I'm not even sure why Charles and Erik were friends, here.

Well, here's a lucky happenstance: X-Men: First Class opens today, and against all odds, it might not be too bad. Seriously, when it was first announced, it really looked like they were trying to cram too much in there; but it might work out.

I didn't want my only word on the subject to be just me bitching about Azazel (who will be fine in the movie if they only use him for color and teleporting; and don't go near his backstory) so it was lucky I found this issue when going through a pile of X-Men comics. (I swear I was looking for something in particular, and now I wonder what it was...)

X-Men #-1, "I Had a Dream" Written by Scott Lobdell, pencils by Carlos Pacheco, inks by Art Thibert. This was part of Marvel's Flashback month, featuring stories set in the pasts of their heroes. (And yet another scheme to jack up the numbers in your comic collection: zero issues, .1's, -1's, 1/2's, renumbering after renumbering...) I remember the Daredevil issue was pretty good, some of the Spidey ones weren't bad, and the Deadpool minus one was jarringly dark and bitter compared to the regular book. And this issue?

Um, fillerific. The first page of this issue is the last page of the previous issue, since this was breaking up the regular storyline; which is going to happen sometimes in these events. There's also three pages of Stan Lee as a character, setting up the flashbacks and having some fun--it has to be fun to write Stan Lee.

But the rest of the issue is Charles Xavier, before he formed the X-Men, having a meeting with Magneto, who's got an asteroid base and recently recruited Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch for his upcoming Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. (At the time, Pietro and Wanda don't know Magneto is their dad; and Magneto probably doesn't either.) All this would be well and good, except we've seen this before, and they're having their meeting at Auschwitz. Magneto is there in remembrance, but Charles shows to try and talk him out of going all Hitler on the humans.

Magneto, for his part, not only refuses to meet Xavier in the middle and maybe not kill all humans; he also berates him for being handicapped. As they prepare to leave, both Mags and Charles say they should probably kill and/or lobotomize the other, but they won't. Today...

So: good art, fun Stan Lee bits; but you've seen this story before. By the way, Amelia Voght is in this issue too, another of Xavier's retconned girlfriends; to try and talk Charles into bagging out of his mutant crusade and teleport him around. Check out Comics, Everybody for the romantic history of Professor X...if you dare.