While adults may quickly grow bored with this repetitiveness, kids love it: They’d feel shortchanged if the Thing didn’t exclaim, “It’s clobberin’ time!” On one level, then, these adventures seemingly work best for young and inexperienced readers. The victory is, of course, only temporary, because the monster-alien-robot-mad scientist - Magneto is a particular favorite - nearly always escapes, so that he, she or it can return to seek vengeance another day and cause further mayhem.
Various battles with said enemy - who initially seems unbeatable - quickly ensue, leading to the capture or imminent destruction of the once-cocky X-Men, at which point some oversight on the part of the villain or some last-minute razzle-dazzle allows victory to be snatched from the jaws of defeat. The venue then shifts to the sudden appearance and consequent depredations of some supervillain, human or otherwise. Saunders, who teaches at the University of Oregon, even outlines the standard pattern of a typical X-Men comic: In the opening pages the X-Men show off their powers to Professor Xavier and squabble a bit.
Open any of these books and you will find an action-oriented confrontation pitting a group of characters with extraordinary powers against a seemingly invincible adversary. Loosely speaking, Marvel’s early superhero adventures are all pretty much the same. This time, I abandoned any attempt to recapture my boyhood sense of wonder.
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