Heading:
Author:
Title: X-MEN No. 56
Place Published:
Publisher:Marvel [Indicia: Magazine Management Co., Inc.]
Date Published: May, 1969
Description:

VF+ (8.5). A few small stress marks to spine, teensy nick at top spine, two very slight finger creases to bottom edge of front cover, light dustiness to back cover edges. White to off-white pages. Gorgeous copy with potential to slab at 9.0. Cover: Neal Adams (John Romita alterations to Cyclops). Script: Roy Thomas. Art: Neal Adams. Overstreet: "Intro Havok with no costume." GPAnalysis: An 8.5 sold for $222 in March 2022.

The Living Monolith clutches the logo on Neal Adams's first X-Men cover, a boundary-breaking innovation that hints at the original, unpublished version which featured even more drastic character interaction with the logo. Eleven years later, John Byrne would revisit the clutched-logo motif on his Dark Phoenix cover to X-Men #135.

"The X-Men issues that Adams and Thomas produced, then, weren't just sleek — they were serious, with dark brooding that replaced Lee and Kirby's grand philosophizing... But after Martin Goodman, still okaying the cover of every Marvel publication, saw the front of Adam's first issue, in which the defeated heroes were bound to the X-Men logo, he demanded that the cover be redone — and Adams quickly realized the limits of his freedom." — Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Harper: 2012, pp. 99-100.

Consignments welcome for PBA's Fall 2022 Comic Book sale. Pre-Code Horror, Golden Age and Silver Age comics, original art, vintage comic-related photos and ephemera sought. Send inquiries to ivan@pbagalleries.com.