Days of Silver Age Past

I’m going to borrow a little lyric from Huey Lewis and The News and add my own personal Silver Age flare to it. So from the “The Power of Love”, Silver Age Sensation style, we have: “The power of inspiration is a curious thing, it can make Magneto weep, it can make the Banshee sing!” Oh the fleeting muse that is inspiration. Where does it come from? Well the inspiration for this post came from an opportunity seized, an opportunity lost, and an opportunity gained. Picture if you will a local comic shop and within it, flipping through the back issues is yours truly; Jubilant Jeff V. I hear a fellow merry marvel marcher chatting with the owner behind the desk and apparently in the customer’s view is some new back issues that the store must have picked up and that I apparently missed ENTIRELY when I had walked in. I’m flipping through the back issues and I hear “So did ya get a chance to price that X-Men #6 ya have there?” Well, naturally, this gets MY attention. I’m thinking to myself, X-Men #6, that’s the crossover with the Sub-Mariner, and any single digit issue of the X-Men goes for at least $50 because demand for Silver and Bronze Age X-Men is perpetually high.

I casually made my way toward the front of the store, continuing to “flip” through the back issues when in actuality I just wanted to continue to eavesdrop and get a look at the condition of the book. I hear the owner say that he hasn't had a chance to price it yet but it’s in REALLY rough shape but that he could price it for him now if he wants. So there I am, mentally holding my breath as I wait for the pricing verdict. The owner then flips through the Overstreet guide and says well in good condition it’s worth $46 which this issue is FAR from so let’s say $10. The marvelite says quite casually “I think I'll take that instead of what I was originally gonna get, just as well anyway”. And at this point my mental conversation is as follows: TEN DOLLARS! TEN DOLLARS! *HANGS HEAD IN DEFEAT*. I did manage to get a look at the issue before the fellow marvelite left and the spine of the issue was pretty much worn away and jagged, the spine of the book itself looked like it had some water damage but I still couldn’t help but be a bit envious of the find. So there we have the fellow marvelite with the aforementioned opportunity seized, myself with the opportunity lost, and the grand no-prize goes to the loyal one who could guess what the opportunity gained was???.................................That would be the writing of this new installment of this sizzling Silver Age Sensation of course! 

The X-Men was the brain child of who other at Marvel than Stan The Man and King Kirby. Stan Lee himself, in the book entitled “Stan Lee’s Amazing Marvel Universe” goes on to say that of all his books he really felt that the X-Men had the greatest untapped potential especially as a way to impart some wisdom on the readers. Stan, in an interview with Chris Hardwick over at The Nerdist, has said that he was certainly not the most learned man around and that he certainly did not want to preach to his readers but if a “teaching” moment seemed to arise, well then he would try to slide a little teaching moment in here or there. The 60’s were a turbulent time in American history and tolerance and segregation were at the forefront of the nation’s minds. Stan and Marvel wanted to connect with the readers and show them both how segregation can feel and how tolerance and respect could be the cure. What did Stan and Jack devise as the perfect vehicle of transmission for their message? They conceived a group alienated by society because they were different. The group they conceived was none other than THE X-MEN!!!!

Now, I would also be lying if a certain tweet had not also served as a wee bit of inspiration for the compilation of this post. The tweet alluded to was via one of my favorite venues for procuring a run of comics for VERY reasonable prices with a WIDE variety to choose from; Midtown Comics. I saw this tweet and my excitement for the X-Men was rejuvenated! “@MidtownComics New X-Men: Days of Future Past Official Trailer! http://bit.ly/Q7pefz “ Seeing this reignited my reminiscence of first seeing the Days of Future Past storyline unfold on the X-Men animated series of the 90's, a storyline that I actally first watched on VHS type as a special promotion from Pizza Hut of all places! 

As homage to Stan’s wishes to use X-Men as a model to disseminate knowledge I would like to take this opportunity, my merry marvel marchers, to share with you some of THE most interesting things that I have learned about the Silver Age of Marvel comics through the pages of the Uncanny X-men: 

1) A Case of Mistaken Identity: As most marvelites know and as I have previously mentioned, Jack Kirby was the first man to draw the uncanny X-Men but did you know that the next two men to take over for King Kirby were actually the same person? Indeed they were, a fact that Karen, a friend of mine over at Between the Pages, pointed out to me. The second artist’s name to appear on the mag was Jay Gavin and the third name to appear was Werner Roth but as it turned out, Werner Roth and Jay Gavin were one in the same person! The story goes, as recounted to me via Karen, that Werner was working for both DC and Marvel during this time and he did not want to lose his employment by “working for the competition”. Roth decided to use the pen name of Jay Gavin, the names of his two sons, when he first started work on X-Men over at Marvel so not to anger or rouse the suspicion of the executives over at DC. 

2) Who okay-ed the color choices for the original Sentinels? With “Days of Future Past” generating quite the buzz, and understandably so as it is one of the most thought compelling storylines in all of marveldom, I thought you loyal ones might be interested in seeing the genesis of the one of the major players in that storyline…………THE SENTINELS! 

Now I must admit that the Sentinels, as a whole, are probably in my top 3 favorite Marvel "villains" of all time. They are intelligent, follow the same self-awareness paradigm as Skynet in the Terminator (coincidence?), are organized, and are truly a powerful and an even match for the X-Men. 

Stan Lee has previously admitted that due to his expansive workload he was not exactly focusing 100% on all the material that he gave the green light for. Most famously Stan recounted a tale in which he was getting ready to leave for Europe during the time that The Amazing Spider-Man #121 was being worked on and quickly okayed the project in haste on his way out of the office and was actually surprised to see that the creative team had decided to kill Gwen Stacey! I have to imagine that a similar circumstance must have come up when the inker showed up to show Stan his color choices for the original Sentinels because  that’s truly a “unique” color scheme that the Sentinels have going on here: 

Well that's all for today marvelites, Jubilant Jeff V signing off! EXCELSIOR!

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P.S. Just to make sure you guys don't miss out on the bolstered Silver Age Sensation experience in each post, remember to click on any of the text that appears gold in each post because that means that I'm linking ya to even more goodness. -Awareness lovin Jeff!