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).