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STORY: "The Return of the Blob" (22
pages) The Blob teams up with the Brotherhood of Evil
Mutants to fight the X-Men. But Magneto turns on him,
and he quits again.
What you need to know:
It's graduation day! And if you're saying to
yourself, "Hold on, didn't that already happen two issues
ago?", then you're wrong. That was the final exam.
This is graduation day.
Xavier promptly heads off to pursue his own
"unfinished tasks" - which turns out to mean heading off to
Europe to fight Lucifer in issue #9. In his absence,
Cyclops formally becomes the X-Men's field leader.
Cyclops gets off to a flying start by
having his first crisis of confidence three panels later and
wondering whether he should leave the team.
Jean is now doting on Scott to the point
where even Warren has noticed. But Scott isn't
reciprocating.
Cerebro - Xavier's mutant-detecting machine
- appears for the first time. Xavier says that Scott is
the first person to see it. (Actually, later stories
revealed that Jean's already seen a prototype - but strictly
speaking, Xavier's comment might still be correct.)
Bobby's girlfriend Zelda - a waitress at
the Coffee-A-Go-Go - turns up for the first time. She
hangs around as a recurring character for a while, and
contributes absolutely nothing.
Mastermind is still trying to win over the
Scarlet Witch. She's completely uninterested.
Magneto recruits the Blob, who gets his
memories of the X-Men back after a blow to the head. Not
unreasonably, given the way they treated him last time, the
Blob decides to hook up with Magneto and get revenge.
A more innocent time:
Hank and Bobby visit a Greenwich Village coffee shop. As
we find out in issue #14, it's actually called the
Coffee-A-Go-Go. And that tells you pretty much all you
need to know. It's all very, very sixties. (Being
Kirby characters, our heroes turn up wearing suits and
hats...)
Magneto has a vehicle in the shape of a
horseshoe magnet. It's called a Magna-Car.
Comments:
It's the Brotherhood yet again, but this one's quite fun.
The Blob's actually a rare example of a villain who seems to
have become less powerful over time, and there's been enough
of a gap to make it worth bringing him back for another shot.
But more to the point, this one's got the Greenwich Village
beatniks in it. You don't get much more loveably Silver
Age than Bernard the Poet, who reads out shopping lists and
calls them "zen poetry."
There's also a bit more going on
here in terms of character development. Some ongoing
storylines are starting to emerge, which goes some way towards
alleviating the impression that the book is just going to be
the X-Men versus the Brotherhood... forever. Of course,
as it turned out, the Brotherhood were shunted aside fairly
quickly - but at this point, they almost seemed to be set up
as inseparable arch-enemies who'd be there in every story as
part of the book's premise.
FEATURE CHARACTERS
Professor X (last in Excalibur: XX Crossing)
Cyclops, Iceman, the Angel, the Beast and Marvel Girl I
(all last in flashback in Excalibur: XX Crossing; all
next in Untold Tales of Spider-Man #21)
SUPPORTING CHARACTER
Zelda (full name unrevealed; first appearance; Iceman's
girlfriend; next in issue #14)
VILLAINS
The Brotherhood of Evil Mutans I: Magneto, Mastermind I, the
Toad (next in issue #11), Quicksilver, the Scarlet
Witch (both next in Strange Tales #128; all five
last in Journey into Mystery #109) and the Blob
(briefly joins the Brotherhood in this story; appears between
issues #3 and #20)
OTHER CHARACTERS
Bernard the Poet (full name unrevealed; first appearance;
a beat poet; next in issue #14)
Carnival workers (between issues #3 and #20)
Last revised: 16 August 2004.
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