Namor was in one of the earliest X-men, #6 i think. Magneto convinced Namor that he was a mutant so that he would join the Brotherhood. Magneto was kind of a wild-eyed loon in those days and he was also conspiring with Namor's cousin, so he might have made it all up. The Sub-Mariner ended up getting shot in the back with a giant magnet.

I find it hard to believe that you can have one guy controlling electricity and not think of Lightning Lad, another guy controlling magnetism and not think of Cosmic boy, yet another guy with a force field like Braniac 5 and a girl who can shrink and not think of Shrinking Violet.

I know you can only go by what you're told but that seems awfully thin.

Untrue.

While it's most common for mutants to develop their powers around puberty (partly because of all the hormones and emotional overload acting as a trigger, but mostly so they could use yet mutants to explore yet another metaphor), it's never been stated that mutants ALWAYS gain their powers at puberty - in fact, a number of cases have clearly been established where the onset of mutant powers occurred long before puberty. Off the top of my head alone, Jean Grey and Illyana Rasputin definitely manifested before puberty, and there are at least a few others. And then there's Franklin Richards...

>>> Even if he qualified, which he doesn’t, the title has been taken from him anyway.

When a normal human male and an Atlantean woman somehow manage to produce a child who is not only super-strong but can fly (traits neither parent possesses), he's pretty much a mutant by definition. Whether or not he holds the title of FIRST mutant (he almost certainly doesn't, since Apocalypse, Wolverine, Mystique, and Destiny have all been shown to predate him), it's difficult to dismiss his mutanthood.

>>> Apocalypse was around during the time of the Pharaohs. I would suspect that makes him the first Marvel mutant that we know of.

Since one of the key premises of his origin story is that he's literally the First Mutant, he's officially the first mutant ever... at least until Marvel retcons again and winds up writing a story about how Abel was the first mutant, and Cain killing him was the first case of anti-mutant hysteria.

I don't think Dazzler would wear a plastic smock with her picture on the front...

speaking of Rom, didn’t he start of as a licensed product. How come Marvel owns his rights now?

Unless they just recently purchased the rights to the character, Marvel does not, in fact, own Rom's rights.

That's why the recent Spaceknights mini-series was not allowed to use Rom in it (or even refer to him by name).

Isn't Namor a mutant by birth?

Wasn't Namor made a mutant in the early 90's? Everyone had to be a mutant then. They even did it to Cloak & Dagger. That was the exact moment when I no longer cared about THOSE two!

Man, all that fanboy X-everything mutant fever crap still gets under my skin. They just got too popular for their own good.

hmmm.... her first ever appearance was in Uncanny, and she was a prominent member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants for a year or two, although it does surprise me the amount she wasn't used in that book.

And is Namor still a mutant or did they ret-con the whole thing?

And yeah, I always liked Dazzler because of that story. I followed her comic and liked her a little more when they did the one story set at a comic convention (San Diego, I believe). It's funny because after all the child stars of the 80's become druggies and burn outs, i expected them to do something like that with Dazzler but they never really "darkened" her. Nowadays, I'm waiting for Joey Q to have her "reimagined" as some sort of Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton type getting high, crashing cars, and flashing her beat up junk. Hmmm...where's Garth Ennis when you need him?

I can’t help but giggle at the people making fun of Disco or Raving. Every generation thinks it’s cooler than the one before. I can’t wait until people start saying, “God! I can’t believe I was into Rap once!”

Both of those were a lot shorter-lived as trends, than rap has been, so far.

And every generation is cooler than the one before. They get all the collected knowledge of cool from their predecessors, and then add in their own current coolness.

Oh, and that Halloween costume is one of the most hideous things I've ever seen. =^)

Double-checking with comics.org, it looks like Maguire did 20 of the 22 covers of that series. I like them all, but my favorite covers of his from that run are issues 5, 6 (kryptonite raining down on Superboy while Lex Luthor watches, under an umbrella), 8 (Bizarro taking up painting), and 19 (Superboy's apparent alien abduction). To me, those four stand out enough to be included amongst my all-time favorite covers of the "Superman Family."

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/10070_4_001.jpg

makes me think of the cover of SUPERBOY # 5 (from the comic book series based on the SUPERBOY TV show).

http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/4002/400/4002_4_05.jpg

I always wondered in the back of my mind if young Kal-El's appearance on that cover (with sunglasses and leather jacket) in any way inspired the look of REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN's Superboy (later of the Ravers).

And in the case of SUPERBOY # 5, the new heroes on the cover with Superboy were intended as Legion analogues.