I love pop culture retrospectives not because I'm a particularly nostalgic guy or because I have any fondness for old things, but because so many great ideas really did start as very small, even forgettable projects. When X-Men #1 came out in September 1963 it didn't look anything like what is arguably the most successful comic franchise in history. In fact, it didn't even have much confidence in itself as a stand-alone comic. On the cover of issue #1 it relies on its association with another, already beloved series to catch its audience's attention. In the top left corner right under the price there's a message that reads, “In the sensational Fantastic Four style!” It's so funny to think that X-Men, the comic series to end all comic series, essentially started as a crude facsimile of another Marvel property. Looking at the original lineup, the original X-Men weren't all that far off that mark, actually.

Though the modern cast of X-Men is dozens of mutants deep, the team in issue #1 peaks at just five plus the authoritarian father figure Professor X. The roster for the next several dozen issues is: Cyclops, Angel, Beast, Iceman and Jean Grey aka Marvel Girl. In their original form, most of these characters are only a step or two away from their counterparts in the Fantastic Four. Iceman is little more than an inversion of The Human Torch, right down to his petulant teenager routine. Jean Grey is The Invisible Woman minus the actual invisibility and with a souped-up version of her forcefield/telekinetic powers. Beast, who would undergo a complete revamp when the series was effectively reinvented in the 1970's, is almost identical to The Thing in both function and in disposition. It seems so off for the astute, blue-furred Hank McCoy to be a gruff Brooklynite in a silly spandex getup. It's also funny to see Angel, who is mostly known for being a brooding, tragic character, in full-on British gent mode. The only character who seems to be more or less the same as his later version is Cyclops. He's still the same old hall monitor in skintight blue rubber.

For its initial run in the 1960's, X-Men was your standard Villain of the Week super hero comic. Famous names like Magneto, The Blob, Juggernaut and, of course, the anti-mutant robot Sentinels all show up in the first dozen or so issues. Naturally the early books are also chock full of completely forgettable and silly bad guys like Unus the Untouchable and The Vanisher. Eventually X-Men tended more toward story arc and a format that I consider one of its greatest strengths, the mutant-on-mutant war that involves scads of people with super powers and inventive deformities.

Unlike most super hero comics, the pages of X-Men are quite crowded. It highlights a feeling of a changing world, a place where the unusual, the minorities, are all of a sudden so visible. It's widely known that the atmosphere of intolerance in X-Men is a direct commentary on the racial tensions of the 1960's and while it's still presented in just as juvenile a way as any other comic of its time, the idea that the heroes of these comics are just as scary to normal folks as the villains is pretty revolutionary. It's this understandable fear of the unknown that makes the Marvel books unique. When you think about it, Superman really ought to be the most frightening part of life in Metropolis but no one ever bats an eye at the possibility that an unstoppable force of destruction with a deep moral impulse might just lose it one day.

I won't be spending much time lingering on the early issues of X-Men. The series doesn't really evolve beyond the typical formats of the Silver Age until the 1970's when a number of new mutants found their way into the book and the adventures got a lot more complex. The art also takes a shift when long-time ink man Jack Kirby is no longer at the helm. I'll be back next week to take a look at the X-Men after they've had 90-some issues to percolate.