Magneto has been an antihero, or at times even an outright hero, for the better part of thirty years now. \u00a0Which makes it surprising that he’s not\u00a0had an ongoing series before, particularly\u00a0given Marvel’s evident keenness to\u00a0find every exploitable\u00a0angle\u00a0on the franchise.<\/p>\n
There are two likely major\u00a0reasons for that. \u00a0First, bear in mind Magneto’s\u00a0role in the X-Men. \u00a0When first introduced in the Silver Age he was just a generic\u00a0would-be world-conqueror. \u00a0The early Claremont stories largely stick to that portrayal, though they throw in an element\u00a0of personal bitterness towards the X-Men. \u00a0But it’s only later that Claremont\u00a0really brings his\u00a0big theme front and centre, and – almost as a consequence of that – has to retool Magneto.<\/p>\n
The X-Men were always about peaceful coexistence, but in their Silver Age\u00a0iteration, the main threat to that peaceful coexistence is the threat from the villainous schemes of “evil mutants”. \u00a0Under Claremont, the\u00a0main threat shifts to being humans and their anti-mutant prejudice. \u00a0That poses problems for Magneto’s role as arch-enemy, since he obviously can’t embody that threat, being a mutant himself. \u00a0Instead he\u00a0has to represent an alternative response\u00a0to the threat.<\/p>\n
The point of departure between the X-Men and Magneto, of course, is that the X-Men believe that\u00a0coexistence is both possible and desirable, while Magneto thinks it’s impossible\u00a0and responds, depending on what year it is, either with pre-emptive attacks on humanity, or with some form of mutant separatism. \u00a0The clever bit about Claremont’s approach, and the reason why it’s been so influential for so long, is that while the stories implicitly invite us to\u00a0accept that the X-Men’s way is right, they\u00a0make sure that Magneto has plenty of\u00a0logical support\u00a0for\u00a0his position; the humans really\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>out to get mutants, and\u00a0if the future timelines shown in the comics are anything to go by, Magneto is\u00a0just plain\u00a0right about the way things are going. \u00a0It would have been easy to show unequivocally that the bad futures are all due to the counterproductive efforts of mutant separatists, but the comics have wisely held back from that. \u00a0Not only does this give\u00a0Magneto a credible argument, it also\u00a0makes sure that the X-Men’s worldview requires a leap of faith.<\/p>\n The point being, this take on Magneto – which has been the dominant one for decades – is interesting in large part because\u00a0of the contrast with the X-Men themselves. \u00a0Even Magneto’s recent stint as a member of the X-Men was done principally to make the point that Cyclops’ revised vision for the X-Men steered dangerously close to Magneto’s worldview, and to ask whether, by “uniting” almost\u00a0all the remaining mutants\u00a0on Utopia, Cyclops had\u00a0achieved something wonderful, or merely compromised what the X-Men stood for. \u00a0So all this\u00a0leads to the question: is he actually less\u00a0interesting if you take him\u00a0away<\/em> from the X-Men?<\/p>\n Second,\u00a0until recently Magneto was vastly overpowered for a\u00a0solo hero. \u00a0In fact, he always has been – which is fine if you’re the sole arch-enemy for an entire team, but not so good if\u00a0the audience has to root for you. \u00a0Obviously, Magneto’s recent depowering as part of Brian Bendis’\u00a0Phoenix Five storyline solves this problem nicely.<\/p>\n So\u00a0how does Cullen Bunn approach the task of a Magneto solo series? \u00a0For a start, he plays up the depowering heavily, and moves as far away as possible from\u00a0the traditional depiction of Magneto as an A-list super villain. \u00a0This is Magneto in reduced circumstances, living in motels and investigating stories of violence against mutants. \u00a0He does have his costume and does get to do set pieces with his powers, but we’re on the fringes of the Marvel Universe here, away from the big cities, and away from established characters for him to interact with – until issue #6, but by then the tone has been firmly set. \u00a0Gabriel Hernandez Walta, drawing the first three issues,\u00a0is a perfect fit for this take, since\u00a0although we know he can do the\u00a0grand gestures from his run on\u00a0Astonishing X-Men<\/em>, his basic style\u00a0steers clear of superhero norms\u00a0and points us to re-align our expectations accordingly. \u00a0Javier Fernandez, who draws\u00a0the next three, is a little more conventionally polished, but still fits happily into the tone set to start with.<\/p>\n This Magneto remains\u00a0obsessed with protecting his people,\u00a0with whatever limited resources he still has open to him. \u00a0You can perhaps query why he would choose to go this way rather than staying with Scott,\u00a0but the series never goes near\u00a0the\u00a0question of why he left the X-Men. \u00a0More fundamentally, given his attitude to the people he’s fighting, even a vastly depowered Magneto is still pretty terrifying. \u00a0The series wisely limits\u00a0Magneto to doing things that are properly connected to magnetism,\u00a0a limit that’s never really been strictly adhered to before – even in his debut, he was somehow able to create force fields. \u00a0But\u00a0so what if this Magneto is no longer up to\u00a0throwing aeroplanes\u00a0around? \u00a0You wouldn’t want to be stuck in a room with him and a fork.<\/p>\n Still, a\u00a0Magneto remorselessly hunting down the oppressors of mutants and torturing them in inventive ways is basically the Punisher with added superpowers. \u00a0The Punisher likewise started life as an alternate model of (anti)heroism to be contrasted with the likes of Spider-Man and Daredevil. \u00a0Once you put him in his own book, you\u00a0don’t have a\u00a0full-blown hero to act as a contrast,\u00a0and the moral argument becomes far bleaker – about a\u00a0protagonist who has lost something of his soul, and\u00a0where the stories can illustrate that there’s something wrong with him, but without there being any real impression\u00a0that he might learn from it or experience redemption.<\/p>\n This seems to be the model Bunn’s working on in these six issues. \u00a0The stories keep\u00a0confronting Magneto with moments that ought to be giving him pause. \u00a0The\u00a0Sentinels are being stockpiled\u00a0for defence by crackpot human separatists who would have been happy just being left alone. \u00a0Magneto’s interrogation techniques are directly lifted from his childhood experience of the Nazis. \u00a0The Marauders\u00a0simply don’t fit into his idea that he’s defending all mutants,\u00a0which he can only preserve by arbitrarily deeming them\u00a0not to be proper mutants (even though getting rid of “the wrong sort of mutant” is precisely the crime he\u00a0loathes them for to start with). \u00a0But while the moral problems here are obvious to us, they leave Magneto himself utterly unfazed. \u00a0As with the Punisher, there’s an element of moral\u00a0horror here that stems simply from the fact of his\u00a0refusal to respond to plot points that ought to be making him question himself. \u00a0He’s either oblivious to them or he’s\u00a0rationalised them away already.<\/p>\n None of this, at this stage, wholly undercuts the idea that we’re supposed to be rooting for Magneto, who is, after all, facing actual anti-mutant bigots and the Marauders. \u00a0But it feels like it’s setting up some sort of debate about\u00a0his\u00a0obsessiveness, to be unpacked further in future issues. \u00a0There are no recurring characters for\u00a0Magneto to interact with (until Rachel shows up in issue #5, and even she only recurs in an exposition flashback the next issue); for all that Magneto claims to be defending an entire race, he appears to exist in a world of one. \u00a0Magneto’s self-image is pretty unambiguous; the book’s attitude to him is a little more so, and it feel like this\u00a0book will be less about\u00a0him undergoing any sort of growth, and more about us figuring out how we’re supposed to feel about him. \u00a0Thus far, it seems like a viable direction.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Magneto has been an antihero, or at times even an outright hero, for the better part of thirty years now. \u00a0Which makes it surprising that he’s not\u00a0had an ongoing series before, particularly\u00a0given Marvel’s evident keenness to\u00a0find every exploitable\u00a0angle\u00a0on the franchise. There are two likely major\u00a0reasons for that. \u00a0First, bear in mind Magneto’s\u00a0role in the X-Men. 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