STORY: "No One Can Stop the Vanisher" (22 pages)  The Vanisher, a teleporting mutant, runs rings around the X-Men until Professor X defeats him telepathically.

What you need to know:
Marvel Girl can't lift anything more than she can physically carry, or she might faint.  (Not that it stopped her last issue, but hey.)

There's the first hint of a romance between Jean and... Warren.  Don't worry, the established order of things comes along soon enough.

First appearance of the Vanisher.  He's a teleporter.  He pops up, tells people he'll be back to rob them in a few days, and heads off to let them sweat for a bit.  His big plan is to steal the US army's continental defence plans and ransom them.  Full marks to the Vanisher for bucking the trends of the day and coming up with a plan that actually makes perfectly good sense.

Xavier beats him by simply turning up and wiping his memory telepathically.  This is the first indication that Xavier can do something quite that impressive.

Fred Duncan, the X-Men's FBI liaison, makes his first appearance.  He's promptly forgotten about for an extended period, but crops up again later on the Silver Age.  Eventually he was killed off behind the scenes as part of the X-Cutioner's origin story.  The whole idea of the X-Men having official government liaisons was quietly downplayed when the book moved in a more paranoid direction.

A more innocent time:
"Careful, Jeanie!  Remember, Dr X told you not to strain your teleportation powers!"  Whenever people complain to you about modern comics making trivial continuity errors, remember - Stan Lee frequently couldn't even remember the names and powers of his own characters.

If you freeze a glove, it turns into ice cubes.  Not a frozen glove.  Ice cubes.

Comments:
By modern standards, teleportation is a pretty low key power.  Back in the Silver Age, however, it made the Vanisher pretty much unstoppable, because you couldn't hit him.  That's the nice thing about the Silver Age - power levels were so much lower that even relatively run-of-the-mill characters seemed fairly exotic.

The Vanisher never really took off as a character - he turns up from time to time, and had his most prominent role as the mentor in Fallen Angels, but he never got that far up the villain ranks.  Maybe it's the awful costume.  Maybe it's the fact that as power levels ramped up, he ended up looking a bit feeble.  There's certainly something a little odd to modern eyes about a perfectly ordinary teleporter being talked up as an incredibly powerful opponent. 

Of course, the ending opens up a whole can of worms which nobody's ever really managed to get back under control.  If Xavier's powerful enough to simply think his opponents into submission... well, that's pretty darned powerful.  It kind of makes you wonder why he doesn't do that with all the villains.

Still, I kind of like this one.  It's silly, but it's fun.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops (last in flashback in issue #308), Iceman, the Angel, the Beast and Marvel Girl I (last behind the scenes writing the fifth diary entry in X-Men: The Wedding Album; all next in Tales of Suspense #49, then in Avengers vol 1 #3)

SUPPORTING CHARACTER
Fred Duncan (the X-Men's FBI liaison; first appearance; last in the "Origins of the X-Men" story in issue #39; next behind the scenes in issue #43)

VILLAIN
The Vanisher (real name unrevealed; uses the alias "Telford Porter", ie "Telly Porter"; a mutant teleporter; first appearance; next behind the scenes in issue #26)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Bill (full name unrevealed; Duncan's assistant; first appearance; last in the "Origins of the X-Men" story in issue #38; no further appearances)
Lieutenant General Fredricks (between Fantastic Four vol 1 #3 and issue #17)
Colonel Hendershoot (full name unrevealed; Fredericks' aide; first appearance; next in issue #23)

Last revised: 13 August 2004

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