Review – Magneto: Not A Hero #1

Written by Skottie Young
Illustrated by Clay Mann

The X-Men are shaken when Magneto finally goes villain again. The Master of Magnetism is caught on video murdering
members of an anti-mutant group. Why did he throw away everything he’s earned with the X-Men? Or is this just the only time he’s gotten caught? This new series by SKOTTIE YOUNG (WIZARD OF OZ) and CLAY MANN (X-MEN LEGACY) will change the way you look at the best X-Villain of all time!

With Regensis upon us, the powers that be at Marvel have deigned that the once great and powerful Magneto shall have his own story, and ye, it shall be good.

Or maybe it isn’t. Who knows?

Let’s talk about it after the cut. As a note, spoilers are most certainly discussed (specifically of all Magneto continuity).

Magneto has a lot of great qualities that have made him such an endearing character over time. He’s always been one to straddle that middle line of “wrong enough to be a villain” yet still somehow “right enough to be an enjoyable character.” Sure, there are moments in his career that push him heavily in one direction or the other, but that’s part of the fun of reading about him. You can root for Magneto and all his villainy even when he does horrible things, because he always manages to go through waves of being a hero or villain. I imagine this is because Magneto has a superpower that is not advertised with his cooler ability of controlling magnetic waves.

No, Magneto’s actual greatest superhero power is that nothing is ever actually his fault.

Mutant equality. This is how it always starts.

A cursory look at Magneto’s history reveals one constant: whenever the character does something completely awful, something downright irredeemable, there’s always some kind of excuse to put him on a more righteous path (not always a “good guy” path, but you get the point). Heck, Magneto was a full-on supervillain and the X-Men’s greatest nemesis, yet he still somehow managed to get along with Charles and have some fun heroic adventures, all evils aside and sometimes at the same time as being a villain. Ripping out Wolverine’s skeleton? No biggie. We’ll get over that and have a catch. Murdering the guy who gave him the secret identity of “Erik Lehnsherr”? It’s cool, man. Sabra will never figure it out!

Maybe he gets away with it because sometimes he gets to be “right” while being evil. Murdering soldiers in Africa during apartheid to save children? That happened. Manning up at the end of “Legion Quest” to rise as the hero and champion of Age of Apocalypse? That happened, too. Magneto was put on trial once for being a bad guy, but after someone else attacked the trial and Magneto saved a few innocent people, the X-Men essentially let him run away scot-free, with no resolution to his trial. Magneto had enough of a sense of morality that he could refer to humans as “animals” one day, yet the next day do something to save them all, that whatever, we can forget about his past for a while. Sure, everyone would be all shocked and everything when he’d turn around and declare genocide on humanity again, but if you waited long enough he’d just rally to become be a good guy once more. (Even Stan Lee admitted that he never saw Magneto strictly as a “bad” guy, just someone striking back at those who attacked him.)

Sometimes we’ll actually get excuses as to how nothing is Magneto’s fault, usually as the result of New Writer X not liking what Old Writer Y did. Just look at what Morrison did with Magneto in New X-Men: Magneto actually created death camps in New York and murdered thousands upon thousands of people while tripping out on drugs, and he planned to flip the planet upside down! He probably would’ve too, if Wolverine hadn’t cut his head off. Scary stuff! But, wait, nope, Marvel changed their mind and, next thing you know, Chris Claremont is writing about some jerky dude named Xorn impersonating Magneto, because of course it wasn’t actually Magneto. Magneto was still a good guy, hiding out in the ruins of Genosha, and he then went on to help Xavier in the short-lived Excalibur series right before House of M. Even House of M, named for Magneto, wasn’t Magneto’s fault; he had just wished so hard to be ruler of the world that the Scarlet Witch, the real “villain” of the story, granted him his heart’s desire.

If Stark’s rubber suit is similar to Extremis, that’s probably a tad unhealthy

So sometimes you have the stoic and centered Magneto, who is able to sit and play chess with Charles or discuss rationally the issues surrounding the mutant nation, and other times you have the racist warlord, looking to take the reigns of the planet and leading mutantkind to a new destiny. Whichever model you end up taking, just keep in mind that you’re almost always waiting for the other shoe to inevitably drop and some excuse thrown out about why this mysterious character just can’t seem to pick a side.

But if you go back about ten-fifteen years ago in your longbox (assuming you’ve been collecting X-Men comics that long), you’ll find this humorous little character named Joseph. I say humorous because, for all intents and purposes, his entire storyline was fairly silly, and is one of the first examples of Magneto being used in really goofy ways because no one can agree on what to do with him. Originally designed to be an amnesiac version of Magneto who could team up with the X-Men during the mid-90’s, Joseph was later changed to be his clone, if only so that Magneto could then show up as Erik The Red later and fight people/be a bad guy again for a while. All of the stuff that made Magneto a worthy adversary was kept, but now he was younger, looked cooler (long hair on hip young dudes and metal bands was cool once) and had a stronger moral compass. But, as these things go, then came the Magneto Wars (of course!), and Joseph died for the greater good, while Magneto went on to commit genocide on New York (except not) and then join the X-Men.

Which roughly brings us up to speed on Magneto: Not A Hero, or what could’ve also been titled Magneto: The Trouble With Joseph. There seems to be an odd trend in Marvel superhero comics of the moment, and that is to mine 80’s and 90’s comics for obscure, forgotten and neglected characters to bring back for “important” storylines. The Spider-Queen just wrecked havoc in Spider-Island, Count Nefaria was just outed as the evil Kingpin of LA, and the Sentinels and Krakoa (of all things!) are a threat again in the pages of various X-Men books. Instead of coming up with new villains or threats, we’re just given old models with new polish, and unless you happened to read stuff like the Magneto War and Lobdell’s X-Men run, then you probably don’t really care that Joseph has returned and brought along some deformed friends.

Yes, “Wait. Stop.” indeed

And who can blame you? Even for myself, a self-proclaimed Magneto uber-fan, I find it hard to really invest in a story like this after only one issue. The idea behind any given “last page reveal” is for the sole purpose of shocking me/the reader, but this only works if the shock is legitimate and not immediately suspect. Bringing back Joseph, the “hero” Magneto, as a villain just seems rather dubious, and while there may be some further twist of fate further down the line (let’s be honest — there probably is), the story went from “an easy to read new story of Magneto” to “a story that maybe only a handful of people will get that is decidedly non-new reader friendly at a time where X-Men books are supposed to be specifically new reader friendly.”Not exactly the best foot to start off on. (All of this is also assuming you’re like me and didn’t read any solicit information, making the final reveal a “shock.” If you did know… well then.)

Perhaps it’s just me, though. I personally do not care for the return of Joseph (“like, at all“) and I would even go so far as to call the return a tad-bit lazy, simply because if we’re going to have a villain, why not play up the opportunity some? If the story is supposed to be about Magneto’s heroism being on inherently dubious grounds, why not play it up with someone/thing new? How about a new mutant now that we have five brand new kids, or an established mutant impersonating Magneto as an act of revenge? With that idea alone you can play-up the schism between the X-Men, because certainly not everyone agrees with Magneto being a hero right now. Or perhaps we can go further than that, and the villain could’ve been a human with technology that can manipulate magnetism, someone who is a human-rights activist trying to frame Magneto, all of which eventually leads to a personal struggle as Magneto has to decide if he sticks to his hero persona or kills this impersonator when given the chance? (Does he give in to racism, or does he rise above?! It’s a battle of ethics and morality for the ages!) Just give me anything besides Joseph.

Tony and Steve: caught in a rad bromance

All of that aside, that doesn’t make the issue inherently bad. Unexciting at the end, sure, but not to the point that it needs to be thrown in a pit. Just because I don’t care for the grand twist doesn’t change the things leading up to it not being bad. There are certainly various things to like, and (depending on your level of fandom) there is more to like than dislike. Skottie Young isn’t known for his writing, but it’s remarkably quite solid. (I’ve read only one thing he’s written, as far as I can recall, and it was a story about Spider-Cat.) Young has a good handle on the various characters who appear, such as playing up the relationship between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, and it reads quite well. His version of Magneto is a bit more sassy than Gillen writes the character (or even Fraction before him), as this Magneto seems less interested in redemption and vindication so much as swift vengeance, but I’m still willing enough to see Young through the rest of the story. Teaming up with the Clay Mann on art and Seth Mann on inks also yields for a very solid issue visually, as the Manns provide a terrific duo, channeling Jim Cheung in a clean and sleek fashion. Young gives them quite a bit of scope with the issue in terms of set pieces and visual iconography in Magneto’s mindscape. Its nice to see that Marvel and the X-Office aren’t just crafting up some kind of throwaway mini here, putting together a solid writer and artist combination for what may or may not “matter” in the grand scheme of things. Despite that disappointing final page, there is a fair amount to like overall.

Therein lies the final challenge of the book: the Magneto fan in me wants to (and, let’s face it – will) keep going, but the discerning reader in me can’t muster up the energy to really care about the villainous return of Joseph. Fellow Multiversity writer Joshua Mocle pointed out to me that Joseph’s existence initially was as a direct foil of Magneto’s villainy, and now that Magneto is a “hero” that angle could be played up for a rather poignant tale with Joseph as the villain. Even so, though, the cynic in me remains rather inherently skeptical. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope Young and the Manns can deliver.

Final Verdict: 6.0 – Browse this, but for an example of “bringing back an older idea for a new comic” that I didn’t hate, you should probably check out Kieron Gillen and Whilce Portacio’s Journey Into Mystery #631