Strange Tales (1951) #128 (1st story)

Cover by Jack Kirby

Cover Date: January 1965

On-Sale Date: October 1964

Synopsis: Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver seek help from the Fantastic Four, as they wish to leave Magneto's Brotherhood. Instead they end up fighting the Thing and the Human Torch, and decide that Magneto is the only one they can trust.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

The X-Men don't appear in this story; the only relevant characters that appear are Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. For the most part I won't be tracking their appearances outside of the x-books, but it seems appropriate to do so while they're primarily X-Men villains.

Page 2, panel 3

This quick flashback to the Scarlet Witch's origin is depicted pretty much exactly as it was in X-Men (1963) #4.

Page 2, panels 5 and 6

These panels depict most of the publicly active super-heroes at the time (with the X-Men being a notable omission). The only one we haven't seen before is Daredevil, so this is confirmation that he's active by this point.

Page 3, panels 4 to 6

The X-Men have just released official photos of the Brotherhood to the media.  This seems like an odd thing for them to do without Professor X around, as the original X-Men defer to him on pretty much every important decision.  It could perhaps be a reaction to the mob violence that Beast and Iceman were subjected to in X-Men (1963) #8; the X-Men may believe that if they identify the evil mutants, anti-mutant sentiment might be focused on them rather than mutants in general.

Page 4, panels 1 to 4

Here we get a pair of flashbacks to the events of Strange Tales (1951) #120 and Fantastic Four (1961) #28. They don't have any new information to impart.

Page 12, panel 5

This is the first time that the Thing and the Human Torch meet Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. They don't part on the greatest of terms, but this issue is the strongest indication yet that the two "evil mutants" are destined to be something other than villains.

COUNTING THE DAYS

The entirety of this story takes place in a single day, probably between X-Men (1963) #8 and #9.