We start with the X-Men earning a vacation!
Not sure taking a one-hour bus ride to New York City counts as a vacation. It’s more of an outing. Anyway, before they can go they have to hide their various mutant traits.
Beast binds his feet. Angel binds his wings.
They hide in plain sight, disguising their features. And before they go to town, they ogle Jean.
They go to a club where Bobby’s lack of game with straight women proves he’s gay.
But there’s not much time for fun as a new robot army has been designed to hunt them down.
Thus, the second “signature enemy” for the team is introduced: The Sentinels. The mutant-hunting Sentinels in many ways capture the heart of the X-Men concept: Human fears of Homo Superior made manifest in what is essentially an ethnic cleansing robot.
Bolivar Trask is the architect.
He gets good press.
But as the robots attack and capture the X-Men, they begin to inexplicably stop operating.
The robots themselves don’t know what is going on.
It turns out, they are under the thrall of Master Mold, an even bigger Sentinel whose job is to make and rule other Sentinels. He orders them to turn on Trask.
Trask is taken to meet Master Mold.
The X-Men rescue Trask, of course. But not before they also get captured.
The teens are put in a clear box–a precursor to the omnipresent clear tubes that Marvel heroes will find themselves captured and stored in by countless villains in the decades to come.
While captured, under hypnosis, Beast tells his origin.
Of course there are sports–part of a grand X-Men tradition.
His athleticism attracts Professor X’s attention–in the days before Cerebro.
Once we’re done with the flashbacks, we return to the main story where Trask has his come-to-Jesus moment as X-Men fight their way through Master Mold’s fortress to rescue their captive members.
And Trask is killed, along with the Master Mold.
That shadowy figure is Magneto. He returns from his adventure in space with The Stranger next issue.
English (US) · 