Comics Books Reviews: Secret

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Thursday, June 30, 2011

Uncovering the secret origin of mutants at Marvel

Panel from Lee & Ditko's 1963 "The Man In The Sky"

With the X-Men: First Class movie in theaters making people thing about the early days of homo superior, their origins go deeper than you think. Although it’s widely thought that Stan Lee & Jacky Kirby first introduced the ideas of mutants in the pages of 1963′s X-Men #1, the real story is buried deep in Marvel and Timely lore.

The first mutant story ever published by Marvel was 1952′s “The Weird Woman” in Amazing Detective Cases #11, in which a self-described “mutant” woman is searching, unsuccessfully, to find someone like her for companionship. That doesn’t even begin to consider Namor, which debuted in 1939 as one of comics first super-heroes. It took more than 20 years for Marvel to reclassify him as a mutant (in 1964′s X-Men #6), but he’s finally come full circle as a card-carrying X-Man in Matt Fraction’s Uncanny X-Men run. Marvel’s claim of Namor being “Marvel’s First Mutant” are true from a publication debut standpoint, but the oldest mutant remains Apocalypse, who was born in Egypt during the 30th century BC.

There were numerous mutant sightings before the X-Men burst onto the scene in 1963; there was an illusion-creating mutant in 1953′s Man Comics #28 (why doesn’t Marvel bring back THAT title?), as well as in 1959′s Journey Into Mystery #52. Of all the stories, probably the one that veers closest to what become the X-Man/mutant struggle came one year prior to the X-Men, in the pages of Adult Fantasy #14 from 1964. In it, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko tell a story of a man with immense telepathic powers who tries to sequester himself away from society to avoid the noise of other people’s minds. Overstreet Price Guide goes so far as to call this a “Professor X prototype story,” even though Ditko never drew an X-Men page in his life.

June 29, 2011 @ 09:31 AM by Chris ArrantTagged: marvel comics, mutants, x-men

5 CommentsKurt BusiekJune 29, 2011 at 9:46 am

X-MEN #6 brings up the possibility that Namor could be a mutant, but doesn’t confirm it — Xavier just wonders if he might be, and Magneto has a skeevy Atlantean tell him he is without any particular evidence. In the lettercols at the time, Stan decided Namor was a “non-mutant hybrid cross,” or some such. The issue didn’t arise again for years, but Namor was treated as a hybrid, not a mutant.

[And when it did arise, they had to do some hurried retconning to explain why Namora and Namorita had the very same mutation, if they were truly mutants.]

There was also a story about Chinese mutants in a Kirby-drawn issue of YELLOW CLAW; we wound up referencing it in MARVELS: EYE OF THE CAMERA #1.

Kurt BusiekJune 29, 2011 at 9:50 am

As for a Professor Xavier prototype story, I’d look to the SF prose work MUTANT, by Henry Kuttner, which features bald, telepathic, radiation-caused mutants fighting a secret war to protect humanity from evil mutants who want to enslave them all, but wary of a humanity that fears and hates them.

I’d bet that Stan and/or Jack (likely Jack) had read that, along with similar works, like SLAN by A.E. van Vogt and CHILDREN OF THE ATOM by Wilmar Shiras.

Al SchroederJune 29, 2011 at 10:31 am

Also there’s Olaf Stapledon’s ODD JOHN, one of the first treatments of the theme of homo superior—mutants who are the next step above man. I know it’s a very real influence on my webcomic, which sort of treads the same ground, even though my main character isn’t a mutant.—Al

WraithJune 29, 2011 at 11:11 am

“Marvel’s claim of Namor being ‘Marvel’s First Mutant’ are true from a publication debut standpoint, but the oldest mutant remains Apocalypse, who was born in Egypt during the 30th century BC.”

Thank you for pointing this out. Heaven knows why, but it bugs me every time Marvel splash “First Mutant” on a Namor story.

JulianJune 29, 2011 at 2:57 pm

When did the first mutant monster show up in comics? Had to be before Wierd Science. Did they ever show up in Flash Gordon or any Sunday Supplements?

Friday, May 6, 2011

Warren Ellis on Secret Avengers Villain

Oh, that wacky Warren Ellis, saying that he wants to call the above character Arnim Zola Jesus from now on. What will he think of next? However, in his defense Zola does look particularly Jesus-like in that image, what with the big robe and the open hands.
More importantly though, this hints at what could be one of the villains in his upcoming Secret Avengers run. We know from interviews that each issue is going to be stand-alone and feature one of the members of the team. Arnim Zola is a long-time Captain America foe, so it's probable that he would show up on the issue centering on Steve Rogers. Switching it up with another member of Secret Avengers (Beast, perhaps?) would be quite fun though. As far as I can tell, the last time Zola showed up was during Captain America: Reborn.
In Pullquotes, we present a quote and related imagery, to provide a source of discussion and/or thought among our readers. Feel free to comment on the above image.

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Posted byMatt Duarteat7:08 PM

Thought Bubbles:Pullquotes,Secret Avengers,Warren Ellis

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1 comments:

Space Jawasaid...

I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid purchasing Ellis' run on Secret Avengers at this point. <__<

May 3, 2011 7:24 PM

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Secret Origin of the Avengers

As I have said repeatedly before, Formspring is a constant source of information and interaction with comic book professionals, and no one shares more than Tom Brevoort. Marvel's SVP recently shared the as a book. I wasn't familiar with this story at all, and I don't think many people are, so I felt it was worth sharing it far and wide. Hit the jump to see how the Avengers got their start, and how Daredevil ties into everything.

On Brevoort's Formspring page, there had been a long discussion over what the Avengers roster should look like, and people complaining about the current team, etc. However, from there the discussion turned towards the origin behind the Avengers as a book, and Brevoort shared this little historical gem...
I don't have the room to do this justice, but here's a Reader's Digest version. Martin Goodman, Marvel's publisher at the time, was famous for flooding the market with anything that worked. So in early 1963, after the first bunch of Marvel super hero releases started to hit, he told Stan, "Give me another Spider-Man and another Fantastic Four." In other words, new characters who were very much like those characters, and would appeal to the same audience.

So two books were started: X-Men, which was the Fantastic Four style book (and even says so on the first two covers) with a team of heroes in identical blue costumes fighting a guy who resembles Doctor Doom on the cover; and Daredevil, which was the Spider-Man book (and says so on the first cover as well), the quippy urban adventurer. Now, Stan was smart enough to do more with these characters and concepts that simply knocking off his earlier characters, but that's where they started. But Bill Everett, with whom Stan co-created Daredevil, had both a day job and a drinking problem. And so production on DAREDEVIL #1 fell way behind. In those days, you booked print time way ahead of time--and if your book wasn't ready, you paid for the printing time anyway. So it was vital to get something to press on time. But Bill Everett was a favorite of Martin Goodman, stemming back to the 40s when he created the Sub-Mariner.

Regardless, there was suddenly a hole in the schedule, with no book where a book should be. In trying to solve this problem, Stan hit on the notion of doing a strip that brought all of the heroes together JLA-style--that would be a book that wouldn't require any ramp-up time, because the characters (and even the villain) all existed already. So he and Jack Kirby brainstormed the first issue, Kirby drew it up hastily, Dick Ayers inked it in what looks like no time flat, and it came out the same month as X-MEN #1. (DAREDEVIL #1 followed around six months later--with Steve Ditko pitching in to help finish it up, and with a different artist on it beginning with #2.)
Interesting, isn't it? Had Bill Everett not been running late with his work on Daredevil, things would have turned out completely different. I don't think that Marvel would have gone on long without a JLA-like team, considering how popular that franchise was, but it could have been at a later time, and with a completely different roster (even Daredevil) or maybe new characters. Hey, that sounds like an interesting “What If?”...
In any case, if you haven't checked Formspring yet, it really is a wonderful website to get involved with creators. Breevort answers a lot of questions, and while a lot of them are about calming down angry Jean Grey / Hulk / Thor fans, every now and then, we get really interesting behind the scenes look at the comic industry like the one above.

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Posted byMatt Duarteat3:36 PM

Thought Bubbles:Avengers,Formspring,Opinion/Editorial

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3comments:

Naymlapsaid...

To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

April 18, 2011 4:18 PM

twobitspecialistsaid...

This is actually rather interesting.

April 18, 2011 4:35 PM

Eric in Ottawasaid...

Tom Brevoort always has really interesting insights! For a while, he had a great, short blog series called something to the effect of "Books I screwed up."

Anytime he shares a story like this, I'm all ears (...or eyes).

April 18, 2011 8:00 PM

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