The second issue of the newly introduced X-Men doesn’t stray too far from the path set by the first one, with the exception that it seemingly reels back in whatever suggestion there was of deeper themes or messages. This story doesn’t really even hint at any political angles or metaphors, but instead focuses on further showcasing the titular characters, now with a rare in-action appearance by Professor Charles Xavier himself.
X-Men #2:
"No One Can Stop the Vanisher!"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: September 3, 1963
- Cover Date: November 1963
The first few pages of the book cover the group racing to the school summoned by a telepathic message from Xavier. This sequence is used to display their various abilities, in a format that’s certainly more natural and engaging than the awkward "test" from the first issue. It feels diegetic and less forced.
It’s a little odd, then, that the next scene features another spin in the "danger room" anyway, for more or less the same exact purpose, which hardly seems like efficient storytelling. This segment is motivated by the Professor's briefing (delivered by a telepathically produced slideshow I guess) which identifies a villain called the Vanisher, who Xavier suspects to be a mutant.
To this scene’s credit, the challenges presented to the X-Men are partly designed to test their speed specifically, which is reasonable when going up against a villain who can teleport at the blink of an eye. I’m not sure what Jean Grey’s challenge of floating a big ball in the air has to do with the Vanisher’s powers, but the rest of the sequence is at least remotely justifiable from that angle – just redundant mechanically with the opening scene.
The Vanisher ends up running laps around the X-Men, which is only appropriate considering his power that the heroes have no means of countering directly. When they eventually meet again, there is no rematch, but rather Professor Xavier uses his mental abilities to make the Vanisher forget who he is, and therefore his abilities and evil plans as well.
It’s an abrupt end that feels a little bit easy, but in truth it works as a reveal of Xavier’s immense power. It’s hard to say exactly why it doesn’t feel entirely like a deus ex machina, but my belief is that this moment was ramped up to sufficiently in a preceding segment, where Xavier announces he’s joining the group. Everyone treats it as a big deal – this suggests to the reader that something significant is to be expected, and even this kind of "magic" solution comes across as impressive rather than lazy.
Now, this moment reveals something rather curious about Stan Lee’s conceptions of morality at the time, him being the one writing the dialogue, and possibly a general opinion of the era. Marvel’s comics – and therefore I’m inclined to believe comics in general – were very particular about the way their heroes behaved, and careful not to show them taking advantage of their abilities in ways that could be construed as immoral or inappropriate. We see that in the beginning of this very issue, when Beast speeds his journey to the Professor by jumping on top of a train, and comments that he has a train ticket – how and why is unclear, but it’s an escape hatch for Stan to point out that even though he could, Beast isn’t using the train without paying just because he’s not inside of it. We see similar moments in Spider-Man stories quite often, where he webs himself a newspaper but leaves payment, or pays for a bus fare after riding on the top of the bus rather than inside.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
Xavier wiping the mind of the Vanisher is something that, in a different era, would be considered grossly immoral, intrusive, and outright condemnable. Later stories about Xavier specifically have used this as a fruitful source of complex storytelling material, calling out the ethical problems of one with the power to not only read minds, but to alter them. That consideration clearly wasn’t there in late 1963 – not a single question of whether this was too harsh a tactic for the problem at hand is raised, and there’s not a hint of regret in the celebration that follows the arrest of a now mentally changed Vanisher. Different times, different vibes and all that, just a fascinating detail about how in the mind of one comic book writer, mental intrusion wasn’t as big a deal as riding the train without paying.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
The Vanisher isn’t one of the coolest villains even of the time, and with all due respect to Jack Kirby who presumably designed the character, this isn’t a representation of his finest work. The villain looks weird in a bland kind of way, like he was dressed with whatever was found in the back room of a community theater rehearsal space.
The threat of his power is comprehensible though, and he does actually work as an intimidating villain that might be too much for the inexperienced X-Men to handle. As is often the case, Kirby elevates both the villain and the generic plot with action scenes that spotlight each characters’ abilities while simultaneously ramping up fun and engaging choreography. It’s not the most creative of Kirby’s fights, but it’s good enough to make the book enjoyable as visual entertainment at least.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
There’s a hinted attempt at character development and characterization-oriented storytelling here too, even though it remains sort of vague and isn’t presented very well. There’s a theme of over-confidence and impatience among the X-Men that gets touched on a couple of times, which is a nice detail, but it doesn’t really do much in this story. If their over-confidence was the reason they lost to the Vanisher, and after being humbled they’d prevail, that would have made sense, but Xavier coming in at the end to defeat the villain that was going to be too much for his students anyway sort of undermines that as a cohesive thematic through-line.
Issue #2 is, if nothing else, consistent in quality with the first story – not particularly great especially in a landscape where we already had a better team-up story in Avengers #1 or more nuanced character-driven storytelling in The Amazing Spider-Man #3-5, but it’s a serviceable action mag with some decent characters and a promise for better stories in the future. The X-Men taking a while to gain significant popularity makes a lot of sense at this stage: there’s better series out there, so this one hardly stands out – yet.
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| Art by Jack Kirby & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
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