STORY: "From Whence Comes... Dominus?" (20 pages)  The X-Men thwart Lucifer's plan by destroying the robots which he needs to operate Dominus, his planet-conquering device.  Unimpressed, Lucifer's superiors banish him.

What you need to know:
Lucifer unveils Dominus, a machine which his people are going to use to take over the world.  Basically, it's a giant mind-control device.

At the end of the issue, Lucifer is banished to "a nameless dimension where neither time nor space exists."  He eventually returned in Iron Man and floated around the fringes of the Marvel Universe for the next few decades before being largely forgotten about.

Apparently, without Dominus in working order, the other worlds conquered by the Quist will revolt as well.  The Quists teleport Dominus away at the end of the issue, presumably to build more robots.

By the way, Lucifer's race is never actually identified in this issue.  They were finally named as the Quists (not exactly a great name, but it's better than none) in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #5.

A more innocent time:
Another great Silver Age title.  Mock-bombastic, and with incorrect grammar to boot.

Clunky exposition: "That's strange - I lost telepathic contact with them when they entered that underground tunnel!  It's almost as if some fantastically potent force suddenly erected a mental barrier between us!"

Dominus is "an ultra-complex mechanism".  So complex, in fact, that it can't even operate itself - it needs "complex robots" to operate it.  So basically, the Quists built a huge great machine covered in knobs and dials, and then built even more machines to operate the first one.  It doesn't sound like the most efficient way of doing things...

Lucifer does the "Before I kill you, let me explain my master plan in painstaking detail" schtick with Xavier.

Proving that he really is dumb as a sack of hammers, Lucifer imprisons the X-Men in "the cosmic-crystalline cube."  This incredibly clever prison has one unfortunate flaw - there's a lever immediately outside which opens it.  And Jean just yanks it telekinetically.

Comments:
Big fight issue, and a little bit too silly for its own good.  If Lucifer's about to activate a big machine that gives him mind control over the entire world, why was he luring the X-Men to him in the first place?  Why not just... switch on the machine?

And while the "robots operating Dominus" thing might just about work as a piece of Silver Age goofiness, it starts to be a problem when it doubles as the mechanism for defeating Lucifer.  (They can't destroy Dominus, so they destroy the robots instead.)

It's readable enough, but even by Silver Age standards it's riddled with plot holes - the Blob and Unus storyline from the previous issue is effectively forgotten about.  Not great - there's a reason why Lucifer is so rarely mentioned, despite being theoretically a major part of Professor X's back story.

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

VILLAINS
Lucifer (next in Iron Man vol 1 #20)
The Supreme One (no further appearances)
The Quists (other than Lucifer and the Supreme One, they appear only in flashback, which is their chronologically earliest appearance, preceding the Tales of the Watcher story in Tales of Suspense #56)

OTHER CHARACTERS
Porter Mack (a rancher; first and only appearance)
The Sirians (an alien race; in flashback only; first appearance; one Sirian, Ixar, appears next in Avengers vol 1 #37)

Written: 2 September 2004

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