STORY: "And None Shall Survive" (20 pages)  While Iceman is comatose in the hospital after the fight with the Sentinels, the rest of the X-Men return home to the Mansion only to get ambushed and defeated by Magneto..

What you need to know:
Magneto's back from outer space, after spending a whole six issues away.  We find out how he escaped next issue.

Despite Xavier's best efforts to keep them away, Warren's parents insist on visiting the school.  In a surprising lapse into common sense, they actually discuss how Xavier can possibly afford to keep a private school going with only five pupils.  They assume that he's just very rich, and running the school "for a lark." 

Of course, on arriving at the Mansion, they're immediately confronted by Magneto, making them the first family members to get dragged into anything X-Men related.

A more innocent time:
The X-Men's Mansion has an "automatic phone-answering device" - and Warren's parents are pretty worried when they get through to it.  (Answering machines were commercially available in the USA by 1966, but they weren't exactly commonplace.)

Iceman's doctor is called John Thomas.  Hmm.

It's Silver Age deathtrap time!  Why simply kill the X-Men, when you can lock them in a "steel gondola", attach it to a helium balloon, and send the heroes floating off into space, vaguely hoping that they'll die of asphyxiation?

Comments:
This is Jack Kirby's final issue, and by the standards of the day it's almost indulgent - there are two whole splash pages, and one of them is just a pin-up of the Angel flying.

The story is built around the mystery of who's lurking in the Mansion and attacking the X-Men.  It's somewhat similar to the Juggernaut's debut in issue #12, where the villain was kept in shadow or obscured until the very end.  But this one doesn't work as well, because the story jumps through such ridiculous hoops to achieve it.  Magneto can't use his powers, obviously, since that would give the game away.  So he ends up attacking the X-Men with a ridiculous assemblage of material he's apparently picked up at Deathtraps R Us.  Even by Silver Age standards, does Magneto really have no better ideas than greasing the Mansion corridors?

And besides - Magneto again, already?  Perhaps Kirby wanted to have the arch-enemy in his final issue, which would be understandable.  But he was definitely overused as a villain at this point.

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

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Warren Worthington Jr and Kathryn Worthington (both last in issue #14)

VILLAIN
Magneto

OTHER CHARACTERS
Lt Gen Fredricks (between issues #2 and #23)
Dr John Thomas (first appearance)

Written: 1 September 2004

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