 | The Angel (1963)Original Medium: Comic books Published by: Marvel Comics First Appeared: 1963 Creators: Stan Lee (writer) and Jack Kirby (artist) image: © Marvel Comics. |
After its 1961 success with The Fantastic Four — the greatest it had had in years — Marvel Comics quickly moved toward greater emphasis on the superhero genre. Aside from populating its former sci fi/monster titles with long underwear guys, within a couple of years it brought out two new teams of heroes, one of which, like the one that started the trend at Marvel, consisted entirely of new characters.
X-Men, like The
Avengers (the other superhero group that debuted with a
September, 1963 cover date) was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby,
the writer and artist, respectively, who were mostly responsible
for Marvel's 1960s rebirth. The Angel, one of five team members
created for this title, was named after a
fairly prominent character Marvel had published in the '40s,
but bore no other resemblance to anything the company had done
before. He did, however, resemble rival publisher DC's Hawkman, bearing
huge, angel-like wings that enabled him to fly. Unlike Hawkman's,
however, The Angel's wings were actually part of his body, the
result of a genetic mutation, the
source of power that distinguished all the X-Men from others of
their genre.
The Angel's real name was Warren Worthington III, and the way comics characters get their names, you just know the guy had to come from a wealthy family. Shorthand characterization was used for all the X-Men when they were introduced — The Beast used big words, Cyclops was moody and introspective, Iceman was young and playful, Marvel Girl was the token female, and The Angel was a blond-haired, blue-eyed rich kid. Personalities became better fleshed out as the series progressed, but they didn't get very far from their starting point.
After the original X-Men series folded, in 1970, the members started popping up elsewhere. The Angel was the first, with a story or two in the back pages of Ka-Zar's first series. He's since been seen mostly in a group setting. In the mid-1970s, he bankrolled a short-lived outfit called The Champions, which included The Black Widow, Iceman, The Ghost Rider and Marvel's version of Hercules. In the late '70s, he was a semi-regular in a reconstituted X-Men. He also had a lengthy stint in the 1980s with The Defenders, and was back with his old buddies when the original X-Men got together to form a group called X-Factor.
More recently, he's undergone the usual indignities that befall a superhero who doesn't appear regularly in a series and therefore can be tossed around by writers without worrying about messing with a commercially valuable property. For example, he got his wings amputated and later regrew them. He got brainwashed and became a villain. He changed his name to Archangel. But he's still around, available for graphic novels, mini-series, guest stars roles and suchlike, and probably will be for a long time.
