*Marvel: “In the Sensational Fantastic Four Style”, boasted the cover of X-Men #1, and they weren’t kidding – Stan Lee and Jack Kirby hit the ground running with the fast-paced, addictive tale of a school for the gifted, a place for young mutants to train to serve and protect the greater world, primarily against less scrupulous mutants with equal or greater powers. Very different from the X-Men as they are internationally known today, this issue brought us the First Five X-Men – the Angel, the Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Marvel Girl – their mentor Professor X, and their greatest enemy, the malevolent Magneto! While suffering a bit from ‘early instalment weirdness’ (the Beast talks like a bruiser, a la the Thing, without his legendary locquacious logorrhea; Marvel Girl is one of the more powerful and competent members of the team, quite unlike the wimp she swiftly became), the pieces were in place for the multi-media phenomenon the team would later expand into. One of the most in-demand debuts of Marvel’s Silver Age, this is a Fair copy, cents, with no UK stamp or overprint. There is tape on the front and back covers, it has been restapled, and there is a small piece off the lower back cover corner. Interiors are clean and unmarred. FA at £800. SORRY, THIS HAS NOW SOLD