- Name: Max Eisenhardt, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr
- Code Names: Magneto
- First Appearance: X-Men #1 (Sept ‘63)
- Powers: Control of Magnetism
- Teams Affiliation: The Brotherhood, X-Men, Hellfire Club
About
Conflict is at the root of all storytelling. All the exciting set pieces and witty banter doesn’t mean much if there isn’t a strong conflict to get the audience invested. X-Men: Apocalypse struggled because the conflict felt like an afterthought to the cast. Conversely in X2: X-Men United the principal cast had a connection to the conflict and that kept the tension high during the film. In X-Men, the conflict between mutants and humans is at the series core. While it is often experienced through hate groups like The Purifiers or thoughtless monsters like the Sentinels, the conflict is never more real or engaging than when the X-Men face off against Magneto.
The master of magnetism has gone by many names, Magnus, Erik Lehnsherr, Magneto, but long before that, he was just a young German boy named Max Eisenhardt. As Hitler rose to power, anti-Semitism ran rampant and Max’s family was forced to flee to Poland lest they suffer at the hands of the Nazi’s. The Nazi’s soon occupied Warsaw and the Eisenhardt’s were forced into the ghetto. Max learned how to smuggle, taking every opportunity he could to help his family survive but he knew they couldn’t stay in Warsaw. His family ran but the Nazi’s captured them. In the woods by the bank of the Vistula river, Nazi soldiers lined up a mother, a father, a daughter, and a son. They raised their rifles and let loose a hail of bullets. The metal flew through the air, the shells fell in the dirt, and the corpses were dumped in an unmarked grave. Max was a survivor though. Maybe the soldier’s aim wasn’t true, or maybe it was some higher power, but Max had only passed out from shock. The lead missed him completely.
He tried escaping but Max was tired and broken. The Nazis found him and put him on a train with the other Jews. It pulled into the Auschwitz concentration camp and even though he was Jewish, Max began to believe that hell was real. He was forced to be a Sonderkommando, forced to lead his fellow Jews to gas chambers, forced to dig gold teeth out of their dead jaws, forced to burn the corpses of men like him. With his own eyes, Max Eisenhardt saw a quarter million men, women, and children systematically murdered, all because they were born Jewish, and it was only a portion of what Hitler had done to his people. When Max was given the opportunity to escape during a riot, he took it and ran. As the Nazi regime fell, Max made a promise to himself, one that would define him for the rest of his existence. Never again.
The war ended and Max restarted his life in the Ukraine. He took the name Magnus and married a Romani woman named Magda, another survivor of the camps. They had a daughter named Anya and they made a peaceful life. He angered the wrong people and they responded by setting fire to the inn Magda and Anya were staying at. Magnus was able to save Magda but it was too late for Anya. The city shook with Magnus’ rage. Rebar, car doors, and wire flew through the sky, killing all those who had assembled against him. Magda was in shock over the monster this man had become, but Magnus knew he was something more.
Magnus took the name Erik Magnus Lehnsherr and moved to Israel where he met the most important man in his life. His name was Charles Xavier and he was working at a hospital caring for Holocaust survivors. The men quickly bonded over their theories of human evolution, even if they disagreed on the role homo sapiens would play in the coming age. When agents of Hydra, led by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker attacked seeking the location of a hidden cache of Nazi gold, Erik and Charles fought back. Erik revealed that he had an unnatural gift to shape metal and Charles revealed that he was a telepath of the highest order. They stopped Hydra but Erik took the gold for himself declaring that homo superior would not be led meekly into gas chambers. They would fight for their right to survive, to inherit the planet that was rightfully theirs. With that, the friends parted and Erik began preparing for war.
Over a decade passed as Erik and Charles built their armies. Erik took the name Magneto and launched an assault on the missile defense base named Cape Citadel. Magneto let the entire world know that mutants were real, they were dangerous, and they would not be ruled over by inferior beings. The X-Men stood in his way, the students of Xavier working for peaceful coexistence. They rebuffed the master of magnetism at every turn. These young, misguided mutants prevented Magneto from beginning a nuclear apocalypse but Magneto amassed a force of his own. He organized his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to take down Xavier, alongside his newest genetic creation Alpha the Ultimate Mutant. Alpha, however, didn’t find his master worthy and reduced Magneto to an infant.
Xavier placed the child in the care of Moira MacTaggert. She had seen Magneto’s descent into madness and found a genetic flaw in him that increased his paranoia and irrationality as he used his powers. Moira manipulated his DNA so to erase that, in hopes that the child would grow into a more level-headed man. Eventually Erik the Red broke into Muir Island and restored Magneto to his physical prime. Magneto often battled the new X-Men and proved to be much too strong for the young team. With one of his schemes, Magneto threatened the world to disarm and swear fealty to him or he would cause total nuclear annihilation and rule over the ashes. The USSR did not respond kindly to this threat and launched a nuclear assault from a submarine called the Leningrad. Magneto wasted no time dismantling the nuke and crushing the sub. The X-Men led the attack against Magneto, who handily stopped them. A young Kitty Pryde tried to save her friends but was beaten back by Magneto. He attacked with almost lethal force before experiencing a moment of clarity. This young mutant Jewish girl in his arms, she was much like his Anya, and he nearly killed her. This was not the world he wanted to create. He called off his attack and fled to reevaluate his life.
Magneto took a softer approach after that. He assisted the X-Men in taking down the hate mongering preacher William Stryker and was counted among the heroes during the Superhero Secret War. He visited a gathering of survivors at the National Holocaust Memorial with Kitty and was captured there by Freedom Force. They handed him over to the World Court who placed him on trial for his crimes against humanity. Xavier and Gabrielle Haller took to his defense and were able to get all crimes he performed before being turned into a baby stricken from the record, however, the destruction of the Leningrad remained. Magneto passionately argued that he acted in self-defense but had learned the error of his ways. The Fenris twins, the children of Baron Strucker, attacked the trial and the human council was moved by Magneto’s attempts to protect the humans who would imprison him. They ruled him innocent, but there were still losses. Charles Xavier was critically injured during the attack and had to retreat to Shi’ar space to recover. Surprising everyone, including the master of magnetism himself, Charles left Magneto in charge of the Xavier Institute in his absence.
The New Mutants didn’t trust their new headmaster, the X-Men doubly so, but Magneto tried to make amends. The younger students began to come around, though Magneto took steps to erode that trust. He joined the Hellfire Club. Hoping to use their resources to shape the future of the mutant world. Magneto’s tenure was filled with failure, many X-Men were critically injured in the Morlock Massacre, the entire X-Men team was assumed dead after their battle in Dallas, and two of his New Mutants were killed under his watch. Magneto realized that Xavier’s way wasn’t his way and left to take control of his own destiny. He rebuilt Asteroid M and opened it as a haven for mutants. This drew the attention of many mutants who began to worship him as a god. They were his Acolytes, and they would be his weapons in the war against man.
The UN Security Council shuttered in fear from Magneto’s vindictive Acolytes and activated their best defense. They called it the Magneto Protocols, a satellite network that prevented Magneto from returning to Earth. Magneto cared little for this and unleashed a massive electromagnetic pulse that disabled every electronic component on Earth. The X-Men travelled to Asteroid M but Magneto was no longer willing to play games with Xavier. He believed it was time for mutants to take their rightful place. Magneto grabbed Wolverine and excruciatingly ripped the adamantium from his bones. Charles realized his former friend was truly lost and used his mental powers to give Magneto a vision. Eric saw a dream of a world where mutants stood side by side with humans, a world where a mutant child would never be marched to their death. A world where Xavier’s dream came true and Magnus stood by his friend. Then Charles Xavier shut down Magneto’s mind.
Years passed and his Acolytes left the brain-dead man, but Erik Lehnsherr had never given up. He recovered at the same time as a pretender named Joseph had joined the X-Men and he felt slighted. Even his closest friend had decided to cross lines to stop him. Well if they wanted a monster, Magneto would give them one. He took control of the magnetosphere at the north pole and threatened the world with utter obliteration if they wouldn’t cede him land for a mutant nation. Shocking the international community, they gave him the island nation of Genosha. He became the tyrant king of Genosha and persecuted many baseline humans. He inherited a humanitarian crisis with the Legacy Virus ravaging the mutant population but when the disease was cured, he had a true, loyal army. He was ready to start World War III and would have if not for the X-Men. Wolverine crippled him and Magneto retreated to plan his next engagement. Cassandra Nova and her mega-Sentinel saw that he wouldn’t have that opportunity. Magneto was left to helplessly watch as sixteen million mutants in his country were systematically murdered simply for existing.
Then a bunch of very confusing and conflicting things happened but since it was technically Xorn pretending to be Magneto pretending to be Xorn you can check out the Xorn article to learn all about that. Anyway Magneto, alongside his old friend Charles Xavier, began to rebuild Genosha. When the Scarlet Witch had a mental breakdown, Magneto took his daughter (yes, I know, don’t “um actually” me) in and tried to help mend her mind. For a brief moment, he felt a tear in reality, a world of his dreams where mutants ruled and he ruled mutants. When he awoke, he could no longer feel the current of the Earth’s magnetic field. Magneto was powerless.
Magneto worked with the High Evolutionary to develop a solution to the depowering of the mutant race. While they couldn’t revive all powers, they were able to give Magneto his control back and rejuvenated his body. In the years that had passed, the landscape of mutant leadership had drastically changed. Xavier was a pariah among the X-Men and Cyclops had become the leader of an entire, united race. Magneto remembered the teenager who stood up to him at Cape Citadel all those years ago and he saw this champion that stood in front of him now. The master of magnetism bent the knee on the shore of Utopia and pledged to follow Cyclops.
Cyclops’ Utopia was not to last, but through it all, Magneto was his most loyal lieutenant. When it fell after the events of the war between the Avengers and X-Men, Magneto wanted desperately to keep that dream alive. He broke Cyclops out of prison and stood by him as they enacted a mutant revolution. In time, Magneto realized that there was too much Xavier in the boy and struck out on his own. He became a mutant vigilante, recruiting those that society had cast aside to join him on Genosha. Magneto knew that a mutant world was outside of his reach, he was just looking to survive the world he was in.
The Terrigen Mist crisis wiped out the community he had built, and Magneto was unwilling to watch his people be gassed to death again. He formed his own band of X-Men to take on any threat against mutant kind. He renewed his old partnership with the Hellfire Club and even worked with Emma Frost in secret to take down the Inhumans. His teammate Psylocke was tired of all the secrets and lies coming from Magneto and promised to take him down. Magneto allowed her to believe she had and formed a new partnership in the shadows. The time displaced original X-Men needed a mentor, they needed a place to belong, and Magneto provided just that.
Must Read
Magneto has been in many excellent comics, but few have been able to balance the nuance in the character. Many focus on the nobility without the mania or the terrorism without his justification. Magneto solo stories especially struggle to deal with both the monster and the man. In the modern day, Cullen Bunn has found that perfect balance over the last three years and proved that with his opening statement on Magneto #1. There is an overwhelming sense of power and dread from Gabriel Hernandez Walta art and Jordie Bellaire’s muted colors make the moments of violence all the more visceral. Check this issue out on ComiXology and enjoy a great story about the greatest villain in comics.
Ranking
Magneto is the greatest villain in comics and arguably all of media. Magneto makes some of the most valid points a villain ever has while still doing everything wrong. A reader doesn’t want to cheer against him even when he is taking abhorrent actions. He is someone that it is hard to be upset with because part of you thinks Magneto is justified in his actions. I don’t think he goes above Cyclops, who is a better X-Man, but Magneto is deeper than Nightcrawler. That makes him the new number 2 in the Xavier Files.
Magneto was requested by Max Dweck on Patreon among others. Thank you for the request. If you have a request for how about you send it below? If you want to cut to the front of the two-year long line, we have a Patreon you can support Xavier Files for just $1 to get a line cutting reward.
Make sure you check out my brand new podcast BATTLE OF THE ATOM. It’s where Bish & Jubez creator Adam Reck and I talk about every single X-Men story that ever existed and rank them from best to worst. Episode 5 is up and we get really excited about the Age of Apocalypse. Make sure you subscribe on any of the following platforms (or others, I’m not picky) Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS.
If you liked what you read be sure to follow Xavier Files on twitter, Tumblr, Facebook!
Next week we got ourselves some Bishop! See you then!
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
