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Taking Comics to a New Level: X-Men Visionaries 2: The Neal Adams Collection
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Taking Comics to a New Level: X-Men Visionaries 2: The Neal Adams Collection
A legendary run of X-Men adventures, featuring classic art!
By Alan Brown
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Published on April 1, 2025
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In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Sometimes a book will come along that just blows you away, hitting you so hard you feel it must have been written just for you. Today’s book, X-Men Visionaries 2: The Neal Adams Collection, had that impact on me during my youth. Although that was in its original form as a series of X-Men comic books, a run in which a new team—author Roy Thomas, artist Neal Adams, and inker Tom Palmer—took the stories and the art of an ongoing series to a new level.
In this column, we’ll look at the story in the form of a graphic novel, a more durable form of comics. Since the format became popular around the 1980s, graphic novels have become a way to tell longer stories, collect recent issues of comics, and as in the case of today’s book, bring back older comics for a new audience (or for old folks like me looking for nostalgia). The reprinting of older work also provides the opportunity for the art to be recolored, as past printing practices often resulted in crude color separations that detracted from the finished product.
The title of this collection is a bit misleading. The “2” at the end suggests this is the second of two volumes that collect Neal Adams’ art on the X-Men comics, which is not the case. The volume covers the same issues as the original X-Men Visionaries collection (issues 56-63 and 65, originally published in 1969-70), and you are getting the whole story when buying this collection. While the art team remained the same during these issues, Roy Thomas wrote the first eight issues, Chris Claremont assisted on the fourth issue, and Denny O’Neil wrote the last.
About the Creators
Neal Adams (1941-2022) was a noted American comic book artist. He started on a daily comic strip, and took jobs as a freelancer with DC comics, where he worked with Denny O’Neil on an influential run of the Green Arrow/Green Lantern comic. He later did freelance work for Marvel Comics, where he drew the Avengers and X-Men. He founded his own comic company, Continuity Comics, which was in business for a decade, and was an advocate for the rights of comic book creators, who were sometimes exploited by the companies who hired them. His work was innovative, and he played with panel shapes and sequencing, while using richly detailed scenes and forced perspectives to bring stories to life. As it is impossible to adequately describe his work with words, I would suggest readers simply Google “Neal Adams X-Men” and take a look at the images online to get a sense of his style.
Tom Palmer (1941-2022) was an American comic book artist known best as an inker, finishing the penciled work of other artists with pen or brush. He worked with top artists including Neal Adams, Gene Colan, John Buscema, and John Byrne.
Roy Thomas (born 1940) is an American comic book editor and writer, most famous for taking over the editor-in-chief reins of Marvel Comics from Stan Lee in 1972. Working at Marvel from 1965 to 1981, he revitalized many characters from the prior eras, and introduced the pulp fantasy character Conan to the comic book format. Thomas was very successful at Marvel, creating a number of new characters, and books he worked on included the Avengers (including the classic Kree-Skrull War arc), Doctor Strange, Nick Fury (both the WWII and S.H.I.E.L.D. books), and X-Men. He also led the effort to bring Star Wars to Marvel Comics. He worked for DC comics for a few years, and later in his career took on more freelance and independent work.
Chris Claremont (born 1950) is an American comic book and fiction writer, whose most notable achievement was writing the X-Men comic book from 1975 to 1991—an unusually long run for an individual writer, and a very successful era for the book.
Dennis O’Neil (1939-2020) was an American comic book writer and editor, spending most of his career moving between Marvel and DC comics. He is credited for infusing DC characters such as Batman, Green Arrow, and Green Lantern with more maturity and depth in the 1960s. His work for Marvel included writing for some of their most popular books.
The Birth of the X-Men
The X-Men were created in the 1960s, when the modern era of superheroes was developing. Having success with Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Avengers, Stan Lee thought it was time for a group that shared a common origin story. This story tapped into the same concerns that had birthed Godzilla on the other side of the Pacific; the threat of nuclear radiation, and the way it could cause living creatures to mutate. It also drew upon a trope common in fantasy and fairy tales, that puberty was often a time when extraordinary powers and destiny would be revealed. Moreover, the theme of teenagers who didn’t fit in with their peers was one that resonated with young readers. Lee turned to his favorite co-creator, artist Jack Kirby, to bring this team to life. They set the story in a private academy north of New York City, headed by Professor Xavier (codenamed Professor X)—a man with telepathic powers who was one of the first mutants to emerge from the human population.
Professor X begins his endeavor with five gifted students. The first is Scott Summers, codenamed Cyclops, whose eyes, when opened, create red concussive blasts of energy, which can only be controlled by ruby-lensed glasses or a visor. Scott is dutiful, cautious, and repressed by fear of his powers. The one female student is Jean Grey, codenamed Marvel Girl, who has telepathic powers that rival those of Professor X, and telekinetic powers as well. All the other students have crushes on Jean, but she’s especially beloved by Scott. While her codename might feel dismissive by today’s standards, depicting a woman as an equal member of the team was progressive for its time. Next to Scott, my favorite character on the team is Hank McCoy, codenamed Beast, who is extremely intelligent, but also musclebound, with huge hands and feet. With his ebullient personality and large vocabulary, he is easy to like. Warren Worthington III, codenamed Angel, is a child of privilege who could fly, possessing wings that span at least twenty feet (but which can fold up so tightly against his back that they can be hidden under normal clothing). The final member of the team is the youngest, Bobby Drake, codenamed Iceman, who can create ice and snow at will. Bobby is initially moody and insecure, but becomes a more valuable member of the team as his control of his powers grows over time.
Opposing this team is the mutant master of magnetism, Magneto, who led the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (the corny “Evil” was dropped later when writers realized that even villains don’t tend to think of themselves as evil). Where Professor X advocates accommodation and cooperation with normal humans, Magneto is his opposite, believing that mutants should dominate and rule normal humans.
The X-Men were not my favorite superheroes at the time, but I did identify with the fact that they were teenagers, and like many of the team members, I also had a crush on the character Jean Grey. But their early adventures were not always the best of what Marvel Comics was putting out, and sales of the book were low. I was delighted when the writers eventually upended the stodgy private school setting and killed off Professor X, putting the young heroes front and center. Roy Thomas took over the writing, and the new talent Neal Adams was brought aboard as artist. The art style was innovative and exciting, the adventures larger than life, and for a few exciting issues, collected in the graphic novel I’m reviewing today, the X-Men’s adventures became my favorite.
X-Men Visionaries 2: The Neal Adams Collection
The book opens in the midst of an ongoing adventure, with the X-Men in Egypt, battling a mutant archaeologist who calls himself the Living Pharoh. The X-Men are learning to work without Professor Xavier’s leadership, which gives the story an interesting dynamic, and they have abandoned their old black and yellow uniforms for costumes that give each of them a bit of individuality (and I’m sure made them more fun to draw). The Living Pharoh has captured Scott Summers’ younger brother Alex, whose concussive mutant powers are just beginning to emerge, and is plotting to steal that energy to make himself even more powerful. There is lots of combat against the foe, whose size increases along with his power, but the X-Men are finally successful. But then they find that young Bobby Drake’s new girlfriend, a young mutant named Lorna who goes by the codename Polaris, has been kidnapped back in New York. It turns out that the mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, created by their late foe Bolivar Trask, are back in action. The robots are supporting the Federal Council on Mutant Activities, led by Judge Chalmers, and are controlled by Larry Trask, who blames the X-Men for his father’s death.
While investigating Lorna’s disappearance, police knock the Beast out a skyscraper window, and his terror during a long fall is captured in a page of Adams’ beautifully evocative art. On the next page, just in the nick of time, he is saved by an ice ramp created by young Bobby, and a whole lot of robot battling ensues. Judge Chalmers begins to have second thoughts about employing robots that shoot first and ask questions later. During a struggle with the X-Men, Larry Trask orders the robots to kill all mutants, and the Judge pulls a necklace and medallion off Larry that his father told him always to wear. It turns out that Larry himself is a mutant, and the medallion suppresses his precognitive powers, and also memories of those powers. So the robots are stuck in “kill all mutants” mode, and after a long, brutal, and inconclusive battle, Scott ends up using their own logic to foil them—a solution that could have been drawn out of an Isaac Asimov novel. Alex is wounded in the fighting and the team takes him to an old associate of Professor Xavier for treatment, a doctor called Karl Lykos.
Doctor Lykos turns out to have a tragic backstory, which forms the foundation for one of my favorite X-Men adventures of all time. During his youth, he was on an expedition in Tierra del Fuego and rescued a young girl, Tanya Anderssen, from some pteranodons in an underground cavern (a battle which gives Adams another opportunity to show off his artistic skills). He was severely wounded, and left with a strange malady that turns him into a kind of life-energy vampire. His one motivation was his love for Tanya, whose father thought the penniless young boy was beneath them. Thus, Lykos was driven to become a successful doctor, hoping to win approval from Mr. Anderssen—but all the while, he used his medical practice to siphon life energy from his patients. And there is no source of life energy that rivals that of a mutant.
While treating Alex, Lykos draws on his life energy, which gives him a level of power he has never felt before, but also transforms him into a human/pteranodon hybrid flying creature. In a fit of self-loathing, he names himself Sauron, after the Lord of the Rings villain. He engages in a flying battle with Angel and reverts to human form. Lykos makes one more attempt to convince Mr. Anderssen that he is worthy of Tanya’s love, but begins to rant about power and revenge, and is rebuffed. He then draws energy from Polaris to transform himself again, tries to murder Mr. Anderssen, and flies back to Tierra del Fuego, pursued by the X-Men and Tanya. When Lykos sees Tanya again and feels an uncontrollable urge to steal her life energy, he throws himself off a cliff rather than destroy the woman he loves. The story is tragic, but very compelling, and possessed a depth I’d not seen before in comic books.
This adventure flows right into the next one. Angel is suffering following his encounter with Lykos and is lost in the caverns of Tierra del Fuego, which turn out to be connected to the Savage Land, a volcanic valley in Antarctica where dinosaurs and cavemen still wander. Angel is captured by cavemen who have mutant powers activated by an old scientist. The rest of the team search for Angel and encounter Kazar, the jungle lord who rules the Savage Land. Together the X-Men and Kazar battle the lackluster caveman mutants, and it is revealed that the old scientist is their old foe Magneto, who they thought was dead, but was merely hiding from civilization. The X-Men are victorious, and they fly home to New York.
The final adventure in the book is a strange one, with Professor Xavier turning out to be alive (it was actually a double who’d been impersonating him who died—one of those convoluted plotlines that you only seem to see in comic books and soap operas). And it’s a good thing he is back, because a malevolent alien race has brought their planet into our solar system and plans to lay waste to the Earth. Professor Xavier uses his telepathic powers to link the minds of everyone on Earth, and uses the resulting psychic energy to drive away the invaders. The story is one of those that introduces powers so vast and transformative they will be difficult to reconcile with future adventures… Stories where the fate of the entire world lies in the balance tend to be tough to follow, and packing this one into a single comic book issue ended up with everything feeling rushed and muddled.
The Further Adventures of the X-Men
Then, tragically, the next issue of the X-Men, without explanation, simply began reprinting old adventures, and before long, disappeared entirely. But that was not the end of the team’s story. A few years later, largely due to pressure from fans who remembered their glory days, the X-Men came back. I’ll never forget the night I discovered that fact. I was in the only bar in the fishing village of Pelican, Alaska, for an evening, and found a pile of comic books in a corner behind one of the booths. Among them were X-Men comics I hadn’t seen before. So I sorted them into a stack beside my beer, began to read, and was soon delighted by the quality of the storytelling.
The book had been revived by writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum, who were later supplanted by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne. The new team featured some original members, but also new members who were older than the young students of the original team, and drawn from a variety of backgrounds. There was Wolverine, a combative Canadian with claws embedded in his forearms; Nightcrawler, a German teleporter who looked like a blue-skinned demon; Banshee, an Irishman with sonic powers; Storm, an African woman who could control the weather; Sunfire, a Japanese man who could create solar blasts; Colossus, a Russian who could literally become a man of steel; and Thunderbird, an incredibly strong Native American. Their adventures spanned the world, and even extended into outer space, and when I returned to civilization, I started seeking out these new adventures of the X-Men.
X-Men became one of Marvel’s most popular comics, and the adventures of the mutants exploded into multiple books and teams. They continued to battle prejudice at home, and were swept up into interstellar wars between the Kree and Shi’ar Empires. They were nearly exterminated by the troubled Scarlet Witch, traveled through time, founded a homeland on the living island of Krakoa (and for a time, gained the power to be resurrected again after death), and even terraformed Mars as another new homeland. The original members went through all sorts of transformations, especially Jean Grey, who gained the cosmic, world-destroying powers of the mysterious Phoenix. Today, still led by a more cynical and world-weary Cyclops, the X-Men appear in at least half a dozen comic books during any given month, and are the stars of a series of popular movies, soon to be rebooted due to the purchase of the franchise by Disney.
Final Thoughts
It might be difficult, given how ubiquitous the X-Men comics are today, to imagine a time when their sales were so low the book was cancelled. And after reading this collection, it is hard to imagine that those sales didn’t improve because of the new creative team. But in the intervening decades, the Neal Adams run has become seen for what it is; a pivotal step forward in the quality of comic book storytelling, and a treasure well worth seeking out.
And now I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts. If you’ve read these issues of X-Men comics, what did you think of them? And if not, what other X-Men stories have you enjoyed reading? And what other graphic novel collections might you recommend to others?[end-mark]
The post Taking Comics to a New Level: <i>X-Men Visionaries 2: The Neal Adams Collection</i> appeared first on Reactor.