Issue(s): Uncanny X-Men #47
Cover Date: Aug 68
Title: "The Warlock wears three faces!"
Credits:
Arnold Drake & Gary Friedrich - Writer
Don Heck - Layouts
Werner Roth - Penciler
John Tartaglione - Inker

Review/plot:
Arnold Drake - who previously wrote a different series about a group of misfits led by a man in a wheelchair - begins his run as (co-)writer. But whatever the similarities between the X-Men and Doom Patrol, Drake is starting with a new status quo for the X-Men here:

"Following the tragic death of Professor X - and a direct order from agent Duncan of the FBI - The X-Men are no more!"

Iceman and the Beast are hanging out together, going on a date with Vera and Zelda. They want to go see a mystic putting on a performance in the East Village. The mystic turns out to be "Merlin", the guy Thor once fought who said he was the Merlin of legend, except he wasn't really a magician; he was a mutant.

Roy Thomas remembered this (actually it was suggested in a letter from a reader in Uncanny X-Men #28) and brought him back to fight the X-Men in #30. So he's already met the X-Men once, and he recognizes Iceman and the Beast when they try to stop him from hypnotizing the audience.

They end up defeating him using loud sounds.

Then they go back to their dates.

Similar to last month's Thor, our heroes also get into a scrape with some hippies when they don't like the poetry at the Coffee A-Go-Go (probably because it's not Bernard the Poet).

There's also a back-up feature highlighting Iceman's abilities.

Doing my best to interpret the credits, i'm assuming that Werner Roth is actually doing Finishes this issue. Not great.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 2

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References:

• The X-Men faced the Yogi Maha previously in Uncanny X-Men #30.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Arnold Drake starts his Marvel Silver Age run, and for the most part it isn't very good. Drake was a longtime DC writer(known best for the extremely weird Doom Patrol, and the long-running DP/X-Men similarity argument is a website all by itself)and his presence at Marvel is due to an unbelievably shameful move by DC. Drake and other writers(and one or two artists)had some meetings to organize a union to get health benefits, among other things. DC executive Jack Liebowitz(and, I think, Irwin Donenfeld) "negotiated" by firing them. Besides Drake, other writers fired were Ed "France" Herron(who wrote the first Red Skull story), Batman co-creator Bill Finger, Supergirl creator Otto Binder, Justice Society and multiple Golden Age DC character-creator Gardner Fox, and Aquaman editor George Kashdan, plus some others. Because of the firing, DC hired younger fannish writers like Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Mike Friedrich,Denny O'Neil,Steve Skeates, etc.--all of whom wound up at Marvel in the 1970s and 1980s for varying times.