STORY: "Death Be Not Proud" (22 pages)  The X-Men defeat Dazzler, but he has already fatally poisoned Angel's mother, who dies.

What you need to know:
The Dazzler is apparently a bit of an idiot, since he's already giving Kathryn lethal doses of poison even before the wedding.  Even Dr Stuart complains about the stupidity of this.  It's a wonder this guy got anywhere as a villainous mastermind.

Burt is defeated, and next issue he's carted off to jail, never to be seen again.  In Exiles #28, of all places, Chuck Austen revealed that Burt had been conspiring with Maximus Lobo from jail, but this storyline seems to have been dropped with Austen's departure from the X-books.

Meanwhile, in the subplots, Lorna goes into town and bumps into Tad Carter, who drags her off for coffee with a bit of telepathic nudging.  She ends up spending nine hours in town without noticing.  This is a set-up for the Promise storyline which begins in issue #17.

Tad Carter is another extremely obscure character, whose only previous appearance was in "The Man in the Sky", a five-page story in Amazing Adult Fantasy #14 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.  Young Tad Carter develops mutant powers because his father was exposed to radiation.  He has telepathy and telekinesis, but the nasty intolerant population try to beat him up.  Fortunately, he's rescued by a mysterious telepath who says that humanity isn't yet ready for the glorious future that mutants will bring because the general public are "too savage [and] too primitive."  So they're all just going to sit around and wait for humanity to be ready.  (This is essentially the premise of the Promise storyline.)

The reason this story is significant is that it came out in July 1962, over a year before X-Men vol 1 #1, and it's very obviously a trial run of the mutant concept.  It's sometimes suggested that the unnamed telepath is a proto-Professor X, although really his behaviour is a bit off beam for that.  It's also somewhat interesting to note that while the Lee/Kirby take on mutants is that we should work to build bridges, the Lee/Ditko version is that the general public are a bunch of idiots, and to hell with them.  This is rather more in keeping with the objectivist worldview that commonly appears in Ditko's own comics, and makes me wonder how much of an input he had on the story.

Back at the subplots, Havok and Lorna head off to the Himalayas to investigate the signal Cerebro detected in issue #13.  That leads into next issue.

The hidden cover number is #81.  It's part of the clouds, just above John Byrne's name.

Comments:
Very clunky.  Everyone stands around for half an issue bemoaning the fact that they can't attack the Dazzler for fear of what it'll do to Kathryn, and then they just have a big fight anyway.  And since Kathryn has to die, the Dazzler idiotically poisons her early, even though he has no motivation to do so.  It's meant to come off as tragic, and the closing scene with Warren carrying his dying mother into the clouds is actually quite sweet.  But overall, it's far too contrived to work.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (behind the scenes)
Cyclops, the Angel, the Beast, Lorna Dane, Havok, Iceman and Marvel Girl I (all also in flashback, between pages 13-14 of the previous issue)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Avia
Candy Southern (also in flashback between pages 13-14 of the previous issue)
Kathryn Worthington (dies; her body appears next issue)

VILLAINS
The Dazzler I and Dr Stuart
Tad Carter (last in Amazing Adult Fantasy #14; next in issue #17)

Revised: 31 May 2006

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