The X-Men #60
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe X-Men #60 (September 1969) is the full first appearance of Sauron — the alter ego of Dr. Karl Lykos — one of the most distinctive villains the Thomas/Adams run gifted the X-Men's rogues gallery. The issue also marks the moment Lorna Dane formally joins the X-Men as a member, a character development with decades of downstream consequences for the team. Arriving when the title was perilously close to cancellation, it represents the creative peak of Neal Adams and Roy Thomas's collaboration: a self-contained villain origin built around Gothic horror tropes that the Comics Code forced them to disguise as science fiction, resulting in one of the era's most inventive character concepts. The issue's willingness to spend most of its pages inside a villain's head rather than on superhero action was a mature storytelling choice that anticipated the character-driven approach future X-Men writers would make the franchise's hallmark.
In The X-Men #60 (1969), the team races to save Havok after he's injured, seeking help from Dr. Karl Lykos—only to discover the doctor is secretly draining mutant energy to become the monstrous Sauron. As Angel ventures out to investigate a mysterious flying dinosaur, he falls under Sauron’s hypnotic control, setting the stage for a chilling confrontation. Written by Roy Thomas and illustrated with bold intensity by Neal Adams—whose dynamic pencils and inks define the cover by Adams and Palmer—this issue marks a standout moment in the early X-Men saga.
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Neal Adams had deliberately requested the X-Men assignment from Stan Lee after learning it was Marvel's lowest-selling title, calculating he would be given maximum creative latitude on a book with nothing to lose. Thomas had arrived on the title only one issue before Adams, and by Thomas's own later account Adams functioned as an uncredited co-plotter throughout the run. For Sauron specifically, Thomas and Adams originally conceived the villain as a bat-like energy vampire, but when they consulted the Comics Code Authority they were told that an energy-draining creature with a bat body risked violating the Code's prohibition on vampires; to sidestep the restriction, they redesigned the monster as a pterodactyl-like humanoid, which in turn naturally connected the character to the Savage Land setting that would dominate the following arc. Both creators have publicly disputed each other's account of which of them originated specific aspects of the character. Adams and inker Tom Palmer won 1969 Alley Awards for Best Pencil Artist and Best Inking Artist respectively for their work on this run, with Thomas taking Best Writer the same year.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First full appearance of Sauron (Karl Lykos in his pterodactyl form), the energy-draining, hypnotic villain created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Neal Adams; Lykos had debuted in human form one issue earlier in X-Men #59.
- First appearance of Tanya Anderssen (in main story and flashback), Lykos's childhood companion and lifelong romantic interest, who becomes a recurring supporting character across subsequent issues.
- Lorna Dane (later Polaris) officially joins the X-Men in this issue, beginning her tenure living at Xavier's mansion.
- The story's title is 'In the Shadow of... Sauron!' — 20 story pages; edited by Stan Lee, scripted by Roy Thomas, penciled by Neal Adams, inked by Tom Palmer, lettered by Sam Rosen.
- Sauron names himself after the villain of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, with the creature's choice of name explicitly tied in-story to Lykos's love of Tolkien's fiction; the word also evokes the Latin 'saurus' (lizard).
- The pterodactyl design was a direct workaround imposed by the Comics Code Authority: Thomas and Adams originally conceived the character as a bat-like vampire, but the Code's ban on vampires forced them to redesign him as a prehistoric creature, which organically led to the Savage Land storyline in subsequent issues.
- The issue contains cameo appearances of numerous Brotherhood-affiliated and other known mutants (Blob, Toad, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Mastermind, Mesmero, Vanisher, Banshee, and others) during a Danger Room recap sequence.
- The run including this issue has been collected in multiple formats: Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men, X-Men Visionaries: The Neal Adams Collection, the X-Men Epic Collection: The Sentinels Live, and the oversized X-Men by Roy Thomas & Neal Adams Gallery Edition (2019), among others.
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The X-Men take an injured Havok to be treated by one of Xavier's old buddies, Dr. Karl Lykos. Lykos is an energy vampire and drains mutant life energy from Havok, turning himself into the evil Sauron. Angel takes off to investigate the flying dinosaur and is hypnotized by Sauron's powers.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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