STORY: "The Mutants and the Monster" (20 pages)  The X-Men fight the Hulk in order to recover a machine which can heal Professor X.

What you need to know:
The X-Men have a stab at reading Xavier's mind using a mind-probe device (based on one that Hank Pym built in Avengers vol 1 #68 - a completely gratuitous continuity reference), and he points them in the direction of the Hulk.  So the X-Men hunt down the Hulk, and unsurprisingly enough, the obligatory fight ends with Marvel Girl zapping him.

Conveniently enough, it turns out that Bruce Banner and Charles Xavier collaborated years ago on a device for "the gamma ray treatment of mental exhaustion."  For once, one of Banner's gamma ray devices actually works.

This story has been out of print since its first publication.

This is the final issue of the Silver Age run, as the book was cancelled due to low sales.  Nine months later, X-Men was revived as a reprint title, picking up the existing numbering with issue #67 (December 1970).  No more original stories appear until Giant-Size X-Men #1 and issue #94 (August 1975).  During their five-year hiatus, the X-Men made guest appearances in various titles, and also appeared in the continuity-implant series X-Men: The Hidden Years, all of which will be covered in more detail shortly.

A more innocent time:
On the letters page, an editorial announces that "the plain truth is that the magazine's sales don't warrant our continuing the title."  Two inches below, the Statement of Ownership reports that the most recent issue had a total paid circulation of 199,571.  How times have changed.

The Beast says that he "scrambled up this cliffside in the best traditions of Justice Douglas", a reference which means absolutely nothing to me.  There was a Mr Justice Douglas on the Supreme Court at the time, who apparently quite liked hillwalking and was seen as the counterculture-friendly judge, but it seems a bit of a stretch.

Comments:
A bizarre coda to the Silver Age run, which doesn't finish off by resolving big stories or recapping the key themes, but by having the X-Men fight the Hulk for an issue.  Aside from the necessary plot business of healing Professor X, it's an afterthought.  Frankly, the most memorable thing about the issue is the fact that it was the last one.

For all its critical acclaim, the Thomas/Adams X-Men run was ultimately a cult success rather than a commercial one.  While the sales may be huge by the standards of today's direct market, they were poor by the standards of the time (and to be fair, they were falling).  Even if the book was still turning a profit, Marvel might well have taken the view that they could make more money by publishing something else instead.

This would normally have been the end of the road - very few characters have been successfully revived after years of cancellation, and those that have tend to feature characters like Namor the Sub-Mariner or the Martian Manhunter, who sustain their own title for a few years in a strong market before getting cancelled again.  In returning from cancellation five years later and becoming stronger than ever, the X-Men are almost unique.  But we'll come to that later.

FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X, Cyclops, Angel, the Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl I (all next in Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comic Magazine #3-4 and #11, then in the second story in X-Men vol 2 #94, then in  X-Men: The Hidden Years #1)

GUEST STAR
The Hulk (between Incredible Hulk vol 2 #124-125)

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Havok and Lorna Dane (both next in the second story in X-Men vol 2 #94)

GUEST APPEARANCE
Glenn Talbot (between Incredible Hulk vol 2 #124-125)
 

Updated: 2 September 2005

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