Caution: This article contains a spoiler for X-Men #17. You’ve. Been. Warned.
Little by little, we have begun to learn about the membership of 3K, the mutant-making shadow organization introduced at the beginning of Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman’s X-Men, whose most notable member appears to be Cassandra Nova. This week’s issue #17 brought another member of 3K out from the shadows: Astra, a late-’90s X-villain whose greatest claim to fame is creating the Magneto clone Joseph.
(Hmm, Charles Xavier’s evil womb twin and a woman with a mad-on for Mags. Mayhap 3K is some sort of revenge society?)
Astra doesn’t have a lot of appearances, and comes from a period when X-Men was cycling through backup writers and scripters in a desperate bid to fill time while Marvel waited for Chris Claremont to make his grand return after nine years away, so you’d be forgiven if you didn’t recognize her. Imagine a young Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development with a high pony and lots of space tech, and you’ll get the picture. Here’s what you need to know about Magneto’s clone’s mom.
Name: Astra
Other names: Mother (if you’re Joseph)
First appearance: Uncanny X-Men #366, January 1999
Created by: Alan Davis, Fabian Nicieza, Leinil Francis Yu
Powers: Teleportation, other abilities augmented by stolen space technology
Group affiliation: Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, 3K
About
A sort of awful Mommy Dearest to the Magneto clone named Joseph, Astra was one of the original members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, but left before the events of 1964’s X-Men #4, the Brotherhood’s first appearance. She claims Magneto was abusive toward her, but it was the Silver Age; he was abusive toward everyone! Have you seen how he treated Toad?
Armed with a chip on her shoulder and the ability to teleport great distances, Astra went “shopping,” assembling galactic technology both to make weaponry and to create a clone of Magneto 20 years his junior and with fewer limits on his power. The opportunity to do so arose after Magneto’s orbital home of Avalon crashed to Earth, during the period when he had been rendered comatose by Charles Xavier.
Magneto awoke to find Astra and Joseph standing over him, leading to an all-out magnet fight. While Astra blinked off to do more galactic gallivanting, Magneto and Joseph fought over the jungles of Central America, until Mags knocked Joey unconscious, leaving him in the care of the local nun.
During the 1999 “Magneto War” story, Astra comes to retrieve Joseph, stealing him from the Israeli superhero Sabra while on a quest to figure out who he is. Astra spends the entire time berating Joseph, not unlike the way she believes Magneto berated her. But after a ton of exposition and insults, she finally confronts Magneto, only to have her own pilfered technology backfire on her, clearing the way for another epic Magneto-on-Joseph magnet fight. The X-Men join this fight, after three issues of fighting the Acolytes, which allows Joseph to turn his attention to fixing the damage Magneto has done to the magnetosphere in his bid to hijack the world by flipping its magnetic poles. In doing so, Joseph sacrifices himself, burning out his clone body. The X-Men and Magneto reach a stalemate, and a frustrated Astra teleports away, declaring “You spoiled my fun!”
During “The Twelve” storyline not long after, Apocalypse claims to have “dealt with” Astra, a clear attempt to hand-wave away a character no one wanted to deal with anymore, though of course, that means she’s about as dead as any subsequent writer or editor wants her to be.
In the 2011 miniseries Magneto: Not a Hero by Skottie Young and Clay and Seth Mann, Astra reconstitutes Joseph and forms a new Brotherhood made of clones of the originals, committing political crimes in Magneto’s name. This results in yet another Magneto-Joseph fight, which ends with Astra tossed in the brig on Utopia — in her underwear, because did I mention it’s a Clay Mann comic? Joseph, in this story, is a lot less heroic than he once was, and Magneto ends up teaming with Astra to defeat the rogue clone in a fight in which they throw planes and subway cars at each other. Magneto then turns Joseph over to the Avengers and allows Astra to escape.
It’s debated whether Astra can be seen walking through the Krakoan gates with the other villains at the end of 2019’s House of X #5. We’ve scanned the panels a couple times and aren’t seeing her. We did see Animax, though. Hi, Animax!
And now, armed with perhaps another Joseph (“Joseph Three? Four?”), Astra is revealed as a member of 3K. What this means for her going forward, obviously we can’t know, but as long as she remains fiendishly campy and mean, she, if not the reader, will likely have a good time.
Fun Fact
As revealed on a data page in 2023’s X-Force #45, Astra stuck with the original Brotherhood long enough to participate in a mission in which the Brotherhood killed the parents of future Orchis agent Jun Wei.
Must Read
We’re not necessarily saying “Magneto War” — X-Men: Magneto War #1, Uncanny X-Men #366 and #367, and X-Men #86 and #87 — is a must-read story (it’s currently ranked #789 on Battle of the Atom’s Big Ol’ List), but if you want to know where Astra comes from and why she created a clone of Magneto, then here you go.
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Dan Grote is the editor and publisher of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Paul Winston Wisdom. Follow him @danielpgrote.bsky.social.
