History of the X-Men, 1966

The following is a history of the X-Men for the year 1966.

History

Calvin Rankin's mimicry

After their intense ordeals with Magneto and the Sentinels of late, Professor X decided to give the team a vacation from their training. Beast and Iceman went on a double date, meeting Bobby's girl Zelda Kurtzberg and Hank's blind date Vera Cantor at Vera's workplace, the library. Soon after they left there, they were confronted by Calvin Rankin, a disgruntled would-be suitor of Vera's. Hank tried to hold him off, but Calvin attacked him, demonstrating strength and agility remarkably similar to Beast's own. Hank was forced to withhold his own powers for fear of revealing his identity. Bobby stood up to Calvin, but was similarly defeated, this time with ice powers. Calvin fled as various bystanders became aware of his apparent mutant abilities and attacked. By coincidence, Marvel Girl also ran into Calvin later at a diner, but they barely spoke. Hank and Bobby warned Professor X of Rankin, and Xavier told them that Cerebro had failed to detect him, apparently confirming that he wasn't a mutant. Rankin showed up at the door, claiming to want to apologize. Xavier let him in, and Rankin shook hands with the team, but they remained suspicious. Rankin went into another room to change, and Professor X braced his team for combat. Rankin returned and declared himself the Mimic, visibly boasting Beast's large extremities and Angel's wings. He fought the X-Men, holding his own with the entire team's combined powers (including Xavier's), but their numbers advantage proved them superior. Mimic feigned submission, grabbed Marvel Girl, and fled the premises. Professor X let him escape in order to follow him.

Mimic took Marvel Girl to a derelict mine, inside of which was surprisingly a well-furnished home. He told her the story of his youth, and his reasons for challenging the X-Men. Rankin had gained his ability to mimic after an accident in his father's laboratory. Deeper in the mine was a caved-in section bearing a machine designed by his late father to make his inherited powers permanent instead of fleeting. The remaining X-Men soon arrived, and as Mimic planned, he used their proximity to mimic Cyclops's lasers and access the deeper section of the mine. The X-Men rescued Marvel Girl and confronted Mimic as he neared the machine, but Professor X told them to let him use it. He had correctly deduced that Calvin's father would instead make a machine to deactivate his powers rather than enhance them, recognizing the danger in letting Calvin achieve his full potential. Using the machine caused Mimic to pass out, and Xavier used a mental blast to short-circuit the facility and cause the mine to dramatically explode as the X-Men escaped with Mimic in tow. Xavier wiped Calvin's memory of what had transpired, and he was let go.

The return of Lucifer

Tormented over his love for Jean and the danger of his mutation, Cyclops quietly departed the X-Men, leaving behind only a note. Meanwhile, the others saw a report on television of two supposed X-Men robbing a bank. Professor X used a newly installed Cerebro to reveal the criminals' identities: the Blob and Unus the Untouchable. Beast was particularly frustrated that Unus had gone back on his vow of innocence from their previous encounter. Though the X-Men still possessed the power-enhancing ray gun they'd used to defeat Unus, Xavier warned that he may have found a way to counter it now. Further, he detected that a third party was behind the robbery, though something was blocking him from detecting who. Iceman found Cyclops's note, but the team could do little about it in the midst of their new crisis. Soon, the fake X-Men duo committed another robbery, witnessed in person by none other than Cyclops. Scott hesitated to act, but upon hearing human bystanders blaming mutants as a whole for their actions, he felt duty-bound to fight back. He suited up and attacked the duo, but they acted as though he was their ally to continue deceiving the surrounding crowd and discrediting the X-Men. The frustrated Cyclops fled back to the school in hopes of allying with the real X-Men once more.

But Beast, Iceman, and Angel soon arrived on the scene themselves, and Beast fired the special ray gun on Unus once more—but he was now immune to its effects. The two sides fought as the crowd continued to believe that all of the mutants were at fault. Cyclops returned and blasted a hole underneath Unus and Blob, sending them underground and onto the back of a moving subway train. Meanwhile, Marvel Girl remained behind to assist Professor X in locating the perpetrator. Just as Xavier mentally honed in on his target, an intense blast of psychic energy rendered him unconscious. Jean maintained contact with him telepathically, though she required the use of a mental-wave amplifier to clearly understand his weakened thoughts. Xavier revealed that the man responsible was Lucifer, and told her of their history with each other. The team reconvened and Xavier mentally conveyed instructions for a device to block Lucifer's mental attacks. Beast constructed such a helmet that allowed Xavier to recover: the Professor had deduced Lucifer's location in the American Southwest, and the heroes took flight in his new jet to make their way there.

In the desert that night, the X-Men saw a vast beam of light open from the sky, and several huge shapes flew down from the light to the surface of a butte. As the sun rose, they saw that gases over the butte obscured a way in. The team climbed down into the hollowed-out structure while Xavier stayed behind. A group of ranchers investigating the strange light behavior spotted them and began shooting at Angel as he flew through the sky. The X-Men easily fended off their efforts without harming them. They penetrated Lucifer's base via a river leading into the rock formation. Soon however, they were sucked into a sudden whirlpool that broke Xavier's psychic connection to them. Moments later, Xavier was captured by a pair of robots, who were naturally immune to his powers. They brought him to Lucifer's inner sanctum, where the alien introduced him to the great machine known as Dominus, with which he would conquer the world. He explained to Xavier the nature of Dominus, a mind-control machine designed for subjugation that can only be operated by robots designed by Lucifer's people, the Quists.

Cyclops, Angel, and Marvel Girl emerged in a subterranean cavern and soon found an entry to the base proper, but were quickly ensnared in a large transparent box trap. Meanwhile, Beast and Iceman joined at another part of the cavern, where they fended off a pair of Lucifer's robots. They were similarly disabled by a trap, this time a falling metal wall. The robots recovered them and threw them into the box with their allies. Marvel Girl managed to telekinetically manipulate the lever to the box, freeing them and allowing the X-Men to take down the robots and penetrate deeper into the base. With help from Xavier's telepathy, they reached him and Lucifer and began fighting the alien menace and his robots. With Lucifer distracted, Xavier was able to exert enough mental influence over him to cause him to order the robots to fight recklessly. The robots were soon destroyed, and Lucifer contacted his master, the Supreme One, for assistance, on a huge video screen. With the robots to operate it destroyed, Dominus was useless. The Supreme One activated the pillar of light from the sky, banishing Lucifer "to a nameless dimension where neither time nor space exists." With Xavier's long-time foe finally defeated, the X-Men returned home.

See also

• History of the X-Men, 1965