The Early Years: First Class

There is a lot of change ahead for the X-Men, including a very different roster. Some founding X-Men members are dropping off the team for a while, and they will be missed. This is the end of the “good old days” of the original five: Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and Marvel Girl. So lets look back at who these characters are and what they accomplished in their first tenure with the X-Men.

Strangers in a Savage Land

Sauron might not have been from the Savage Land, but his origin is still forever tied to it. As the X-Men search for his body, they discover a passage into this legendary realm, a primitive jungle world hidden beneath Earth’s southern pole. They have an adventure with Ka-Zar and Zabu! The X-Men find themselves knocked down a few pegs on the food chain, faced with dinosaurs, monsters, and a classic villain. Issues 62 and 63 are full of surprises and danger.

The Gang Gets Ugly

At the end of issue 39, the team once again gets new uniforms. They’re very colorful and I guess they’re indicative of the time period, but man… this team is a fashion disaster. The blue and gold motif is gone and instead the team is a mess of primary colors. This was an attempt to make them each look more distinct, but they end up looking pretty stupid.

New Uniforms

Another thing that happens in issue 27 is the team gets new uniforms. Jean apparently made them while she was away at college. How nice.

It’s easy to not even notice the difference since there isn’t really much of one. Now everyone has a red belt, and Jean wears this dumb little pointed mask. She actually looks kind of like Iron Man. The rest hasn’t changed all that much. In fact the only other thing I notice is that the yellow on Beast’s chest is a bit slimmer.

Also, Jean is color blind and her friends are very polite about it.

The Uncanny Beatles

I was talking in an earlier post about the original matching X-Men uniforms being a lot like various rock groups of the time. I had mentioned the Beatles’ matching black leather outfits and I realized that they look an awful lot like some of the modern attempts at matching black leather X-Men uniforms. They resemble the team from the movies or the New X-Men comics of the early 2000’s.

So anyway I drew this.

Uniforms

This early in the series, the X-Men uniforms are fairly simple. They are each wearing blue and gold spandex with a mask to hide their identity. Iceman gets away without much of a uniform, but as we saw in our last post he still has to get his blue and gold boots on before he can do any fighting. These uniforms might seem a bit hokey and boring to those of us used to their modern appearance, but this look has really grown on me. For one thing, they are all new recruits in the early comics. This design emphasizes the team spirit more than their individual personalities. I think of this as boot camp. The Professor is trying to mold them into a team, and he often warns them against arrogance and showboating. It makes sense that their uniforms share a cohesive theme.