By the time the X-Men debuted in September 1963, we Marvel fans already prided ourselves on insider knowledge.
The Beast we recognized as a variation on the Thing/Hulk theme — a powerfully built bruiser with a name that would be appropriate to a monster. But Stan Lee and Jack Kirby fooled us on that one, playing against type. The Beast’s primary super power was not strength but agility, and instead of a limited and crude vocabulary Hank McCoy possessed a superabundant and grandiloquent one.
But we were certainly right about Iceman. Here was a mirror image version of the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, an impulsive, exuberant teenager whose powers were based on cold rather than heat.
From the first issue of the X-Men, we readers looked forward to a clash and/or team-up between the two. As was the case with the Hulk versus the Thing and the Human Torch versus the Sub-Mariner stories, Lee was happy to accommodate us, this time in Strange Tales 120 (May 1964).
Also, Kirby returned to the Human Torch feature after a five-issue absence, and gave the story his uniquely dynamic zing.
And over in Tales to Astonish 55, Giant-Man had a rematch with his running foe the Human Top. Henry Pym had a lot of trouble with super-speedster Davy Cannon because he’d been accustomed to fighting crime at insect size. When he became a giant, though he was stronger, Pym was somewhat hindered by awkwardness.
“(H)aving the ability to become a giant isn’t a guarantee of success in battle, and the Top’s abilities have demonstrated there are ways to evade and escape a lumbering pursuer and to turn his size advantage against him,” observed the blogger Comicsfan.
Vincent Mariani:
ReplyDeleteAfter doing a succession of variations on Jekyll and Hyde with The Thing and The Hulk, Lee and Kirby introduced The Beast in X-Men #1. The Thing had started out as a tragic monster, but was evolving into a more lovable lug. The Hulk's demeanor would alternate from righteous brutishness to normal intellect and back. With The Beast, the characterization started out as a crass, aggressive, nasty lout, unapologetic in an ape-like body. The first incarnation of the character was probably the single most unlikeable protagonist in the entire Marvel cast, with a saving grace in the visuals, as Hank McCoy used both hands and feet with amazing athletic dexterity.
The bestial characterization didn't last, though, as the Beast quickly transformed into a wordy, slightly pretentious highbrow, in one of the great examples of early Marvel's flexibility towards creating a world where all of the individual pieces would fit together in the best possible way.
Vincent Mariani:
ReplyDeleteIt was a neat trick Lee and Kirby pulled, turning Ant-Man into Giant-Man...and making him even more accessible and appealing as a hero. The key was making his size occasionally as much a drawback as an asset, and also making him bigger but not necessarily stronger than some of his foes, like the Hulk.
And the Wasp, able to shrink in the manner of Ant-Man and sting much larger enemies with precision, served as a perfect counterbalance.
Alaric Shapli:
ReplyDeleteI always assumed that Iceman's code name was a deliberate reference to the guys who used to haul ice around for a living. A clever way to repurpose an existing word.
I replied:
Good point. But "snowman" was also a familiar term. I suspect Iceman was chosen because ice is more dangerous than snow. Interesting, too, that Iceman and Marvel Girl were the only two of the original X-men to use the traditional "superness" plus "gender" code name.
Bob Doncaster:
ReplyDeleteThe Beast's intelligence and use of big words always made me think of Johnny in the Doc Savage novels.
I replied:
I imagine Stan was thinking of him, too.
Michael Fraley:
ReplyDeleteI still regard the first few years of Gi-Ant-Man as my favorite iteration of the character. I first encountered him when he returned to the Avengers as Goliath, in some powerful work by Don Heck at his peak. Later, I caught up on his first adventures through back issues that I'd purchased at an outdoors flea market. I loved the Kirby / Heck collaborations, enjoyed the Ayers & Reinman artwork, and was charmed by the goofy kid-friendly villains. Each month, he faced bad guys faster, stronger, or even bigger than he was. After Bob Powell took over the art chores in #66, I quickly lost interest. His redesign looked clunky, giving Gi-Ant-Man a crustacean-like helmet and armor. Along with Gil Kane & Roy Thomas's Captain Mar-Vell, Gi-Ant-Man is among my small group of favorites, along with Gene Colan's work on Ironman. This is apart from classics that populate EVERYONE'S lists, like FF and Spider-Man.
Richard Meyer:
ReplyDeleteI remember that Beast actually was a hairy and lumbering brute in the first issue who tried to forcibly kiss Jean and got telekinetically sent to the ceiling. I don’t know when they changed their minds, but it was a good change.
I replied:
Clearly, Lee and Kirby had not yet worked out the Beast’s personality. But by the third issue, they had hit on the solution.
Play against type. Make the brute an intellectual. Expand his physical agility to include mental agility. This time, the Beast’s dust-up with Iceman has a distinctly different tone. “Little man, did anyone ever tell you that you are a feather-brained fathead?” he says. “If it weren’t for the fact that I abhor violence…”
Johnny Williams:
ReplyDeleteDan, firstly, I loved the original X-Men at first sight. To me, they were the first ‘new super team’ with what I coined ‘The Marvel Feel.' The FF in all of their very ‘Not-DC’ uniqueness were of course the grandparents of the whole thing, while the Avengers had a sort of (loosely) JSA-JLA vibe to them; in that they were a bunch of independent superheroes come together to combat common foes, but from wildly, widely diverse backgrounds and they bickered, as did the aforementioned Fantastic Four, which was very un-DC of both groups.
But it was with Professor Charles Xavier and the students of his - School For Gifted Youngsters, a freaking brilliant concept in its own right, that we began to ‘get’ a hybrid that contained elements of both -- a uniqueness like the FF possessed, in one case a superheroic family unit and in the other a superheroic student body; and those students also came together from widely diverse backgrounds to fight common foes like the Mighty Avengers as stated above. And yes, there was bickering. It wouldn’t have been early Marvel if there weren’t. Lol. This new, hybrid of both paradigms had to my way of thinking a distinct ‘Feel’ that was like nothing (purely) before it.
Over time with familiarity came the ‘family feeling’ to the team; and much later, with the recruitment of new, more diverse, older non Xavier student’s members (Storm, Logan, Banshee, Thunderbird) we finally got a sort of Avengers vibe at last. However, in the beginning, The Uncanny X-Men were distinctly a Marvel creation. Inevitable comparisons to the Doom Patrol* notwithstanding they were truly their own thing.
*The Doom Patrol were Also very, very different from just about anything else around, including the X-Men; therefore the similarities between them were never a major issue or consideration for me. The DP really were literally ‘something else’! So much so that while they too eventually coalesced into a ‘family feeling unit’, and later gained new recruits, they Never felt derivative of anything or anyone else.
I replied:
And no wonder — the X-Men and the Legion are similar in concept.
David Allen Jones:
ReplyDeleteThat TTA was one of the first comics I ever owned. Very early on in the original X-Men run (which I binged recently), Lee wrote Hank's dialogue to be cruder, less erudite, but someone (probably Kirby) must have suggested it would be more interesting if he was a bookworm and very well-spoken, so we got the Hank we all knew and loved for a long time.
ReplyDeleteMichael Fraley:
I enjoyed the early X-Men -- which for me really begins around issue #19 or #20, although I have read #1. I loved Cyclops, never dreaming that he was essentially a revamp of the golden age Comet. Iceman was a retread of other ice-powered golden age heroes. The Angel's closest kin was the winged mutant in the science fiction classic "He That Hath Wings," written in 1934 by Edmund Hamilton. Marvel Girl and Prof. X descend from all of the psi-powered mutants in 1950s literary science fiction. The Beast, oddly enough, strikes me as the most original of the group. He sort of looks like a Russian power lifter with big feet. He's as agile as Spider-Man, but in street clothes looks like a chubby nerd. For a kid like me, he was pure reader representation. The later furry versions destroyed all of that, though he wouldn't have fit into the "new" X-Men of the late 1970s -1980s if he'd remained the same.
I replied:
To me, Cyclops was clearly the central character, because he was the most reticient and tortured of the group.
ReplyDeleteAlan McKenzie:
Quite a few of the Silver Age Marvel heroes had names that were familiar, everyday terms ... a spiderman was a guy who worked on skyscrapers in New York, an iron man is a strong guy (especially in a sports context), the iceman (as noted in the O.P.) was the guy who delivered ice (in the days before domestic refrigerators) and daredevil, of course ...
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Edited
Barry Pearl:
ReplyDeleteActually, Iceman was a clone of Jack Frost, a Timely era hero and later introduced as a villain for iron man. Later the hero reappears in the Invaders and a few other places
David Applegate:
ReplyDeleteTwo of my first few Marvel comics bought off the stands. Still love those covers and those in-house ads!
There's another element at play. A blank-faced figure covered in snow and ice echoes a blank-faced figure covered in fire, just as the big bruiser Beast echoes the big bruiser Thing. They were hoping to imitate the success of the Fantastic Four.
ReplyDeleteEric Akins:
ReplyDeleteThey probably chose 'Iceman' over 'Snowman' to get some gravitas from the play 'THE Iceman Cometh'.
Glen Ingram:
ReplyDeleteI liked the early X-men. They were different and awkward. They were of us but they didn't fit in, or weren't allowed to fit in, with normal life. This they all had in common. They were adjusting. Later they became just an Avenger mirror.