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.