STORY: "The Supreme Sacrifice" (20 pages)  The Sentinels are defeated when Bolivar Trask sacrifices his own life to destroy them.

What you need to know:
Trask dies and the Sentinels are disposed of.  They turn up again in a new form in issue #57, with Trask's son Larry taking over from him.

There's a villain approaching the mansion in the final panel, which is really just a trailer for the next issue.  

A more innocent time:
"Personal note: for those of you who might want to make your own heavy gravity globe, we'll just tip you off that the opening is formed by repelling the atomic particles within the globule's structure!  There - now the rest will be easy!"  Stan is getting bored again...

Xavier defeats the Sentinels by, er, dangling a crystal over them.  Apparently it causes interference somehow.

The final panel tells us that when the X-Men get back home, they'll find waiting for them "the most unexpected menace of all."  I beg to differ.  It's Magneto.  I know he's supposed to be on a prison planet, but come on - in the Lee/Kirby X-Men stories, Magneto's about as expected as they get!

Comments:
Er... yes.  Another big fight scene with not a tremendous amount happening, and while it seems bizarre to be saying this about a Silver Age comic, they could really have done this story in two issues rather than three.  It's a nice idea, and the first part of the storyline is great, but it all degenerates rather quickly into the X-Men fighting giant robots who don't have all that much personality.  The Sentinels are decent enough as henchmen, but when you make them into the villains in their own right, they flounder a bit.

In case you didn't get it, the story ends by flagging up the moral: "Beware the fanatic!  Too often his cure is deadlier by far than the evil he denounces!"  Just a touch heavy-handed... 

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, the Angel, the Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl I

VILLAINS
The Master Mold I (wrecked; appears next in flashback in issue #57)
The Sentinels (destroyed; the Mark I Sentinels make no further appearance; their successors, the Mark II Sentinels, debut in issue #57)
Magneto (appears only as a shadow in the final panel; last in flashback in issue #18)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Bolivar Trask (dies; his corpse appears next in flashback in issue #57)

back | next