This comic book tale is of the story titled “Trapped: One X-Man!” the feature of X-men #5 from 1964. In this tale we have the second encounter between our hero’s and Magneto’s evil mutants, and to top it off, after the events of last issue left Professor Xavier powerless the X-men must deal with this alone.  To make matters worse, Magneto and his evil mutants manage to capture The Angel, and the X-men must rescue him from Asteroid M.

Is this the making of a good tale? and will this have ongoing repercussions?  Or will this story fail to live up to all our hopes for it. Continue on to see what I think in my review of X-men#5. 

Artwork

The key word of this issue, would be effective detail.  Meaning that given the era of comics, and that amount of work Jack Kirby was putting out, I can easily see how  he would not have time to detail every panel highly.  But in this issue we see he knows how to detail effectively.

While there are a good share of panels with low detail’s offering no background, or just floor / wall outlines. there is also always within view a panel or two that fills in the gaps that are left to the imagination elsewhere. This is particularly true in the later part of the issue when the X-men are on asteroid M. But the panel i choose to share is from before that, with the X-men and an incognito Toad riding a train.

This panel I feel shows us  just how jack can bring the world to life, offering expression and even emotion in the other passengers on the train.

Characters & Development

The X-men on their own for the first time, show us that they can function without their mentor and founder Professor X, monitoring and helping them every step of the way.  This is the kind of proof that any teenage hero team or school like this would need.  My biggest questioning of this, is if it was not  way too soon in the X-men ongoing stories.

Originality and Continuity

We seem to have built an ongoing menace in magneto and his evil mutants, and one that seems to work, and maintain a level of continuity.  The X-men show us in this issue, in their own way that they have not forgotten the help Quicksilver gave last issue, but lets see if you can pick up on how?

Story

at its roots this is a good story, but one that I feel did not flower to the extent that it could have, it has continuity and originality, it has character development, yet it did not hold my attention like I could have hoped.