All throughout November, guest writers will be weighing in on fandom, specifically guest writers who identify strongly with characters, teams, or franchises online. Each piece will feature a personal look at why a writer gravitates to a character, what keeps their interest, and — most importantly — a set of reading recommendations for folks looking to better understand that character.

Today Kevin M., who goes by @MagnetoRocks on Twitter, has graciously volunteered to write about (that’s right!) Magento…

Magneto is not a difficult character to like. Some favorites are obscure or unusual, some are difficult to explain to people who have never heard of them, and others are hard to justify to people who have. But Magneto is different. Thanks to a series of compelling performances by Ian McKellan and Michael Fassbender – and aided no doubt by a strong presence in multiple animated shows – Magento has become that rarest of things — a villain firmly entrenched in the public consciousness as more iconic than even most of the heroes he faces. Indeed, it seems fair to suggest that several of the X-Men films have now been about Magneto to a greater degree than they have been about most of the titular team (to the frustration of some X-Fans). People whose favorite X-Men character is Magneto include none other than Jonathan Hickman, the Head of X himself. So no, liking Magneto wouldn’t seem to require much of an explanation.

What is more unusual, however, and what draws me to the character so strongly, is that for all the character’s mainstream appeal, there is relatively little agreement on precisely who Magneto is anyway. (While I don’t mean his name, it’s worth noting that nobody can really agree on that either. Max, Magnus, Erik – choose your own adventure.) Every so often, some website or twitter account will do a ranking of greatest comics villains. Every time, Magneto will be included near the top, and every time, a chorus of voices will rise up to declare that Magneto is not a villain! This is a startling claim to make for a character who has threatened on multiple occasions to destroy the planet or perpetuate a genocide, and has occasionally begun to make good on the threat. And yet. It is equally true that the character is now more often found working with the X-Men than against them, and that in modern comics he appears driven more by the zealous safeguarding of his persecuted people than by any bigotry or intolerance of others, as he was once depicted.

What really makes Magneto the greatest character in all of comics is his rich depth and nuance, allowing readers to see whatever they wish in him. Magneto is the tyrant who forced his followers to abase themselves before him; he is the monster who condoned the destruction of a hospital because its patients were ‘only’ human; he is the tragic survivor of a family and a culture devastated by the inhumanity of man; he is the most loyal defender of a persecuted minority against the forces of oppression and intolerance; he is the villain, the antihero, and the hero all at once. It is all a contradiction, yes, but it is not the contradiction of messy continuity and inconsistent writing but rather of human nature. Magneto is the very best and the very worst of that nature, eternally wrestling for control, and watching that endless battle is what has enthralled readers for decades, and will for decades to come.

Magneto Reading Recommendations

It is impossible to talk about Magneto without talking about Chris Claremont. When Claremont took over the X-Men franchise in the late 1970s, Magneto was the team’s nemesis largely because he was chronologically their first foe. He had no particular personal connection to any of the heroes. His motivations were mostly hating everybody else, and his ‘personality’ was confined to lengthy raving monologues. By the time Claremont left in 1991, Magneto had been utterly transformed.

He now had a detailed and sympathetic origin, losing his family to the death camps of the Holocaust and his daughter to the unthinking prejudices of post-war Europe; he had a rich personal history as Charles Xavier’s old friend, and his motivations had been transformed from unthinking brute bigotry to a noble desire to stand up for his people. About the only thing that didn’t change was the monologues – now more loquacious than ever. While Claremont’s departure would see the character return to his straightforward villainy for the following decade, subsequent versions of the character from the animated shows to the movies to modern comics would draw directly on Claremont’s vision, perhaps the greatest achievement of his definitive X-Men run. So it’s no surprise that Claremont-penned issues will make up the bulk of this list.

Uncanny X-Men #150: The essential turning point for the character. This is where Claremont’s re-invention of Magneto begins, as he introduces the spectre of the Holocaust to the villain’s background for the first time. You can draw a straight line from this issue to the opening scene of the 2000 X-Men film – and to the rest of the character’s history. This 1981 issue is also, remarkably, the last time the X-Men would properly fight their supposed arch-nemesis for a full ten years.
Uncanny X-Men #200: The culmination of 50 issues worth of development since the previous issue on this list. In the years since Claremont first added a tragic backstory to the X-Men’s nemesis, he continued to pile on new levels of depth, including a retroactively inserted friendship with Charles Xavier and a new world-weary ambivalence for a character who was previously characterized by ironclad monomaniacal certainty. It comes to a head here, when Magneto is put on trial for his past crimes in a symbolically fraught reckoning between his villainous past and his more nuanced present. When he agrees to take his old friend’s place as head of the Xavier School at the end, the moment is satisfying for how utterly, thoroughly earned it is. If only it had been allowed to stick.
Classic X-Men #12: Some of Claremont’s best work on the character came not in the pages of Marvel’s best-selling ongoing but rather in side titles, none moreso than this spectacular back-up in the Classic X-Men reprint series. A Fire In The Night expands on the hints laid down in Uncanny #150 to shade in more of the Master of Magnetism’s history, juxtaposing the persecution and hatred he faced even after his release from Auschwitz with the complexities of his present life. Utterly tragic, and utterly compelling.
Uncanny X-Men #274 - #275: Perhaps the definitive Magneto story, and the definitive culmination of Claremont’s depiction, much moreso than the better known epilogue to follow in X-Men #1-3 - even if it is intercut with a dull space plot. Rogue, stranded in the Savage Land, teams up with Magneto in a struggle that is far less about any exterior threat than it is about the internal war between aspects of his character. The climax is the most poignant monologue the character has ever delivered, which is saying something. “I am not Charles Xavier. I will never be Charles Xavier. I was a fool to try.” (As a bonus: Magneto has never looked better than he does under Jim Lee’s pencil here)
Magneto #1 - #3: While there is no denying the significance of Claremont for the character, Magneto’s history of strong stories does not end in 1991 by any means. For a modern-day Magneto tale, it is hard to beat the first arc of Bunn’s excellent and all too short lived ongoing from the mid-2010s. A stark examination of the character’s ruthlessness and determination which keep him so darkly compelling.

Honorable Mentions: Uncanny X-Men #161, New Mutants #35, New Mutants #52, X-Men (1991) #1-3, X-Men: Alpha, Uncanny X-Men #534.1, House of X #1. -@MagentoRocks