X-Men: 10 Facts from 1-50

After reading the first 50 issues of the original run of X-Men I decided it would be fun to present 10 interesting tidbits which might be retroactively changed later because that’s what comics do.  The original X-Men are radically different from what they become.  And if you aren’t familiar with them, the original team only consisted of Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, Iceman, and Angel.

10. Beast has the personality of the Thing until issue #3!  Oh yes, enough people wrote into Marvel that Lee and Kirby changed the Beast’s personality to something completely different, going a bit over the top in multiple instances of dialog to signify the change.

Before

After

9.  Everyone wants to do the no pants dance with Jean Grey, even the Professor and Beast!  Angel definitely tries the hardest!  She’s evidently the trophy mutant, for character and fanboy alike!

8.  People had their names and addresses displayed when they wrote in.  And yes friends, nerds are still the same back then, disputing the laws of imaginary physics and correcting historical inaccuracies.

7.  Beast and Iceman frequent a beatnik coffee house.  Iceman goes to hit on the waitress Zelda.  Beast goes because…  well I don’t know why Beast goes since he hates the poetry.

6.  Bolivar Trask is an anthropologist who creates Master Mold and the Sentinels to deal with mutants!

5.  Xavier dies!  And he’s been dead for like 4 whole issues!

4.  Magneto!  Magneto speaks of himself in the third person like Doom!  Magneto is also abducted by aliens!

3.  Blob can speak in full intelligible sentences!

2.  After Xavier dies Cyclops and Jean take the undercover identities of a radio announcer and a model!

1.  Professor X loses the use of his legs because Lucifer drops a boulder on him.  Yeah I thought it was Magneto too.  Oh and Lucifer is an alien.