In the first issue Hank is definitely just the Thing. Stan Lee has said that he realized they needed something to distinguish Beast from the Thing and came up with the idea of making him the annoying intellectual (basically, Dilton Doily from Archie comics).
Lee was trying out a lot of stuff while dialoguing those early issues, like the infamous panel where Profesor Xavier is in love with Jean, which was never referred to again while Stan was editor (and probably should never have been referred to at all).
I think this story(which I hear intern Claremont contributed to), Lee's original Sentinel and Juggernaut stories, and the Z'Nox story at the very end, are about the only great stories in this original run. I'm sorry, but it was torturous to slug through these issues. I've never been particularly interested in the 05+ cast anyways, and seeing their earliest presentations did not improve my interpretation. I do miss Warren being a rival to Scott, but I guess Logan took that spot definitively in the Claremont era. I do think Feige should pull out all of their origins though. Those are angles to the characters that are largely lost on modern fans and do give interesting backstories for the boys(Jean would have to wait for Lord Claremont to give her a backstory...) lives prior to us meeting them already set up at the mansion in #1. Bobby's in particular is really good. Obviously they didn't really have him as gay back then(even if his debut in #1 is certainly funny in modern hindsight...), but the mob violence scene and his father trying to stand up for him is even better now. Love Scott's too, don't erase Jack Winters(hmmm, Scott's relationship with telepathic/diamond form Emma now has an even more interesting Freudian context)! Neal Adam's art is very good, but the writing from Roy Thomas in those issues is still iffy(and full of insensitive racial sentiments). I will never forget this page:
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Mutant heroes, ladies and gentlemen! Thank the gods Cockrum/Wein and Claremont came in afterwards.
Let the flames destroy all but that which is pure and true!
Here's a What If? idea?
What if the X-Men had become the Super-Adaptoid's other Adaptiods?
I'd buy that for a dollar.
LOL
Calvin Rankin has become a man.
On to X-Men #30 with fill-in artist, Jack Sparling!
Um, yay?
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*yawn*
Moving on. . .
One of the things that jumped out at me in early issues was how Stan apparently forgot what Cyclops's name was. In the first issue, he's Slim Summers. In fact, he's even introduced by Xavier as Slim.
It's not until several issues later that we get "Scott" with no renfare or reveal at all. On top of that, the book often seemed to keep calling him Cyclops even when referring to the others by their real names.
I'm also amused by how completely unimportant the guy that crushed Xavier's legs turned out to be in the whole mythos.