quartet didn’t wear official uniforms. This continued to the Angel’s appearance in *Amazing Adventures* #15, where the letter-answerer said that secret identities weren’t a problem, because “if a guy with wings was standing next to you on the subway, what would you look at?”
Comics have tried to apply such a rationale to heroines who don’t wear masks and expose much of their frontal “splendid protuberances” (as Rene Mathis might put in talking to James Bond), but as gay characters became more common in super-hero stories, I found that reasoning dubious.
Dee Tyler Phantom Lady: “Okay, Pied Piper, I’ve got you now!”
Pied Piper: “Let me go or I’ll tell the whole world you’re Dee Tyler!”
Dee Tyler Phantom Lady: “What? How? Why are you looking in my eyes?”
Pied Piper: “Because your body doesn’t interest me, darling.”
Dee Tyler Phantom Lady: “This never happened to Sandra Knight…”
Ah, right on the number I got but wrong on the mag it reprinted! Never read issue 27 or any reprint thereof — issue 77 is the only comic I have featuring the Mimic. I also missed the issue of Incredible Hulk wherein he reappeared and apparently died — and presumably, hasn’t yet made a comeback.
More musing on the Mimic — I read that story wherein a character with the powers of the original X-Men taking on an android with the powers of the Avengers circa 1966 and both were essentially mimics of the Super Skrull who had the powers of the Fantastic Four, and whom I’d first see in Captain Marvel #27, maybe within a year of reading X-Men #77.
I’d dispute the Super-Skrull as the template — Amazo was around first and “villain with all the team’s powers” is a logical enough idea to adopt independently.
Ah, I’d forgotten about the DC example and didn’t realize Amazo came first. Of course, the basic concept is an expansion of the concept of the evil counterpart of the hero — that is, one with powers that are basically the same as the heroes, of which I know there was at least one for the Golden Age Captain Marvel, such as Captain Nazi, probably others. Sinestro served that purpose for Green Lantern, and Reverse Flash for the Flash.
And there’s the evil counterpart team too. The Injustice Society, the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3, the Legion of Supervillains, the Frightful Four. Either with matching powers (the Syndicate) or conceived as an evil mirror (Frightful Four, Injustice Society).
So Glynis Wein was the inspiration for Phantom Girl’s look too?
As to this book, I had been reading and enjoying the X-Men in reprints, and will whenever they appear again, and had loved the Beast’s series so even if I hadn’t fallen in love with Cockrum’s art on Legion I would have picked this up. I was hooked from the get-go and still am. Legion and X-Men are my two most undying comic loves. I honestly wish they had kept Sunfire and Thunderbird longer though but understand the reasoning that the team need to pare down more than jettisoning the four originals that left. Sunfire could have used better characterization, and I felt that it was a mistake to kill off Thunderbird rather than just let him stomp off. I even had a pet theory of how to bring him back that I never shared.
Share now Steve, you’re amongst friends…this is a safe space! 🙂
Little things please little minds: although we’re still some way away from Wolverine (and most Claremont characters) signature “I’m the best there is at what I do” line, I just saw that in Hulk #181’s second page, Wolvie says “… I’ll just keep moving, if you please… because moving is the thing I do best!” Wait, what now? Does that mean he out-Travolta’s Travolta on the dance floor? How was this never a part of (singer and dancer) Hugh Jackman’s iteration of the character?
The Canadian Air Force officer was a Captain. You would guess the guy should be a MAJ or LTC . . . . At this point, the Canadian Armed Forces all shared support people, so Cockrum may bot have intended to draw an Air Force guy (but that is what he did), Cockrum’s dad was a USAF LtCol. and he was a USN veteran of the Vietnam, War, so I assume he knew what he was drawing.
Odd that Wein, Cockrum and the LSH’s Phantom Girl are all at the Grand Ol’ Opry with Sean.
One of the down sides of Cockrum’s tenure at Marvel is that he did fewer of there “Easter Eggs” there than he had at done at DC (except for X-Men #99, where Julie Schwarz, Clark Kent & Lois lane make a cameo appearance, that is).
This is great art.
Sam Granger was a sold inker but something was lost where someone else inked him. I thought Bob McLeod and Bob Layton were better.
i thought that Marvel initially wanted Cockrum to ink, but they made him a penciller, Given the speed issue. Maybe not a great allocation of talent.
This was a transformative comic for me in ’75 because it was the first Marvel comic I actually loved. Oh, I “liked” Spidey and the FF and wouldn’t miss an issue of DD or the Defenders, but for whatever reason, this new X-Men team, I just loved right from this first issue. As to the line-up, I’d always liked Cyclops and Wolverine looked like fun. I also liked Thunderbird and was disappointed by what happened to him a couple of issues from now. Sunfire, I thought, was a jerk and I was happy to see him go. Storm and Nightcrawler were my two favorites of the new group, however, and Nightcrawler in particular was the character that brought me back. I thought the idea here for a living mutated island created by nuclear radiation was cool, but there were really too many characters for anyone to do anything but posture and pose for the most part. The book was better once the group got whittled down to a more manageable roster.
I always liked Wein’s writing and I had really liked Cockrum’s work on the LSH, so of course, I enjoyed him here as well. All in all, it was an equation in which the sum was greater than it’s equal parts. Thank, Alan. For me, this was where Marvel really began to get good.
Chris Claremont was not exactly a “A List” writer at this point in 1975. He had been doing the (interesting in concept and narrative . . . but wordy) War Is Hell feature in Special Marvel Edition. He had done a nice fill in with Syd Shores on Daredevil #102.
Mike Friedrich showed some feeling for the X-man during his CA&F fill-in, but he did not have an unmixed record on new books.. Ant-Man in marvel Feature sank without a trace. His new Outlaw Kid stories briefly sold in 1872 . . . but soon sank,, too (It did not quite match the art in the 1950s reprints.)
I had thought in 1973-’75 That they wanted to revive the X-Men and that Steve Englehart was the likely writer, however, he did seem to be slowing down a bit by that time,
The War Is Hell feature (otherwise known as John Kowalski) appeared in the comic of the same name, not in Special Marvel Edition (that book became the home of Master of Kung Fu). War Is Hell was a reprint book for the first 8 issues and then used new material up to cancellation with issue 15.
Never got any issues of War Is Hell but based on comments I’ve read about it, appears it would have been worth checking out while Claremont was writing original stories for the mag.
The Dick Ayers issues are not particularly inspired, but there’s some excellent Herb Trimpe and George Evans stories.
Claremont initially wrote biased on its creator (Tony Isabella’s) plots.
However, he branched into things like the Russo-Finnish “Phony War;” Kowalski’s; service as a China Marine in the late 1920s or early 1930s; and rare successes the Polish Cavalry had against Germany Infantry, Artillery and support Troops. by letting the Panzers pass and hitting every thing else in bad terrain.
It looked like he dis some research.
Yeah, the one with the Atlas War Srory Reprints . . . .
Judging from previous comments, I may be on my own here.
Maybe I was a cynical and grumpy old man before my time, but I never really got into the all-new X-Men, despite my love for Cockrum’s LSH, and not even when the series took off under Claremont and Byrne and started all the fan buzz. Unlike Don above, I felt that this was a point when I became a bit jaded with much of Marvel’s output. Why reintroduce the X-Men if you’re not going to feature the X-Men that everyone had known up to that point? If these (mostly) new characters merited a series, why not a series of their own? It was their own series, of course, but I’ve always resented the use of an established brand to push something quite different.
This issue, and much of what followed, I always felt was aspiring to be in the vein of something like the Thomas/Englehart Avengers, but without the established history. It didn’t help that these were new characters, and some of the characterizations here felt shallow and a bit forced, just to create some interpersonal conflict within the team. The story itself felt quite competent and adequately done, but never moved me beyond that. I even felt that Dave Cockrum’s art was not all that it had been on LSH – I didn’t know then about the deadline pressures he must have felt, and I missed the lush finishes that he had brought to his previous work.
I’d note also some appallingly dated cliches: the torch-wielding mob in a small European village, and the proud native American mourning the capitulation of his tribe and wanting to ‘still be a man, amongst the Apache’. Digression: did the Bison that ‘covered these plains’, really fall ‘like rain before Apache skill, Apache bravery’, or fall like rain before New World settlers’ guns?
I’ve discussed at Atomic Junk Shop question of when membership changes mean its not the same team (https://atomicjunkshop.com/there-is-no-i-in-team-but-thats-not-my-point/). Didn’t have that problem with GSXM though. Maybe because at that point I had only minimal acquaintance with the original team. Or because the core concept for me is “team of mutants” rather than a specific membership roster.
You have a point about Proudstar. Like most Native American characters of that era, his anger doesn’t seem like it would lead to political activism or serious criticism of tribal/US relations, just nostalgia for preColumbian times.
Agree about the core concept, it just seems weird that with all their exposure through the reprints and their guest roles in Cap and Amazing Adventures, and the apparent sales upturn of the Thomas/Adams issues at the end of the first run, somebody seemed to have thought the OG team were popular enough to revive their title, then made the decision not to have them in it. Were people buying the Thomas/Adams issues because they liked the core concept, or because they liked those particular characters? Or maybe they just liked Thomas and Adams, I don’t know.
I wonder if the old team did not lift CA&F;s sales when they did the cross-overs in 1874? Or did not help The Avenger’s sales when they got cover featured in the 1973 Magneto story?
Neal Adams was definitely the main draw for me. I liked Thomas’ writing, but back in ’69 I wasn’t yet picking up books based on the writer.
I didn’t read any of the Adams-era X-Men stories until the 1980s and eventually I also read most of the pre-Adams X-Men stories. Most of the Kirby-er was good, occasionally great. Early Thomas was often painfully mediocre if not downright bad. However, those issues wherein the team essentially brokeup and the covers diminished the X-Men logo to give greater billing to whichever individual or pairing the mag focused on, struck me (reading them in the ’80s or ’90s) as simply some of the very worst super-hero mags I’d ever read, in both art & story, excepting Steranko’s brief run (artwise at least). On the other hand, Adams’ run was far more to my liking, and seemed to motivate Thomas to improve his writing.
I must admit, that as a child, I was more into particular characters, regardless of the quality of the writing & art, but gradually my focus changed so that the particular characters no longer mattered that much to me, at least not as much as the quality of the product itself. But then, one thing I really hated was when I felt an old favorite character was being portrayed completely out of character with no reasonable explanation. Maybe one reason I’m not very inclined to read new stories featuring characters I used to read about regularly a half century or more ago. I know some newer creators may be crafting great new stories about them, but some others — well, I’ve gotten the impression they’re not so good. But, hey, if modern, younger fans like them, so be it.
Can a band that no longer has any of its original members still have a right to identify as that band? Similarly, can a super hero team that no longer has its original line up be considered to have a valid claim on the team name? It’s the superhero version of the Ship of Theseus paradox!
There are a number of old bands from the sixties and seventies touring the world without a single member of the original band still among them. All it requires is a legal agreement with the living members of the original group or their families to pay a percentage of profits for the use of the name, logo, etc. I’ve seen several shows in the last couple of years, most recently, The Little River Band, who perform without a single original member. Are they still the same band? As Alan would say, “your mileage may vary,” but in a legal sense they are, and that does count for something. If Marvel wants to say that Wolverine, Storm and Nightcrawler are the X-Men, then they are. Maybe nor YOUR X-Men or mine, necessarily, but they are X-Men. Besides, the Mutants of GSX-Men #1 were connected to the original group, first by the use of Professor X and Cyclops and then by the return of the entire original team. And what do we mean by the “original” lineup? Was it not The Beatles without Pete Best or Stu Sutcliffe? These oh-so-precise definitions may serve your definition of the term, Chris, but to me the new team is the X-Men just as much as the old, especially looking back at both from the 20/20 hindsight of 2025. IMHO, of course…
I don’t think he’s complaining about the legality of Marvel creating a new X-Men. I don’t dispute the legality of Marvel creating things like the Stone Age Avengers but I still don’t count them as Avengers.
You’re right, having Professor X and Cyclops there helped. So did the fact the rest of the original team made the collective decision to leave — that makes the new team more a legacy team than just “nobody’s using the name, so we’ll pick it up.”
And, of course, who owns the Trademark (and possibly Trade Dress, think KISS or Paul Revere and the Raiders) is an issue. The ability to perform the band’s established repertoire might also be effected by who owns the rights and entities like ASCAP and BMI in addition to the rights holder could get involved.
Sometimes, there can be two competing iterations of some classic groups touring (or at least making the odd appearance). each with one or more original members (https://www.reddit.com/r/rock/comments/vpbxsr/bands_where_no_original_members_remain/?rdt=63973).
This could create a possible Lanham Act issue if you don’t differentiate between competing bands.
Stan Lee himself tested that out with Avengers #17, the first to feature the new roster with no actual original members (Captain America still being iced up over the course of the first three issues). Started a trend of playing around considerably with the line-up which rarely stayed stable more than 12 issues or so at a time. But over the course of his run, Thomas eventually brought back the original members, even if only for one issue in the case of the Hulk, who had already become a founding member of the Defenders by then.
It depends on the Band and where that Band was geographically.
There were plains Apache, who lived in Kansas who had a plains culture, based on buffalo hunting. If I remember there were Kiowa-Apache Bands in Texas that had a “Buffalo-based” culture and were the primary First Nations victims of the Comanche becoming a great power.
The Apache Bands in Arizona and New Mexico had an agriculture and hunter gatherer culture and generally lived in small villages in rough (usually mountainous) terrain.
,
When Geronimo finally surrendered in 1886, the USG basically left them alone, Back in 1990, I went to the MI Advanced Course at fT Huachica, AZ. part of the Course was the study of what was then called “Low intensity Combat'” (which the Marines call “Small Wars” and which the Army had called and would again, call COIN. As part of this, we studied the Apache Campaigns of Crooke and Miles and did staff rides up into Apacheria.
I served in The Middle East and Africa but I have bever seem anywhere materially poorer. But the people had great pride..
Thanks for the info, John. No question about Apache hunting buffalo, it was just the phrase “the bison that covered these plains fell like rain…”, which bothered me – ‘fell like rain’ sounds more like their near-extinction/slaughter than the actions of hunters or relatively small groups or tribes of hunters. The comic identifies Proudstar as being at Camp Verde, Arizona. From what you say, does that mean that Len Wein should maybe have picked another reservation, or fallen back on the comic book standard of making one up?
Probably. Or give John Proudstar superspeed and have him chase antelope and jack rabbits .. . . .
Not really environmentally friendly to run down that bison down either, unless he was bringing it back to his village to eat.
(Or it went into the freezer at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.)
Like many of you, I have a ridiculously good memory of where I was when I bought new comic books, as we had a number of different drug stores in my hometown of New London, Connecticut. Plus, my father was a pediatrician at the hospital, where he would leave me in the lobby shop at the foot of the spinner rack when he went on rounds. A half-century ago, this purchase was especially memorable because I got it in a foreign country. I had just turned 9 years old, and I went on a family trip to Canada in April of 1975, where we stayed partially in Quebec. My father picked me, the youngest of four, to accompany him on a mission to a pharmacy where he purchased a new pipe (for himself, not me). However, I came away with the more valuable prize, Giant-Size X-Men # 1.
Back then, every comic book was special to me, so I doubt that I considered it to be very special, other than that I loved all of it. Like you, Alan (and many of you others, I suspect), I loved superhero team books, so I don’t remember having to make a big decision about which comic book I got. Aside from my JLA subscription, I was still only getting one comic book at a time, not usually more than three a month.
I was familiar with the X-Men from my copies of X-Men # 72 and 73 (reprinting original issues # 21, 24 & 25), as well as Avengers # 111, so I was really intrigued by so many new characters and costumes. Having been too young to have caught the great Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run, I was really intrigued by the seemingly brand-new characters of Havok and Lorna Dane, along with the seemingly brand-new costume of the Angel, as well as all of the other new mutants on the team. Nightcrawler became my very favorite of the “all-new all-different” X-Men, what with his blue skin and prehensile tail, along with his freaky hands and feet. The introductory panels of Nightcrawler being saved by Professor Xavier from the mob of European villagers seems very similar to the depiction of the Scarlet Witch being saved by Magneto from the mob of European villagers in the flashback in the first appearance of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants back in X-Men # 4.
I wasn’t yet aware of specific artists’ styles, but I knew I really liked this Dave Cockrum fellow’s pages. Especially iconic in my memory was the panel of all of our heroes simultaneously blasting the mutant-island Krakoa, as well as the panels depicting the focusing of Storm’s lightning into Lorna Dane, augmented by the combined powers of Cyclops and Havok, and then channeled through Lorna so that the menace was vanquished by defying the laws of gravity. I’ve always assumed that the name “Krakoa” was a takeoff on the Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa, which erupted in 1883 in a cataclysmic explosion that was 13,000 times more powerful than the first atomic bomb, ejecting 6 cubic tons of rock into the sky, and heard all the way from Australia to the island of Mauritius off the East African coast.
At one of my trips to the Terrificon at the Mohegan Sun Casino before the Pandemic, I asked Roy Thomas about the impetus for creating this second iteration of the X-Men. He mentioned that there was also supposed to be a merchandising tie-in with a set of X-Men action figures, but apparently that part of the deal never came to fruition.
Lastly, I’m very grateful to learn from some of you that I wasn’t the only kid to unknowingly dispose of a copy of this staggeringly valuable comic book. By the late 1970’s, the only Marvel comic book I was still collecting was the Avengers, so I decided to sell all of my other Marvel titles in my collection to one of those comic book stores in the greater Hartford area. I think the owner gave me about $50 (a huge amount of money for me) for about 40 comic books, including such gems as Where Monsters Dwell # 13 and the Human Fly # 1, along with Giant-Size X-Men # 1, Uncanny X-Men # 94 and 106. By 1981, I realized to my chagrin that the owner must have been suppressing quite a smirk when he gave me such a “sweet deal”.
thanks for sharing Jay, those memories of the purchase are wonderful.
I lived in New London, CT, from May 1997 to May 1999, while serving on the ARDM-1 Oak Ridge (a floating drydock, decommissioned long ago now) in Groton. Found a great comics store with a great collection of mainstream, indie and underground comics (can’t recall the name of the store now, though). Also loved the college radio station there that played a very eclectic selection of songs.
Fred, my best guess is that the store was Sarge’s Comics on State Street, although I had already moved to the Hartford area by your time period. But Sarge’s has been there for quite a while.
https://www.facebook.com/SargesComics
And WCNI is the radio station for Connecticut College, which is right across the roadway from the Coast Guard Station.
wcniradio.org
Yep, I visited the station once for a fund drive, got a t-shirt, long since worn out, as well as a couple of cds that I still have. After mostly listening to WCNI for two years, I couldn’t stand going back listening to predominantly Comcast-controlled commercial radio.
And it was at Sarge’s that I not only filled in a few more holes in my old collection, but also got a lot of Love & Rockets & American Splendor comics and collections, as well as Too Much Coffee Man, among other titles.
Believe it or not, my Mom picked this up for me on one of her grocery shopping trips. I had pretty much just asked her to “pick me up a comic book if she saw one,” so thanks, Mom!!
That being said, I loved it. I had seen a reprint stories with the X-Men that appeared in one of the Giant-Size series, so I was intrigued and the whole concept of the team was still pretty new to me.
I continued the series until around 100, when my local distributor stopped carrying comics. I picked up a few off and on when I had a chance for several years before coming back at the end of the Phoenix Arc.
Dave Cockrum had become a favorite from his LSH work and I was excited when he returned to the book later.
The X-Men were always a favorite when I could get my hands on a copy.
Like Alan, I was open to buying new team books so I jumped on this one. I think they made great use of the larger format as it accommodated all the origin and Meet The Team material.
The Cockrum/Claremont and Cockrum/Byrne runs were so good, it’s depressing to read later X-material and see how thoroughly Claremont’s tropes swallowed him (https://atomicjunkshop.com/five-covers-five-stories-most-of-them-good/). Nothing says Claremont Story like a mind-controlled mutant in bondage gear.
I’ve learned from online conversation that for many fans — younger than me, Alan or Don, I believe — this is where the Bronze Age starts. I don’t agree — way too much had already changed by 1975 — but if I imagine if you start reading comics in the 1980s or 1990s, the new X-Men stand out head and shoulders above, say, the impact of GL/GA or New Gods or anything else.
I feel that this is a really good opportunity to point out that I feel that Dave Cockrum was an incredible character & costume designer. Comic book fans understandably rank Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko very highly when it comes to that particular skill set, but I believe that Cockrum’s work, first on the Legion of Super-Heroes feature and then on X-Men, as well as other titles & characters, really demonstrates just how imaginative he was at conceiving new characters, as well as at effectively re-imagining existing ones. I could start a list, but then we’d be here for quite a while.
OK, no one pointed out the aspect of this book that most frustrated me. It was supposed to have included a reprint of Avengers 53, the concluding chapter to the story reprinted in X-Men 93. Having missed GS 1, I was disappointed twice. When I picked up issue 94 and discovered a whole new team, and years later when I finally found a copy of GS 1. Thank goodness Marvel Triple Action finally reached that issue!
I soon learned to appreciate the new team, helped by the wonderful art of Dave Cockrum and the retention of my favorite X-Man, Scott Summers.
Alan, you are so lucky having this book. Alas, my collecting days are over so it is not even an aspiration for me.
This was a classy book, and the last ‘old’ X-Men story, at least until we had to suffer the mediocrity of X-Factor. Why ‘old X-Man’? Sure, the GS introduced the new characters, but in all honesty they became background characters once the main fight against Krakoa started, and victory and safety was gained through the actions of Polaris, Havok, Cyclops and Ice-Man. Len and Dave really wanted the team to go out on a high.
The art is joyful, although I note that Dave seemed happier drawing the new ( and his) characters, and not so much the Angel, Havok etc. Dave even had to resort to a few Adams swipes here and there where may have had difficulty ( I noticed these on 3 panels through the issue with Prof X, Iceman and Polaris).
GS#1 was not distributed in the UK ( as with all the GS books). But I already knew and loved the New X-Men even if I didn’t get the chance to pick up a comic until #96. How? Well, no one has mentioned FOOM #10, which features the new X-Men and pre-dated GS#1. I was a FOOM member by this time and devoured FOOM#10 when it arrived through the letterbox, with its gorgeous Cockrum cover cleverly showcasing both teams. I closely copied Dave;s interior drawing of Storm, and to this day, the FOOM cover is my favourite work by Cockrum.
Alan, you still have your copy of GS#1. I foolishly sold my cocoa stained copy many, many years ago. But I still have my copied drawing of Storm!
Ah, interesting. I don’t have a GS X-Men 1, but I do have FOOM 10. So I actually have the first published appearance of the New X-Men? Pass the Mylar!
Like you, being in the UK I didn’t get this one back in the day. In fact, the first I knew there was a new X-men team was when I found issue 97 on the spinner rack. It is still my favourite of the X-man stories of this era, maybe because it was the first one I’d bought and discovered all the new characters in it. I did manage to find a copy of issue 96 soon thereafter but never saw 94 or 95- maybe they weren’t distributed in the UK either? I picked up a black and white reprint of GS #1 in the Marvel UK Rampage Magazine issues 8 and 9 published in February and March 1979. Maybe that is where you first found it too?
96 was the first to be distributed in the UK (9p), but was fairly limited. 97 was more widely available and was the first I came across back in the day.
I gave up on British Marvel some time after MWOM 200. Not enough money to buy both US Marvels and UK Marvels unfortunately. And I had seen GS#1 ( or a part of) as I picked up the Italian reprint of GS1 ( at least the second part) while on summer vacation in Italy in ’77. X-Men#96 I still remember finding and purchasing in a WHSmith…the only time I remember buying a comic from that chain. Strange that now I forget names/faces but can still remember where I picked up comics!!
That seems to be a common theme in these parts. We have vivid recollections of when and where we made our purchases. Still seems like yesterday…
However, when it comes to where we left the car keys today….
A couple of slight corrections… I meant to say I sold my cocoa stained copy of…FOOM 10! Also I forgot about Storm’s key role in defeating Krakoa. Oh well………
I bought this comic, or some version of it, off the rack, but I was only 4 years old in 1975. Based on where I remember buying it, I would have been six or close to seven years old when I purchased the copy that ended up in my hands. Whichever version/printing it may have been, I definitely bought a new issue off the rack that had the main “New X-Men” story in it….
Wow!! (I say that a lot!!) Way back when in the early seventies I’d read some of the reprint X-Men and then started picking up the rebooted issues about the time Vindicator showed up. Somehow I missed this “First Issue.” Hadn’t read it until now. What impressed me, after the more, uh, cerebral moments of Prof. X gathering the team was the sheer ACTION pounding through the story! Loved it!! The series would get even better (Like the Hellfire Club, the trip to the Savage Land, and that notable scene on the Moon…) and I was a rabid reader through the Eighties. I remember reading part of the Savage Land arc warm inside my folks’ house during a Kansas blizzard. Thanks also for the writers and artists insights on their creative process. Magazines like this made me want to be a writer, which is what I wound up being. So, thanks folks!!