FIRST STORY: "Who Dares Defy... the Demi-Men?" (15 pages)  The X-Men reunite to investigate a group of mutants summoned to San Francisco by Mesmero.  Mesmero's Demi-Men capture Iceman and Lorna Dane.

What you need to know:
The idea of scattering the X-Men around the country is aborted after only two issues, and the original cover design returns.  Angel returns to the Mansion on a whim, finds that Cerebro has detected a ton of mutants all in the same place, and calls in the X-Men.  And that's the end of the break-up angle.

Mesmero debuts, as leader of the Demi-Men - a bunch of mutant followers.  They're all meant to be working for Magneto.  However, Magneto was supposed to be dead at this point, as the story acknowledges, and this version of the character was later written off as a robot in issue #58. 

Eventually, in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #7, the whole thing was written off as a scheme of Starr Saxon, the Machinesmith - a villain who hadn't even been created at this point and who has nothing whatsoever to do with the X-Men.  He seems to have been selected for no reason other than the fact that he was a robot-themed villain.  In an attempt to justify his involvement, Marvel also decided that most of the Demi-Men are his robots too.  Oh, and Mesmero isn't in on the scam; he thinks he's working for the real Magneto.  He doesn't learn that (and neither do we) until issue #58, when he sees the robot get smashed.

Incidentally, the name "Demi-Men" only appears in the title, not in the actual story.  It's been adopted as the group's official name in lieu of anything else.

Mesmero is gathering an army of Demi-Men by amplifying his powers and mentally summoning latent mutants.  This is the first time that the concept of latent mutants was really pushed as a plot point.  Of course, this is a less than subtle way of going about it, so tons of latent mutants all converge on San Francisco and wander around in a daze.

One of them is Lorna Dane, the future Polaris, who makes her debut in this issue.  Surprisingly, there's never been a story with a flashback to Lorna's life before this point.  The X-Men manage to catch Lorna before she marches off to join the Demi-Men.  Lorna already has green hair, which is the only sign of her powers; she dyes it to avoid attention.

Mesmero and the Demi-Men are in awe of Lorna, whom they descirbe as "the M-II Weapon."  Again, this gets a bit complicated.  This arc starts off saying that Lorna is actually Magneto's daughter.  Hence, M2.  In issue #52, that's all dismissed as lies by the villains; Iceman digs up some documents which establish who she really is.  That remained the position for some 35 years until Chuck Austen needlessly complicated matters by attempting to reassert that she was Magneto's daughter on the basis of a self-performed DNA test.  Of course, this begs the question of why none of the X-Men had picked up on this at an earlier stage, given that they're rather big fans of documenting and cross-checking DNA.

The story has never been reprinted.

A more innocent time:
Future pro Tony Isabella writes in for the second month running, to tell Marvel how much the book sucks.  He's got a point.

Comments:
Well, it's not great, but at least it's back on track.  After the horrible false start of the last couple of issues, we're back to a proper team of X-Men dealing with the sort of villains they ought to be fighting.  In other words, we're back to the original formula, and while it's been done much better than it is here, at least it works.

This issue begins a four-part storyline, which was pretty lengthy by the standards of the period.  In theory, the big event in this issue is the debuts of Polaris and Mesmero, but neither character is particularly compelling.  Polaris is a generic female-in-distress, while Mesmero is a fairly typical ranting villain.  All very underwhelming.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Cyclops, Marvel Girl, the Angel (last in his story in Marvel Tales #30), the Beast and Iceman (both last in flashback in Marvel Holiday Special 1994)

SUPPORTING CHARACTER
Lorna Dane (later Polaris; first appearance)

VILLAINS
Mesmero (first appearance; last in a photo in Weapon X vol 2 #8)
The Demi-Men (first appearance)
Starr Saxon (behind the scenes; last in flashback in the second story in Captain America vol 1 #368)

SECOND STORY: "A Beast is Born" (5 pages)  Hank's father, Norton McCoy, is exposed to radiation while heroically averting a nuclear power plant meltdown.  As a result, little Hank is born as a mutant.

What you need to know:
Back to the "Origins of the X-Men" stories.  The Angel story was originally planned to go here, but for some reason Marvel skipped forward to the Beast instead. 

A hacked-up version appears in 1973's Amazing Adventures vol 2 #17, a weird fill-in issue which rounded off the Beast's brief run as that book's lead character.  Basically, it's a token framing sequence of the Beast narrating his origin, and the main body of the story is constructed from partial reprints of the "Origins of the X-Men" Beast stories in issues #49-53.  The story has never been reprinted in full.

A more innocent time:
We're back in the days when withholding public warnings about an imminent nuclear explosion seemed perfectly sensible behaviour.  "We'll withhold a general public warning for twenty minutes more, to avoid panic!"  The character doesn't seem to be intended as a villain...

Comments:
The Beast's arc, which covers issues #49-53, is remarkably exhaustive.  It starts with the marriage of his parents, and he isn't even conceived until the last page of this story. 

The story goes downhill in future issues when El Conquistador turns up, but actually, this is a nice little five-pager about the heroism of Norton McCoy, the Beast's dad.  It's an amusing change of pace.

FEATURE CHARACTER
Hank McCoy (chronologically earliest appearance; between page 3, panels 4-5, he appears in Uncanny Origins #6, then in flashback in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #10)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Norton McCoy and Edna McCoy (chronologically earliest appearance for both; both next in flashback in X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #10)

OTHER CHARACTER
Bob McCoy (Hank's uncle; first appearance; appears between pages in Uncanny Origins #6)

Written: 3 January 2005

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