{"id":3038,"date":"2015-06-21T21:35:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T20:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3038"},"modified":"2015-06-21T21:35:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T20:35:05","slug":"magneto-vol-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3038","title":{"rendered":"Magneto vol 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one rather slipped by me – we’re actually two issues into volume 4 by now, which is a “Last Days”\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em> tie-in. \u00a0But let’s go back to volume 3 before it slips from mind entirely.<\/p>\n

It is the fate of the lower-selling Marvel comic to spend a lot of its time doing crossovers, which is why\u00a0Magneto<\/em> has wound up doing both\u00a0Axis<\/em> and\u00a0Secret Wars<\/em>. \u00a0But that means joining in large-scale high-stakes adventure with big name characters and mainstream Marvel Universe concepts floating around,\u00a0all of which was quite at odds with the tone\u00a0established by the early issues of the series. \u00a0They went for Magneto as a small-scale, largely de-powered vigilante still hanging in there despite being a shadow of the man he once was.<\/p>\n

These five issues\u00a0fall between the crossovers, and\u00a0as it turns out, they don’t try to yank the book back in a direction it can’t stick to. \u00a0They do dial it back a bit,\u00a0with a little more emphasis on horror and a lot more on psychology. \u00a0It’s certainly territory where Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s art feels much more appropriate – and Walta is a godsend for this book,\u00a0keeping\u00a0it grounded and\u00a0character-based even as the plot keeps raising the stakes.<\/p>\n

But writer\u00a0Cullen Bunn accepts the cranking up of scale, at least to some degree. \u00a0Or perhaps he was always intending to go vaguely in that direction (he must have anticipated being\u00a0dragged into these sorts of stories from the outset, after all). \u00a0At any rate, it turns out that he does have\u00a0a hook\u00a0for the series as it moves into more traditional Magneto territory.<\/p>\n

There are two stories\u00a0in these five issues, though issue #13 is a\u00a0largely self-contained prologue. \u00a0It’s\u00a0a solo story for Briar Raleigh, with Magneto himself only appearing right at the end (in a scene that frankly feels as if it was nailed on to make sure that the title character\u00a0showed up in the book). \u00a0Briar is a human injured by Magneto in the past, who’s been bankrolling him\u00a0for a\u00a0while now, for reasons\u00a0yet to be fully explained. \u00a0Issue #13 doesn’t explain them either,\u00a0instead\u00a0showing us\u00a0that she’s part of an underground subculture\u00a0of people obsessed with super villains, some of\u00a0whom have fabricated their own\u00a0tales of being glamourously injured at the hands of celebrity maniacs, and some of whom seem\u00a0traumatised by a genuine encounter with an\u00a0A-list villain in which they were a bystander who barely merited a speaking part.<\/p>\n

This leads to Briar seemingly betraying Magneto to SHIELD (it’s a trick, of course), so that SHIELD can show up in Genosha in issue #14 to try and take him in. \u00a0Magneto is back in charge of a re-emerging mutant community in the aftermath of\u00a0Axis<\/em> and still\u00a0hasn’t got over\u00a0the fact of his total impotence when the place was wiped out at the start of Grant Morrison’s run. \u00a0After making a big deal about establishing that he could take out SHIELD easily (he’s now relying routinely on MGH to boost his powers), Magneto cheerfully surrenders in order to get\u00a0on board the SHIELD Helicarrier, and\u00a0erase a government database of mutants. \u00a0But, as he then points out,\u00a0simply slipping out and going home wouldn’t send the sort of message he wants, and so he brings in the Marauders to do a bit of gratuitous damage first.<\/p>\n

Issues #16-17 see the\u00a0nascent Genoshan community being stalked by a serial killer who turns out to be the concentration camp commander from Magneto’s childhood. \u00a0Or, more accurately, a mental projection of him. \u00a0The pay-off is that one of the traumatised mutants is involuntarily bringing this ghost to life, and Magneto has to despatch\u00a0them – even though the ultimate problem is really about his own hang-ups.<\/p>\n

The point\u00a0here seems to be the asymmetry of how villains and their victims personalise matters. \u00a0It’s spelled out by Briar in issue #13, when she says that “it’s almost like they’ve convinced themselves Magneto hurt them personally. \u00a0Don’t we all do that to some degree?” \u00a0Similarly, in issue #17,\u00a0“Hitzig” makes a point of explaining that while Magneto might be obsessed with him,\u00a0the feeling isn’t mutual: “I never even knew your name\u2026 \u00a0I barely even\u00a0knew you existed”. \u00a0And in\u00a0between, we have Magneto going out of his way to make a point against SHIELD, not to achieve anything concrete, but ultimately to send a message that will stick in the humans’ minds.<\/p>\n

Magneto wants to be an inspiring\u00a0and reassuring leader figure to the mutants, and a bogeyman to anyone who\u00a0threatens them. \u00a0He’s trying to build and exploit his own legend, in some ways because he’s trying to adopt and adapt the impact that the Holocaust had on him as a child – a\u00a0point we saw in the earlier issues. \u00a0Up to a point, this is sound psychology.<\/p>\n

But it also means Magneto is positioning himself in a “great man” role that he seems a little too keen to buy into. \u00a0The\u00a0truth, as the story also acknowledges, is that\u00a0there were much bigger forces at work and\u00a0it was\u00a0only ever really personal in young Erik’s mind. \u00a0Magneto is trying to adopt a role that is somewhat illusory, which leads him to convince himself that what’s good for him blurs with what’s good for his mutant community. \u00a0So\u00a0his\u00a0solution to the\u00a0“Hitzig” projection is to kill the mutant who’s creating it, giving a superficially convincing tragic speech about how it’s all for the greater good. \u00a0Even though she’s suicidal anyway\u00a0and offers no resistance, she makes sure to point out that this is nonsense. \u00a0If all he really wanted to do was get rid of the serial killer, he could kill himself. \u00a0(Or, for that matter, he could pack her off to the X-Men to get her out of range – but that would involve explaining himself too.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Without wanting to pre-empt\u00a0volume 4, it looks as though this theme of hubris will be continuing, as Magneto tries to live up to his A-list billing\u00a0with a grand plan to save the\u00a0universe\u00a0all by himself. \u00a0Plainly, that’s not going to work out. \u00a0And this is where Bunn seems to have a found an interesting approach for Magneto that can withstand the book’s increase in scale and return to more traditional X-Men plot territory such as new communities on Genosha –\u00a0to some extent this version of Magneto is trying to build his own legend for understandable reasons,\u00a0but there’s a part of him that has simply started believing his own hype.<\/p>\n

Not only is this an interesting take on the character, who remains somewhat sympathetic despite his more monstrous acts, because he so plainly stands in the position of being a genuine victim\u00a0in turn. \u00a0It also plays rather neatly off the tension between this book’s style and the more typical Marvel Universe plots that it now finds itself engaged in, because the gap between this book’s take on\u00a0Magneto\u00a0(as viewed from his own perspective) and the\u00a0more traditional version (as generally viewed by the people opposing him) is precisely what the stories\u00a0are\u00a0about. \u00a0So whether or not\u00a0it’s by design, the style\u00a0clash between\u00a0what this is book is doing and the broader crossovers can even, with a degree of squinting, be\u00a0read as\u00a0an expression of the theme.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0good return to form, and a welcome part of the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This one rather slipped by me – we’re actually two issues into volume 4 by now, which is a “Last Days”\u00a0Secret Wars tie-in. \u00a0But let’s go back to volume 3 before it slips from mind entirely. It is the fate of the lower-selling Marvel comic to spend a lot of its time doing crossovers, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3078,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}