X-Men (1963) #53

 

Cover by Barry Windsor-Smith

Cover Date: February 1969

On-Sale Date: December 1968

FIRST STORY: "The Rage of Blastaar!"

Synopsis: The X-Men fight Blastaar and fight Blastaar and fight Blastaar and fight Blastaar.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES:

Page 3

The X-Men have returned to the mansion, where Marvel Girl is testing out some of Xavier's "mind machines".  This one can apparently allow the user to use psychic energy to transmute their matter into radio energy, and beam their essence into deepest space.  Or some such bullshit, all it does in this story is summon Blastaar from the Negative Zone (and give Jean what appears to be an orgasm).  According to Jean, Xavier showed her these machines while he was training her in secret circa X-Men (1963) #40.

No mention is made in this story about the FBI having ordered the X-Men to split up; that story set-up quietly disappears from this point onwards.  (Then again, the X-Men spend very little time at the mansion until Xavier's return, so it's not like the FBI would have been able to find them.)

Page 14, panel 2

This is Blastaar, who spends the whole issue fighting the X-Men while shouting things like "I am a living weapon -- aimed at your vitals!"  He's decidedly not an X-Men villain, and I'm not sure he'll show up in this project again.  He's seemingly killed at the end of the issue (by standing in melted ice and being electrocuted), but like Cyclops says, "Wherever men live with hate in their hearts -- Blastaar lives there, too!"

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story takes place in a single day, an unspecified amount of time after last issue.

SECOND STORY: "Welcome to the Club, Beast!"

Synopsis: The X-Men help Hank defeat the Conquistador, and Hank joins the X-Men as the Beast.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES:

Page 1

The sun is about to come up, so I need to figure out when midnight happened in the last issue.  I'm thinking it was probably between page 4.1 and 4.2.

Page 5

The Conquistador dies here (something which Professor X proudly takes credit for).  As far as I'm aware, he never appears again, which is no great shame.  Beast joins the team at the end of the story, and Professor X makes sure to mindwipe everyone in his hometown.  What this ignores is that Hank's last football game was being filmed, and presumably broadcast on TV.  I don't know how many people generally watch college football games in the US, but I gather that it's somewhere in the vicinity of "a lot".  Covering up something of this scale seems to be a little bit out of the professor's league at this point, but he must have managed it somehow (or was satisfied with merely wiping the minds of everyone who knew Hank personally).

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story takes place over a single day, the same day as the end of last issue (December 8th).

Avengers (1963) #60

Cover by John Buscema
(with some alterations by John Romita)

Cover Date: January 1969

On-Sale Date: November 1968

Synopsis: The X-Men attend the wedding of the Wasp and Yellowjacket.  The wedding is attacked by the Circus of Crime, but the Avengers deal with it.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 1

Right there on page one, we have a concrete date for the wedding of the Wasp and Yellowjacket: Tuesday, November 21st.  The last calendar reference we got in an X-Men comic was in X-Men (1963) #40, where it was said to be Autumn, so everything since then has happened in the space of around three months.

Cap's bit about Yellowjacket only appearing for the first time a few days ago isn't all that relevant to the X-Men, but it does highlight just how messed up this wedding is.  Yellowjacket is Hank Pym, but a few days ago the guy got caught in a lab accident that gave him an alternate personality, and made him believe that he had actually murdered Hank Pym.  He hasn't taken his mask off yet, so nobody knows his identity except for the Wasp (who figured it out when he kissed her).  So of course she does the right thing, and takes this as her chance to marry Hank while he's experiencing a psychotic break.  Yes, their marriage gets pretty messed up later, but let's be real here, it was messed up from the beginning.

Page 8

The X-Men are seen hanging out together in the background (except for Cyclops, who is in the bottom corner sucking up to Captain America).  This issue came out concurrently with X-Men (1963) #52, so I assume that they're here between #52 and #53.  Angel can be seen in the background of another panel, just before a giant snake pops out of the wedding cake to attack the Wasp.  You'd think this would put the heroes on high alert, but the X-Men (and everyone else except for the Avengers) take off soon after, before the Circus of Crime makes its move.

Page 5, panel 1

The wedding of Reed and Sue Richards, from Fantastic Four Annual (1965) #3, apparently happened a few years ago.  I currently have it in April of XY 1, about 1.5 years before this story.  That's not quite enough for me to consider it as covering a few years; I'll have to write this off as a reference to real-world time, not in-universe time.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story all takes place in one day (Tuesday November 21st to be specific).

X-Men (1963) #52

Cover by Marie Severin

Cover Date: January 1969

On-Sale Date: November 1968

FIRST STORY: "Twilight of the Mutants!"

Synopsis: Iceman proves that Magneto isn't Lorna's father, and the X-Men defeat Magneto and Mesmero.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES:

Page 1

Cyclops/Erik the Red has broken through the defenses of Mesmero's Mutant City between issues.  Mesmero mentioned that Magneto was crippled last issue when some rubble landed on him.  It's easy to miss, because it was never shown in the art.  This entire plot point is entirely conveyed through dialogue.

Page 8, panels 1 to 3

Here's where we learn that Erik the Red is really Cyclops.  The whole plan for him to wear a disguise and infiltrate Magneto's band was cooked up between page 14 and 15 of last issue.

Page 13

While the rest of the X-Men were working on Cyke's bondage suit, Iceman went off to Lorna's home town to question her family and read newspaper files.  (The Marvel Database says that her place of birth was probably in northern California, but it's never been confirmed.  Last issue she said that her home is 1,200 miles away, so wherever she lives currently it's nowhere in California.)

According to Iceman, Lorna's real parents died in a plane crash just weeks after she was born.  She was raised by her aunt's family, who never told her that she was adopted.  How this negates Magneto's claims of fatherhood isn't clear, but it's enough that Lorna believes it I guess.  (Besides, it turns out much later that she really is Magneto's daughter.  Iceman is a shoddy researcher.)

Page 15

By the end of this story Mesmero is defeated, Magneto has escaped, and the mutant city is blown up.  (Presumably Mesmero escaped off-panel with Magneto.)  The big loose end here is the fact that Mesmero had assembled an army of mutant Demi-Men.  I don't think it's outright stated, but I assume these were latent mutants that he summoned with the psyche-generator, much as he did with Lorna.  The question is, where did these mutants go when the story was done?  I guess the easy answer is to say that they all died when Mutant City exploded, but surely there were some survivors.  Perhaps their powers faded away after the psyche-generator was destroyed?  That seems like a much more likely answer: Lorna's powers are fading away the next time we see her, and I don't think that's ever explained.

COUNTING THE DAYS:

This story takes place over a single day, the same day as the end of last issue.

SECOND STORY: "The Crimes of the Conquistador!"

Synopsis: Hank helps the Conquistador steal an experimental nuclear reactor.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES:

Page 2, panel 5

It takes this story a couple of pages to catch up with last issue's cliffhanger, so the back-ups to #51 and #52 are somewhat intertwined.

Page 3, panels 2 to 5

Professor X notes that Cerebro is in its "first stage of perfection".  When we last saw it in the back-up to #42 it was still being called Cyberno.  Note also that although Xavier tells the X-Men about Cerebro's existence, he doesn't name it and doesn't allow the X-Men to see it.  We're still working with the idea that he's keeping it top secret (at least until issue #7; perhaps once the X-Men graduate he's happy to let them know about it).

Page 5

There's not much else going on with this story, which ends on a cliffhanger that concludes next issue.  Normally I would have done a post updating the timeline at the end of last issue, but with this issue ending the Lorna/Mesmero story, and next issue ending the Beast back-up, I'll do the update post after issue #53.

COUNTING THE DAYS:

This story takes place over one day, the same day as last issue (still December 8th of XY -2).  It possible that page 4.2 to 5.7 happen after midnight, if it's necessary for that to happen.

X-Men (1963) #51

Cover by Jim Steranko

Cover Date: December 1968

On-Sale Date: October 1968

FIRST STORY: "The Devil Had a Daughter!"

Synopsis: Magneto convinces Lorna to join him by claiming that he is her father.  The X-Men escape from the Mutant City, and Magneto's legs are paralyzed by some falling rubble.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 13

There's not a lot that I need to cover in this story, as it's mostly a long fight scene.  The most important moments are Lorna joining Magneto, and Magneto's legs being paralyzed by falling rubble, but neither of those are relevant beyond next issue.

Page 15

I couldn't make a post on this issue without sharing this page, which introduces the world to Erik the Red, the X-Men's resident bondage viking.  Believe it or not this is Cyclops in disguise, trying to infiltrate Magneto's forces.  The X-Men (but let's be real, the Beast did the work) must have spent the days-long gap between pages 14 and 15 creating a suit that can redirect Cyke's optic blasts through his gloves.  (The Arnold Drake run on X-Men is buck-wild, you guys.)

COUNTING THE DAYS:

This story spans several days, as follows:

• Day 1:
• Page 1 to 14: The X-Men escape the mutant city, but Lorna joins Magneto.
• Several days later:
• Page 15: Cyclops attacks the mutant city in his Erik the Red get-up.

SECOND STORY: "The Lure of the Beast-Nappers!"

Synopsis: El Conquistador sees Hank's football prowess, and kidnaps his parents so that Hank will work for his criminal gang.  Professor X sends the X-Men to investigate.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES:

Page 2

The Conquistador and his gang have been waiting a long time for his plan to come to fruition.  We don't learn what that plan is in this issue, but apparently it requires the aid of someone with moderately super-powered strength and agility.  (Come on Conquistador, just hire a circus acrobat or something.)

Page 3, panels 1 and 2

Presented without further comment, it must be noted that Hank attended a gay victory celebration between pages 2 and 3.

Page 5, panels 2 and 3

Cerebro detected Hank between page 4 and 5, and Professor X sent Iceman to investigate.  Note that Iceman's knowledge of Cerebro in this flashback story is something of a continuity error; Xavier kept it a secret for a while, revealing it first to Cyclops in X-Men (1963) #7.  The other X-Men didn't find out about it until a few issues later.

Page 15, panel 3

Angel is appearing here before his origin back-ups.  Why they did it this way is a mystery to me, but it should be noted that his upcoming series in issues #54 to #56 take place before this.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story takes place in a single day, the same day as last issue (December 7th of XY -2).

X-Men (1963) #50

Cover by Jim Steranko

Cover Date: November 1968

On-Sale Date: September 1968

FIRST STORY: "City of Mutants"

Synopsis: Lorna is taken by Mesmero to his mutant city, where her magnetic powers are awakened.  Magneto shows up to declare that he is Lorna's father.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 3

Last issue, I discussed the narrow window of time available for Magneto to have recruited Mesmero and built the psyche-generator.  Now we learn that Mesmero's running an entire city of mutants, something Magneto definitely couldn't have set up in a matter of days.  I guess it's possible that Mesmero did all this on his own after being left to his own devices, but come on, it's Mesmero.  It's amazing just how much better this story fits after its version of Magneto is retconned into being a robot impostor.

Page 8

Oh look, Magneto invented some special knock-out gas as well!  Boy, what a busy week he had after returning to Earth.

Page 12, panel 5

Mesmero's claim here that the X-Men killed Magneto is the main reason I don't just have Magneto setting all of this up after his last appearance in Avengers (1963) #53.  It all has to happen before that, unless Mesmero is lying here for some reason.  He doesn't have any reaction at all to Magneto's appearance later in the story, so it's difficult to say either way.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story takes place in a single day, the same day as last issue.

SECOND STORY: "This Boy -- This Bombshell!"

Synopsis: Hank McCoy becomes a star footballer in college, and during a game he stops some thieves and becomes a hero.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 1

Hank is shown here as a preternaturally strong and agile toddler.  Assuming that he's around 3 years old here, I've placed this in XY -15.

Page 2, panels 1 and 2

Hank looks to be around 8 years old here, which places this scene in XY -10.

Page 2, panels 3 to 5

Hank is a freshman here, so he's in his first year at university.  This would suggest that he's around 18 here, but I currently have him turning 18 in XY 0 (around the same time as his illustrious pro wrestling career in X-Men (1963) #8).  So it looks like Hank went to university at a younger age than most, probably 16 (which would place this scene in XY -2).  That works for Hank: not only is he smart enough, he's also strong and agile enough that it's plausible for him to become a star sportsman despite his relative youth.

The football team has lost the last five games straight.  We know from the Iceman back-up in X-Men (1963) #44 that these stories are supposedly taking place in 1963.  That's a topical reference that will be made irrelevant by the sliding timeline, but it does at least let us know when writer Arnold Drake intended these back-ups to happen.  As such, I can date this story using a calendar of the 1963 University Football Season.  No doubt I'm about to display my complete ignorance of American football, but here goes.

Hank apparently attended Bard College (don't ask me when that was revealed; it's in his entry at the Marvel Database).  This fits with him living in New York (Bard College is real; Chris Claremont went there!).  Bard College isn't listed on the NCAA page I linked to above, so I guess their football team played in a different division, but whatever.  That's the only football calendar I could find going back that far.  According to that page, the season kicked off on September 20th.  Assuming that Bard's games were all played on Saturday, that means the team's five losing games happened on September 21st, September 28th, October 5th, October 12th, and October 19th.  The scene above, where Hank joins the team, happens somewhere between the 19th and the 26th of October.

Page 3, panel 3

Since Hank joined the team, they've won six games straight.  These games happened on October 26th, November 2nd, November 9th, November 16th, November 24th, and November 30th.  The game above is happening on December 7th.  Coincidentally enough, that's the last date listed for the 1963 season on Wikipedia.

If we cast our minds back to the Beast origin flashbacks from X-Men (1963) #15, they show Hank celebrating that his team has won the conference championship.  That would be the same game depicted above. I think that makes sense with this being the final game of the season, assuming they ended up with more wins than the other teams in the conference. I could be wrong; I'm Australian, so I don't know how inferior versions of football work.  I guess they go and play in a Bowl of some sort after this?  (Not that it matters, Hank won't be there. I assume they go right back to losing after he leaves.)

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story spans well over a decade, as follows:

• Page 1.1: Flashback to Hank's dad saving the power plant, probably happens in XY -19.
• Page 1.2 to 1.3: Hank as a strong and agile toddler. Probably in XY -15.
• Page 2.1 to 2.2: Hank crushes his uncle's hand. Probably in XY -10.
• Page 2.3 to 3.2: Hank joins the college football team. Probably in XY -2, between September 19 and 26.
• Page 3.3 to 5.5: Hank stops some thieves while playing football. Happens on December 7th, probably in XY -2.

X-Men (1963) #49

Cover by Jim Steranko

Cover Date: October 1968

On-Sale Date: August 1968

FIRST STORY: "Who Dares Defy... the Demi-Men?"

Synopsis: Magneto's disciple Mesmero and his Demi-Men summon an army of latent mutants with their psyche-generator.  One of those mutants is Lorna Dane, who is found and taken in by Iceman and the rest of the X-Men. Mesmero leads his army to find Lorna and declare their worship for her.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 2, panels 1 and 2

Angel, having returned to the mansion just because he felt nostalgic, recalls that he and the X-Men had shut down all of Xavier's machines before they left.

Page 3, panels 1 and 2

Cerebro apparently has an emergency circuit that turns itself on when it senses emerging mutant energy.  (How does it sense that energy when it's switched off so that it can turn itself on?  Marvel technology is weird.)  It's currently sensing a huge number of mutants on the move; how long it's been registering these mutants is unclear.

Page 3, panel 5

After Iceman and Beast moved out to California (San Francisco to be more precise), Iceman organised a cover job for them: sky-divers billed as the Danger Twins.  You'd think a smart guy like Hank would have been able to come up with something better.

Page 6, panel 1

Mesmero and his army of mutant Demi-Men are worshippers of Magneto, who apparently set them up and created the psyche-generator seen here.  This poses something of a continuity problem: when the hell did Magneto have time to arrange any of this?  He's been stuck on the Stranger's planet since X-Men (1963) #11, and didn't return until circa X-Men (1963) #42.  He was only back for a week or so before his apparent demise in Avengers (1963) #53.  Mesmero later accuses the X-Men of having killed Magneto, so he can't have set it up after Avengers #53.  The "week or so" between his return and "death" is really the only time when he can have recruited Mesmero and created the psyche-generator, but he also had to spend that week preparing his plans for the Avengers/X-Men crossover. It was a busy week, I guess.

Of course, later revelations will make that placement somewhat moot.  It's revealed in X-Men (1963) #58 that this "Magneto" was actually an android.  Its creator isn't revealed at the time, but is later said to be Starr Saxon, the Machinesmith.  So there's a much wider span of time that this can have been set in motion, or at least there will be in future versions of the timeline.  For every update of the timeline, I try to only consider the comics published up to that point.   Later timelines will factor in the robot retcon, but for now I have to pretend that this is really Magneto.

Page 8, panel 1

Lorna was mesmerised by the psyche-generator, and has apparently travelled 1,200 miles to San Francisco.  (You could believe from this issue that she travelled all that time between Mesmero activating the machine on page 6 and her appearance on page 7, but that's probably not true.  The mutant army was on the move before the start of this issue, so Mesmero has definitely used the psyche-generator more than once.) From the book it seems as though she's walked the whole way, but let's assume that she was at least functional enough to get on a bus or something.

Page 8, panels 3 and 4

The Avengers apparently loaned Angel a supersonic jet for long-distance travel.  I suppose he did work with them recently, but I doubt the Avengers just handed over a jet because Angel asked nicely.  I suspect that FBI agent Fred Duncan might have put in a request.

Page 9, panels 1 to 4

Hank has been working on a portable version of Cerebro.  All of this is happening at Hank and Bobby's apartment in San Francisco, which they must have organised before getting a job as sky-divers.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story all takes place in a single day, probably a number of weeks after Beast and Iceman were last seen in X-Men (1963) #47.

SECOND STORY: "A Beast is Born"

Synopsis: Norton McCoy saves a nuclear power plant, and gets exposed to atomic radiation. Some time later his wife gives birth to a mutant baby named Hank McCoy.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 5, panels 3 to 6

The birth of Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, is obviously the most relevant part of this story.  Based on clues in other issues, I've worked out that Hank turns 18 roughly half-way through XY 0.  This puts his birth in Summer of XY -18.  I'll elaborate on the placement of the rest of the story below.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story spans a number of years, ending with Hank's birth in XY -18.

• Page 2.1 to 2.4: Norton McCoy and Edna Andrews are married. They move into their new home close to where Norton will be working at an atomic power plant.
• Page 2.5 to 4.4: "Shortly after that", Norton heroically stops the plant from going into meltdown, and is bathed in radiation.  I'd say that "shortly after" means it's probably happening no more than a few months after the marriage.
• After a few months of recovery, Norton finds a new job in a new town (as mentioned on page 5.1).
• Page 5.1 to 5.2: Norton and Edna find out they're going to have a baby.  This probably happens around 6 or 7 months before the next scene, towards the end of XY -19.  (I'd probably place all of the preceding scenes in XY -19.)
• Page 5.3 to 5.6: Hank McCoy is born. (This happens in Summer of XY -18).

X-Men (1963) #48

Cover by Sal Buscema or John Romita
(sources differ)

Cover Date: September 1968

On-Sale Date: July 1968

FIRST STORY: "Beware Computo, Commander of the Robot Hive!"

Synopsis: Cyclops and Marvel Girl, now operating out of New York, defeat the villainous android Quasimodo and his army of robots.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 2, panels 1 to 4

Since the X-Men were forced to split up last issue, Jean has taken on a job as a model, using it as an excuse to her parents for not coming home.  She and Cyclops have been ordered by the FBI to operate out of New York; Beast and Iceman have been sent to California; and Angel will be working as a "roving agent".  Don't get too attached to this exciting new set-up folks, it'll be over by next issue.

The above sequence also features what I believe is the first thought balloon from Jean that contradicts the upcoming Xavier/Changeling retcon.  She's been pretty vague in her mourning so far, but here she specifically thinks about how "the professor" sacrificed himself to stop Grotesk.  It's going to be difficult to reconcile that with the idea that she knew Xavier was alive all along.

Page 3, panels 3 to 5

Since she started working as a model, Jean has averted three near-disasters.  Note that she's described as new to the job on the first page; what kind of a workplace are these people running?

I'm not gonna lie, I included this page just for the last panel.  That's Cyclops of all people being swooned over by a bunch of bikini models.

Page 6 panels 1 to 4

Cyclops has only just landed a job as a radio reporter (or he got the job a while ago and has managed to keep it a secret from Jean, which seems unlikely).  He just recorded his first report a few hours ago.  It sounds about as exciting as you'd expect a Scott Summers radio report to be, but I really do wonder how he managed to walk into a job like that.

Page 14, panel 7

In this issue Cyclops and Marvel Girl face an army of robots called Cybertrons, under the command of a bigger robot called Computo.  They're stealing technology from Scott's radio station for uhhh... reasons.  Behind the scenes, the real mastermind is Quasimodo, the Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organism, who makes a quick getaway once he's been exposed.

Quasimodo first appeared back in Fantastic Four Annual (1966) #4, around the same time as X-Men (1963) #26, where he was created by the Mad Thinker as part of a plot to destroy the FF.  At that point he was just a computer, but in Fantastic Four Annual (1967) #5 (circa X-Men (1963) #38), the Silver Surfer came along and gave him a misshapen android body.  Quasimodo went on a rampage, and at the end of that story the Surfer transformed him into a stone gargoyle on a clock tower.  How Quasimodo got from that state to commanding an army of robot drones is a mystery that has never been answered.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story takes place over a single day (probably a weekday, as Cyclops says it's a business day on page 11.2).  It can't be more than a few weeks since the last issue, as Scott and Jean are only just now settling into their new lives since the team disbanded.

SECOND STORY: "Yours Truly, the Beast"

Synopsis: The Beast explains his powers and abilities to the reader.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 4, panel 1

As with the spotlights on Cyclops and Iceman, there's very little in this story that's of chronological relevance.  It's interesting to note that Hank claims to have 37 US patents at this point in time.  What they are is anyone's guess: the only thing we've seen him invent so far is the ray that increased the power of Unus the Untouchable.

X-Men (1963) #47

Cover by Don Heck

Cover Date: August 1968

On-Sale Date: June 1968

FIRST STORY: "The Warlock Wears Three Faces!"

Synopsis: Iceman and Beast find the Warlock masquerading as a mystic called the Maha Yogi.  They stop his plan to build an army of hypnotised slaves.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES:

Page 1

Days have passed since the X-Men were forced to split up last issue.  Iceman and Beast both live in the New York area, so it makes sense that they'd be hanging out together while they still can.  Presumably this story happens before they receive their letters from Agent Duncan telling them where they'll be stationed.

Page 4, panel 2

The Warlock, who you might remember from X-Men (1963) #30, was last seen being carried off by the Angel in a comatose state.  It's not clear what the X-Men did with him, but I suspect they either handed him over to the authorities or put him back in his sarcophagus.  Whatever they did, he since woke up and freed himself, and has taken on the guise of a mystic known as the Maha Yogi.  Apparently he's been touring cities and hypnotising his audiences, preparing an army of slaves that he can call on at any time.

This might be the last time we hear from the Warlock/Maha Yogi.  He has later run-ins with Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Captain Marvel, but I don't think he ever crosses paths with the X-Men again.

COUNTING THE DAYS

This story takes place over a single day, only days after last issue.

SECOND STORY: "I, the Iceman"

Synopsis: Iceman tells the readers all about his powers.

CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

Page 1

This story is a featurette about Iceman, in which he goes into detail about how his powers work.  It's not in continuity, so it has no bearing on the timeline.