The X-Men.
A Brazilian beginning.

The publisher behind the books

Miguel Penteado founded GEP in 1966 after an established career as an illustrator, printer and publisher. He had helped found Continental in 1959, later renamed Outubro, where Maurício de Sousa’s characters made an early appearance in comic books. GEP carried that interest in Brazilian creators forward, publishing homegrown superheroes and horror comics alongside Marvel material.

For Penteado, producing stories locally was already part of publishing. That background makes the Brazilian X-Men adventures an especially interesting part of these editions.

Marvel reached Brazil through several publishers

Brazilian readers did not encounter the Marvel universe through a single publisher or in its original American order. Historian Alexandre Morgado describes how EBAL’s early selections favored characters supported by television cartoons. Licensing agencies offered other characters to competing publishers, creating an opening for GEP and the X-Men.

This fragmented publishing landscape helps explain why the Brazilian editions follow their own sequence. It does not, by itself, explain the choice of their opening story.

Gráfica Editora Penteado, known as GEP, introduced the X-Men to Brazilian readers through Edições GEP in the late 1960s. But Brazilian readers did not start at the beginning of the American series. GEP 1 opened with the story from the American X-Men 7, “The Return of the Blob,” translated as “A Volta do Bolão.” The original American issues 1 through 6 were skipped at the start of this run. GEP’s numbering began at 1, even though its opening story came from American issue 7. Even the title announced the Blob’s return, although his earlier appearance had not been published in this run. Why GEP chose this starting point remains undocumented in the sources reviewed.

The series also carried other characters and genres, so its X-Men sequence skips numbers. The X-Men appeared in GEP issues 1 through 8, then 13, 14 and 19. Together, those eleven books form the numbered X-Men subset collected here. Separate Super-Almanaque compilations sit outside that checklist.

The editions have their own identity: Portuguese lettering, localized character names, and black-and-white interiors. Even recognizable American cover compositions feel different in their Brazilian presentation.

GEP also published locally produced X-Men material by Gedeone Malagola and other Brazilian creators. Issue 8 includes a story involving an alternate version of Thor, an unusual piece of the team’s international publishing history.

Empty pages became new adventures

Porto’s research explains the practical problem: the American stories supplied about twenty pages, and GEP had few advertisers. Penteado commissioned Brazilian X-Men stories of eight or nine pages to fill the remaining space.

Ten short adventures resulted. Walter Silva Gomes recalled drawing them in a style modeled on Jack Kirby. Gedeone Malagola wrote most of the scripts; Francisco de Assis wrote Os mutantes de Júpiter. A production decision gave readers stories outside Marvel’s American continuity.

Their authorization remains unverified. Malagola reportedly said Marvel approved them, but researcher Roberto Guedes noted that the claim was never adequately proven.

Covers with a Brazilian identity

The local contribution reached the covers too. Edições GEP 14 features Fireman in artwork created for the Brazilian adventure, rather than copied from an American cover. Porto identifies distinctive local lettering on issues 8 and 14 and credits Walter Silva Gomes with the two Super-Almanaque covers.

Those differences are part of the appeal of collecting the originals: local artists reshaped the presentation as well as adding stories.

A short run, with an uncertain ending

The X-Men run ended around 1970. Historical accounts place the closure of GEP’s comics operation in 1972 and connect Penteado’s withdrawal with censorship pressures. Those later events do not establish why the X-Men run ended earlier. The sources reviewed do not establish a specific cancellation reason.

Small print runs. A difficult hunt.

GEP’s original X-Men editions are consistently described as low-print-run books. In a 2022 account of X-Men Made In Brasil, editor Marcio Baraldi explains that GEP’s print runs were small and connects that limited circulation with the books’ present-day rarity. The article also describes their short time on newsstands. This is published historical testimony, rather than a surviving printer’s ledger or an issue-by-issue circulation statement.

No reliable numerical print-run total for the original X-Men issues has been located in the sources reviewed. The documented conclusion is small circulation, not a specific number of copies per issue. Limited-printing statements for later collections of GEP stories should not be used as printing figures for the original books.

These were reading copies, printed with black-and-white interiors on newspaper stock. More than half a century of handling, storage and ordinary wear adds another obstacle when searching for intact copies.

Survival is part of the story

Heat and humidity are especially hard on paper. Warm, humid storage conditions, common in parts of Brazil, can accelerate deterioration and encourage mold; moisture can also warp pages and covers. For books that were never stored in a controlled environment, those risks compound decades of wear.

There is no reliable count of how many GEP copies survive, or how many were lost specifically to climate. The preservation risks explain why condition matters so much: finding a copy is one challenge; finding one with sound paper, an intact cover and strong presentation is another.