By the time the X-Men debuted in September 1963, we young Marvel fans already prided ourselves on our insider knowledge.
We recognized The Beast as a variation on the Thing/Hulk theme — a powerfully built bruiser with a name appropriate to a monster. But Stan Lee and Jack Kirby fooled us on that one, playing against type. The Beast’s primary superpower was not strength but agility, and instead of a limited and crude vocabulary, Hank McCoy possessed a superabundant and eloquent one.
But we were right about Iceman. Here was a mirror image version of the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, an impulsive, exuberant teenager whose powers were based on ice rather than fire.
I did wonder why he hadn’t been called Snowman, since that’s what he most resembled, but perhaps “Iceman” seemed more forceful (although to many people in 1963, that term must still have sounded like a guy who hauled ice around for a living).
And from the first issue of the X-Men, we readers looked forward to a clash and/or team-up between the two. As with the Hulk versus the Thing and the Human Torch versus the Sub-Mariner stories, Lee was happy to accommodate us, this time in Strange Tales 120 (May 1964).
Also, Kirby returned to the Human Torch feature after a five-issue absence, and gave the story his uniquely dynamic zing.
On a cruise in New York Harbor, the two teens’ romantic rivalry for Dorie Evans is interrupted by an attack by the pirate Captain Barracuda.
“As you might expect, fire and ice go well together, as did fire and water when the Torch took on the Sub-Mariner; having a hero with a power so elemental does lend itself to these kinds of pairings,” noted comics historian Don Alsafi.
“If you’re paying attention, you’ll note that this is the second time we’ve seen a side story featuring an X-Man on his own, following the Angel’s face-off with Iron Man. Attempting to ascribe Stan’s motivations some five decades after the fact is of course guesswork at best, but if this was by design then it was pretty smart of Stan to give Marvel’s new X-team greater exposure, one member at a time. Such spotlight stories are useful because they allow the featured characters more time to shine on their own, and let us see how they operate and act apart from their team, developing their personae separate from their roles in the group.
“In this case, it works well because Bobby Drake, as the youngest and least mature of the X-Men, is a perfect match for Johnny Storm, who fulfills the same function for the Fantastic Four.”
Interesting to play “what if?” here. What if this pattern of individual X-Men guest appearances had continued?
— Those teenage masters of super-agility, Spider-Man and the Beast, meet for the first time!
— The two brooding romantics haunted by eye trouble, Daredevil and Cyclops, battle the Mole Man!
— What if Marvel Girl, Invisible Girl, the Wasp, and the Scarlet Witch formed a literary club and met to discuss that new book by Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique?. Might they have pondered the curious fact of their ineffectuality before super-villains crashed through the wall…?
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