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).