History of the X-Men, 1965

The following is a history of the X-Men for the year of 1965, in which the team at last dismantled the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, but found that their leader Magneto would not be so easy to dispose of. The robotic Sentinels, created by Bolivar Trask and led by the Master Mold, also proved to be a dire threat to the team and mutants everywhere. Within the team itself, the quiet and polite Cyclops and Marvel Girl continued to silently long for each other, while the charismatic Angel repeatedly got in the way of their budding romance.

History

Ka-Zar of the Savage Land

While training at the school, the X-Men saw a news report on a man in Antarctica wearing a loin-cloth, apparently accompanied by a sabertooth tiger: a beast long thought extinct. The man had rescued an explorer who had been thought missing to his exploration party, who caught the event on camera. The tiger sent the explorers into a panic, but no one was harmed. The X-Men surmised that the man was a mutant, to be wearing next to no clothing in frigid temperatures. They spoke to Professor X, but he assured them that Cerebro had produced no sign of mutants in the area. Nonetheless, he encouraged them to investigate, seeing how restless they had become after weeks of inactivity, but also warned that they would likely face unexpected dangers. The X-Men arrived at the area where the wild man had been seen, and found a deep crevasse. They investigated below, and emerged from an enormous subterranean cave system to find a vast, lush ecosystem filled with prehistoric creatures: a realm that would come to be known as the Savage Land. They were quickly set upon by predatory beasts and hostile humans, and Marvel Girl was soon kidnapped by a group of natives.

Reeling from their sudden defeat, the X-Men were approached by the man they were searching for, Ka-Zar, and his tiger ally, Zabu. Ka-Zar's defensiveness and limited vocabulary led to misunderstandings and a brief fight, until they were interrupted by another hostile human, whom Ka-Zar called Maa-Gor. Ka-Zar made short work of defeating the caveman, and agreed to help the X-Men to find the "swamp-men" who had taken Jean Grey. Angel went to scout ahead, but was himself soon captured by a swamp-men net. He and Jean were tied up and taken to a massive tyrannosaurus rex for sacrifice, but Ka-Zar and the others arrived at the swamp-men stronghold in time to rescue them. The X-Men, Ka-Zar, Zabu, and Ka-Zar's many bestial friends of the jungle stormed through the swamp-men and escaped safely. As Ka-Zar led the X-Men back to the entrance, he insisted that this was his world, and that the X-Men and other surface people should stay in theirs.

The Brotherhood crumbles

Professor X detected a new mutant on the scene, and the team set out to speak with him before Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants could reach him. They followed reports of a man walking through the air, and found a brick building with a large hole in its wall. Inside, the mutant was indeed meeting with the Brotherhood, but their discussion had gone awry. The mutant, who appeared to be a middle-aged man known as the Stranger, had used his powers to transform Mastermind into a "solid block of matter," utterly incapacitating him. The X-Men attacked the Brotherhood, leaving the Stranger to observe as the two teams fought. He eventually lost interest and went to leave, but Magneto insisted on joining him to convince him to join the Brotherhood. The Stranger created an invisible cone of energy, through which he, Magneto, and Toad fled. During the fight, Iceman completely covered Quicksilver in ice, and the Scarlet Witch completely lost interest in fighting for Magneto, instead devoting her attention to ensuring her brother was safe. Cyclops melted Quicksilver out, and the siblings announced that they were finished serving Magneto: their life-debt to him had by now been repaid "many times over." Cyclops asked them to join the X-Men, but they decided to return home to Europe, weary of the endless battles between mutants.

With no other leads, the X-Men retrieved the petrified Mastermind and brought him back to the school for examination. Xavier found that the Stranger had altered his body on a molecular level. Professor X led the team out to find the Stranger, having now been put in the strange position of saving Magneto. Xavier tracked Magneto and Toad and found them in the woods wrapped in some strange cocoons. The Stranger suddenly appeared, having grown much larger than human-size. In truth, he wasn't a mutant at all, but an alien visitor from a race interested in mutations throughout the universe. Before the X-Men could react, the Stranger zipped into the sky, bringing Magneto and Toad with him into space—he declared that they would never return. With all of its members having left or otherwise been convincingly defeated, the Brotherhood was effectively dismantled.

Attack of the Juggernaut

As soon as the team returned home from their encounter with the Stranger, Cerebro detected a large threat in the vicinity and approaching fast. Professor X knew that it must be the Juggernaut: he had the X-Men prepare a series of fortifications around the school, and explained his relationship to Juggernaut. Cain Marko was his jealous, mean-spirited stepbrother who had gained great strength and size from an artifact known as the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak during the Korean War. Juggernaut soon arrived and easily stormed through the X-Men's preparations. He went to attack Professor X, and Xavier's mental powers could not penetrate his psionic helmet. Cyclops burned a deep hole in the ground and Juggernaut fell in, buying the X-Men some time. Xavier went to his Mento-Helmet, a device to charge the power of his mental energy and hopefully make him strong enough to take down Juggernaut. To keep himself from overloading, Xavier released excess brainwaves out into the city. He inadvertently made a connection with the Human Torch, who cautiously dismissed his messages. While the X-Men threw everything they had at Juggernaut, Professor X realized that Torch's help could be critical to victory. He contacted him directly, and Torch agreed to come help. As Xavier's mind finished charging, Torch arrived to fight alongside the X-Men. Under Xavier's telepathic instructions, Beast managed to loosen Juggernaut's psionic helmet. Angel and Torch flew circles around him, and Angel slipped the helmet off the enraged Juggernaut's head. Xavier assaulted Juggernaut's mind, knocking him unconscious and leaving him pliable for delivery to the authorities. Professor X expressed his gratitude to the Human Torch, but wiped his memory of the incident to preserve the X-Men's secrecy. The team recovered physically and went to work cleaning up the wrecked school grounds.

Wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm

Full article: Wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm

The X-Men attended the wedding of Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl of the Fantastic Four, as did a number of other renowned heroes. Doctor Doom attempted to sabotage the wedding by using his "emotion machine" to encourage (or coerce) a veritable army of other villains to attack the Baxter Building. One of the first villains to infiltrate the building was the Mole Man, who drilled in through the floor with a small army of Moloids. The X-Men helped the Thing fight them off and send them back down their hole, and Iceman used his ice to seal it shut. Later, the X-Men were a major part of the hero-villain battle that erupted outside the Baxter Building. Angel helped fend off the Black Knight from attacking a truck bomb that Daredevil had hijacked from Hydra agents. Iceman found himself under fire from the beam attacks of several villains at once, but Cyclops used one of his own to save him. In the end, Reed Richards used a device provided by Uatu to transport all of the villains back slightly in time and wipe their memories of these events. Reed and Sue Storm were thus successfully and peacefully married.

Rise of the Sentinels

The Juggernaut fight had taken a great deal out of the team, and they weren't at their peak even for the Baxter Building battle. They underwent exhaustive physical therapy overseen by Professor X to get their abilities back in top shape. Impressed by their recovery and their efforts in recent months, Xavier told the team that he was granting them some vacation time, much to their delight. Each team member made preparations to stay at home for a little while. Scott considered using this moment as an opportunity to get closer to Jean, but Warren got in ahead of him and drove her to the train station, leaving Scott feeling lonely and inadequate. As the team left, Xavier read the newspaper for that day and found that an anthropologist named Bolivar Trask had begun to instigate a culture war against mutants. He believed that, left to their devices, mutants would soon rise up and enslave the human race. Recognizing the extreme danger that Dr. Trask's zealotry posed to the X-Men and mutants worldwide, Professor X contacted a national television network and proposed a live debate with Trask.

The debate took place the following night, and Xavier encouraged the public not to fall victim to ignorance and prejudice. Trask remained hostile to mutants and to Xavier, and revealed a small group of roughly eight-foot robots he called Sentinels. Trask had created the Sentinels to defeat mutants and bring an end to their supposed danger. But as he tried to command one, the Sentinel ignored him and blasted him with an energy ray. The Sentinels had achieved sentience, and believed themselves superior to humanity. Helpless against robot foes, Professor X sent a desperate mental signal to the X-Men. One of the Sentinels stayed behind to watch over those in the studio while the others flew away with Trask in tow. Xavier used his mental powers to keep the innocents in the studio from panicking. Beast and Iceman, who had only gone as far as Manhattan, arrived soon after Xavier's signal and began fighting the Sentinel. Cyclops arrived by a taxi, and came in such a hurry that he accidentally revealed his identity to the driver, causing a small hateful mob to chase him for some time. The three X-Men fought the Sentinel and seemed to have met their match, until the robot suddenly fell over defeated for seemingly no reason. With the danger stopped for now, Professor X led the civilians out of the studio while carefully keeping his own mutanthood concealed.

With time to focus, Xavier realized that he heard the Sentinel mutter the words "Master Mold" before collapsing. Moments later, he received a "vague mental impulse"—a "thought" of sorts from the Sentinel, a desire so strong that Xavier could pick it up despite its artificial nature. The Sentinel wished to return to the point of its creation, a location that Xavier identified from the thought. Meanwhile, as Angel was making his way to the others through the air, he ran into the departing Sentinels. They attacked him, but at that moment, Marvel Girl in a train passing underneath saw this happen and pulled Angel down with her telekinetic powers. Jean then demonstrated a new skill, the ability to levitate for short distances using telekinesis. She did so up onto the roof, and Angel carried her to the TV studio. The team took a car to the place Xavier saw, but found simply a grassy field. As they became confused, a nearby hill suddenly rose up, revealing a large metal fortress underneath, and artillery that began to fire energy rays upon them.

The team hurried to another hill nearby to get out of range. Iceman and Beast used an icey contraption with Cyclops' energy beam to launch themselves across the gap into an opening, but they were snatched out of midair by long mechanical tentacles that dragged them inside and deposited them in a large transparent box. Angel tried to follow them in, but he was blocked by a sudden wall of fire. A thick gas came into the box, and the two were knocked out. Beast was taken into the chamber of the Sentinels' leader, the Master Mold: essentially a huge, supremely intelligent Sentinel. Trask was also there, another prisoner of the Sentinels: Though Master Mold possessed the power to create Sentinels, only Trask had the knowledge required to initiate the process. Trask refused to help, but Mold threatened to attack humanity if he didn't cooperate. Outside, Xavier figured out that though he couldn't mentally control a Sentinel, he could fire a psychic attack at them just as well. He did so at the Sentinels controlling the exterior artillery, knocking them out and halting their assault for the time being. Angel, Cyclops, and Marvel Girl entered the artillery area, and were soon met by a Sentinel. Having received no orders from the Master Mold to attack them, the Sentinel instead simply told them to follow him to the Mold's chamber. On the way, they saw Iceman in his containment cell and broke him out, much to the Sentinel's annoyance. Marvel Girl telekinetically knocked it over, allowing the four to flee as an alarm began to sound.

The Sentinels put Beast into a machine called the psycho-probe, which would cause him to honestly speak aloud his secrets. He essentially told them his life story up to the point that Xavier took him in. Tracking the team's progress from outside, Professor X realized that Beast might unwittingly doom them all. He sent his astral image into the Master Mold's chamber and deadened Beast's thoughts, causing him to stop speaking. Xavier attempted to assault Master Mold's mind as well, but it detected his presence and began firing electrified impulses into the air, disturbing his astral form and forcing him to retreat. Master Mold sent the Sentinels after the X-Men inside and dragged Trask away to force him to make more Sentinels.

Xavier's astral form moved with such desperation that it knocked him out of his wheelchair upon arrival. Moments later, the Sentinels' base lowered itself back into the ground, blocking off his telepathic access. Professor X dragged himself to the nearest street and telepathically flagged down a passing driver and passenger, who obeyed his suggestion to take him to the city. With little other recourse, Xavier looked to more closely examine the defeated Sentinel in the television studio for clues as to why it had suddenly collapsed. Arriving at the studio, Xavier found that it was being investigated by a number of police. Recognizing him from the debate, they allowed him to look around. He found that a huge decorative crystal on a tower across the street had interfered with the Sentinel's reception and caused it to deactivate—meaning that to move it from where it lay would reactivate it. The police received orders from Washington to cooperate with Xavier, and they went along with his plan to bring the large crystal to the Sentinels' fortress.

Meanwhile, the Sentinels trapped the X-Men (sans Beast) in a large bubble of sorts with an intensely heavy gravity field inside of it. The four heroes tried to break out, but to no avail. Soon, the Sentinels brought Beast and opened the bubble to put him in it, but the X-Men used that opportunity to escape and fight back. Xavier's crystal caused the Sentinels to deactivate, giving the X-Men freedom to move. As they made haste for the Master Mold's chamber to attempt to destroy it, a huge explosion came billowing out of it. At the critical moment, Trask had refused to help Master Mold make more Sentinels, and had destroyed the Mold's ionic power source, sacrificing himself in the process. The X-Men escaped from the exploding facility, narrowly returning to the surface in time.

Magneto returns to Earth

The military arrived at the scene, and the injured X-Men were given medical attention. Xavier oversaw their transport while trying to carefully pose as a neutral civilian informant rather than the X-Men's leader. Beast and Cyclops were injured, and Iceman was in critical condition. On Xavier's insistence, each of them kept their secret identity a priority as doctors examined them. Angel used the hospital phone to check the school's answering machine, and found that his parents had called. Xavier called them back and tried to gently ask them not to come over, but they insisted. Xavier felt a vague sense of unease about their visit, and had Angel fly over to the mansion to check on things. Entering the mansion, Angel found himself attacked by flying weapons. He saw an enemy in the shadows and flew at him, but crashed into a mirror that flew into his way, knocking him unconscious.

Xavier detected the loss of Angel's mental connection, and had the recuperated Cyclops drive him to the mansion. Professor X found that some sort of mental barrier had enveloped the school. As Xavier and Cyclops went inside, they found that Cerebro was screeching wildly: this meant not only that a powerful, dangerous mutant was inside the building, but they had switched on Cerebro just moments ago. Suddenly, the cables of a "mechanical mental-wave distorter" wrapped itself around Xavier, attacking his brain and forcing him unconscious. The lights went out, and the mystery assailant attacked and knocked out Cyclops. Back at the hospital, Beast and Marvel Girl decided to check on the mansion. Upon their arrival, they found that the floor had become slick and glassy. Beast slid into a trap door, and Marvel Girl was knocked out by sleeping gas as she met the attacker face-to-face: incredibly, it was the returning Magneto. While the five X-Men were unconscious, Magneto locked them all inside of a "steel gondola" carried by a large balloon and sent them aloft, floating helplessly into the sky. Back at the hospital, the comatose Iceman mumbled to himself incessantly that the X-Men needed him, and that he would prove himself to them.

Professor X recovered and began to fight back against the distorter still wrapped around him. Exerting great pressure, he managed to destroy the device through pure mental energy, then began to revive the others. Once all were awake, Marvel Girl used her telekinetic power to keep the gondola from rising any higher, though she couldn't counteract the balloon's lift enough to push it down to the ground. Professor X mentally analyzed the school and found that Magneto had taken Angel's parents, the Worthingtons, captive. He sent a telepathic message to Iceman, who was awake and recovering but still weak. Nonetheless, he jumped out of bed and quickly made his way to the school to help. Xavier also intercepted images of Magneto's memories, showing how he had escaped from the Stranger's planet by commandeering a spaceship—and cruelly leaving Toad behind. With this history in mind, Xavier harnessed all of his mental energy to achieve "the most difficult thought projection of his life," and sent a telepathic message to the Stranger, out in space.

Iceman arrived at the school and found that Magneto was analyzing the Worthingtons' DNA to create more mutants. Iceman interrupted the process at a critical moment, and the two fought. A weakened Iceman was no match for Magneto at full power, and the X-Men's nemesis quickly overwhelmed the team's youngest hero. As the rest of the X-Men began to run out of oxygen in the gondola, they decided on a more risky plan of action. Cyclops blasted a tiny hole in the craft, causing them to plummet toward the ground, but Marvel Girl used her telekinesis to slow the descent, allowing them to land safely near the school. Iceman's teammates joined the fray, rescuing him from a sure death at Magneto's hands. Magneto remained a formidable threat to the combined X-Men until the arrival of the Stranger, streaking into the atmosphere at blinding speed. The terrified Magneto used his magna-car to escape, tailed over the horizon by the Stranger's aerial form. The team began to clean up the mansion's damage from Magneto's attack, and Xavier wiped the Worthingtons' memory of their ordeal, allowing them to wake up peacefully the next morning and meet the team in their casual dress.

See also

• History of the X-Men, 1963-1964
• History of the X-Men, 1966