FIRST STORY: "If I Should Die" (15 pages)  Professor X dies while fighting Grotesk.

What you need to know:
Well, for a couple of years in the late 1960s, this was a hugely important story, because Professor X died.  Nowadays, it's the issue where the Changeling died.  To be fair, it also kicks off a new phase of the book's history, as for the first time, the X-Men have to get by without their mentor.

Xavier is still acting oddly, and Marvel Girl is siding with him against the rest of the X-Men.  After going to all this trouble to set up the "Changeling" back door, however, Thomas shoots himself in the foot - Xavier bizarrely decides to fight Grotesk alone, uses a rubber mask as a disguise, and uses his telepathic powers.  Oh, and the narrator says Xavier is using his mechanical leg braces.  Oops.  The official line is that Xavier managed to give the Changeling some limited mental powers which, let's face it, is a bit of a stretch.

Grotesk is meant to die in this issue too, but for some reason later he was eventually dusted off and brought back to fight the original Ms Marvel.  He soon disappeared into obscurity again.

The cover layout changes - issues #42-48 shove the X-Men logo aside to make way for individual characters.  Apparently Stan Lee thought it might help sales.  The idea was dropped after only 7 issues, so presumably it didn't work.

A more innocent time:
I've always loved this issue's cover.  The banner reads: "Not a hoax!  Not a dream!  Not an imaginary tale!  This is for real!"  Or not, as the case may be.  To be fair, at least he was genuinely meant to be dead at the time this issue saw print.  Not that Marvel have ever been bothered by such hairsplitting - when this story was reprinted in issue #90, they reused the cover complete with the same text! 

Comments:
An issue that reads rather oddly in retrospect.  Obviously, replacing Xavier with a cipher like the Changeling has completely gutted the story, so there's not much point reading it unless you're willing to ignore continuity and take it at face value. 

Taking it as originally intended, it doesn't quite work.  The shock value isn't there any more, and there's the fundamental problem that it's a Grotesk story.  Not only is Grotesk a rather dull villain, but it's far from clear what he's doing fighting the X-Men rather than (say) the Fantastic Four, a team of explorer heroes who would at be at home exploring lost underground civilisations.  In a way, this issue flags up many of the areas where X-Men was going wrong at this point - there aren't many strong ideas about the X-Men themselves, so instead we get some attempts to boost sales, and some generic villain ideas which could have been used in any book Roy Thomas happened to be writing (and, one suspects, would have been).

But Xavier's death scene on the last two pages actually is pretty good, if sentimental, and Don Heck does deliver a good closing splash page of the X-Men in mourning. 

FEATURE CHARACTERS
The Changeling (dies; his corpse is behind the scenes at his funeral next issue)
Cyclops (becomes team leader on the Changeling's death), the Angel, the Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl I

VILLAIN
Grotesk, the Sub-Human (next in Ms Marvel #6)

SECOND STORY: "The End, or the Beginning?" (5 pages)  The Living Diamond is defeated.  Scott joins up with Xavier and becomes Cyclops.

What you need to know:
The last chapter of Cyclops' origin, and he gets into costume for the first time after Xavier enlists him to be the first X-Man.  Interestingly, Xavier's already got the costumes ready, despite the fact that he only decides to enlist Scott into the team on the way back to the Mansion.  Hmm.

Issue #309 inserts a flashback where Amelia Voght, Xavier's lover, immediately walks out on him the moment he comes home with Scott (because she objects to the idea of the X-Men).  This fits, a little awkwardly, between panels 2-3 of page 5 - just after they get into the mansion, and before Scott gets his costume.  Of course, there's nothing whatsoever about Amelia in this story, because she wasn't going to be created for another 25 years.  But trust me, she's there!

The Living Diamond dies because he won't give up in the face of Xavier's improvised ray gun, so he shatters.

A more innocent time:
Xavier can do mental lockpicking.  And he can "mentally analyse" machines to find out how to operate them.  Truly the power of telepathy is without limit.

Comments:
At least Xavier doesn't get banished from the comic entirely!  He's still here in the back-up strip, and will be for months to come.  In fact, because of that, he didn't really disappear for very long in total.

Anyhow, this is the issue where the X-Men are effectively formed - Professor X and Cyclops constitute the founding members.  It's a nice enough little story, and Scott getting into costume it a good scene.  One niggle: I know there's only five pages, but shouldn't Scott be just a little upset about the fact that he's killed the Living Diamond...?

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (Charles Xavier) and Cyclops (Scott Summers; assume their codenames and form the X-Men; both appear between page 5 panels 2-3 in flashback in issue #309; both next in the "Origins of the X-Men" story in issue #44)

VILLAIN
The Living Diamond (dies; next as a zombie in Sensational She-Hulk #34)

Written: 4 December 2004

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