Do You Consider Magneto A Hero Or Villain?

[Michael Watkins]

When has Magneto ever given anyone their freedom? Magneto has been, canon, a slave-maker and slave owner.

Just to reiterate, since mass murder and conquest of nations doesn't seem to be enough: Slave owner.

he gave Maggot his freedom. he rescued Kitty Pryde from space. he defended a hospital from Nazis. they are plenty of examples out there, for the open-minded. but if all you're looking for is the devil, you're sure to find him.

[t hedge coke]

he gave Maggot his freedom. he rescued Kitty Pryde from space. he defended a hospital from Nazis. they are plenty of examples out there, for the open-minded. but if all you're looking for is the devil, you're sure to find him.

Fair enough, though I don't think "saving someone" especially "saving someone incidentally or to impress them into service" is the same as "saving someone," but yeah, if you go looking for the devil, you'll often find him in a mass murdering slave-owning bigot.

I'm not saying Magneto is "all evil" or something. But, he's no hero and he is a bad, bad, bad man. Saving two or three people over a lifetime of murder, theft, assault, slavery and torture does not do much to counter all that badness.

[Alan2099]

Magneto is a cold blooded murderer, racist, and all around bad egg.

Now there are times when he ISN'T murdering people and the race that he favors needs his help and he offers it, but just because he's not doing something bad at that exact moment doesn't mean he's not a bad guy. It would be like saying Dr. Doom isn't a badguy because sometimes he's not trying to take over the world.

Magneto has tried to be good before, but he's gone about it in the wrong ways and he's right about some of the things he says, but at the same time, he's probably done more to harm mutant/human relations than any other mutant on the planet.

[Doctor Know]

When did Magneto become a murderer? During the Silver Age he was a cruel boss and generally a bad dude. But I don't think Stan and Jack had him commit murder then. X-Men was cancelled in the late 60s and revived in 1975, and by then Byrne and Claremont had a different agenda for him. He gave up his aspirations for conquest, tried to reconnect with his family and began teaching at Xavier's school and joined the X-Men. I don't remember much of the Claremont and Lee era, but was it around then? Morrison's Magneto was a killer no doubt, but that was retconned to be Xorn.

[Namor'sWrath]

He's neither. He's something in between, as he should be.

[ariwl1]

When he isn't murdering thousands across the planet by warping its EM field? Hero. It takes a lot of forgetting to even begin to rationalize Magneto as a hero. The man's body count of innocents is staggering. He's gone from stock villain to noble antihero to psychotic mass murderer over the decades. As he is written now, I'd have to choose 'hero'.

This. For me Magneto to be accepted among the X-Men reqiures complete suspension of disbelief, but that's par for the course in comics. For me Magneto was at his most compelling when he was the headmaster for the new mutants. His sins at that time hadn't really piled up that high, and it was interesting watching him navigate that role when he knew it was the best way but it didn't necessarily agree with him and he was also just not very good at it.

Post Fatal Attractions a lot of Magneto's time with the X-Men I take at face value for the sake of it not getting in the way of the story.

[nx01a]

To put Doctor Know in the know... Anybody want to post the pages of him destroying a Russian submarine then creating a volcano in Russia (UXM #150), murdering the people who stopped him from saving his daughter then murdering the soldiers who came after him (UXM #304) or Mags blasting the EM field and murdering thousands of people across Earth (X-Men v2 #25), please? Hell, throw in the times he's created life just to enslave and use it as soldiers (Savage Land Mutates, Alpha)...

Mags has done utterly deplorable things but I'd rather have him on the side of mutants against the Inhumans and speciest humans with big guns and Sentinels. He's currently written as a dark character trying NOT to go around destroying random innocent lives... and I find him utterly fascinating.

[Huntsman Spider]

When did Magneto become a murderer? During the Silver Age he was a cruel boss and generally a bad dude. But I don't think Stan and Jack had him commit murder then. X-Men was cancelled in the late 60s and revived in 1975, and by then Byrne and Claremont had a different agenda for him. He gave up his aspirations for conquest, tried to reconnect with his family and began teaching at Xavier's school and joined the X-Men. I don't remember much of the Claremont and Lee era, but was it around then? Morrison's Magneto was a killer no doubt, but that was retconned to be Xorn.

A common one cited is Fatal Attractions in the early 1990s, when Magneto basically snapped and used his powers to warp Earth's electromagnetic field, causing blackouts and power outages all over the world, which explicitly led to at least thousands of people dying because of car crashes, plane crashes, or lifesaving equipment not working anymore. Then he ripped Wolverine's adamantium out through his pores, and the only reason Wolverine didn't die from that is that Jean Grey telekinetically held his body together long enough for his healing factor to work, though it was overtaxed that it actually burned out afterwards. And Xavier, who had given Magneto chance after chance after chance to be a better man, decided enough was enough and wiped Magneto's mind clean of everything, including the anger and hate that powered him through so much of his life and his darkest days and deeds, leaving Magneto effectively braindead.

That aside, the reason it's so attractive to cast Magneto as any sort of heroic figure is the universe he lives in. If you look at the Marvel Universe as a whole, despite the good deeds of the X-Men, none of it changes the minds of humanity at large on mutants, particularly not authority figures who see the X-Men as just a few steps removed from Magneto's Brotherhood, and mutants continue to be persecuted with borderline, sometimes even outright genocidal intent. It doesn't help, either, that anybody who isn't a mutant in the MU generally regards mutants and their situation with either apathy or outright hostility, with even superheroes turning a blind eye for the sake of not inconveniencing their government connections or discomforting their allies in the Inhuman Royal Family. With almost nobody outside the X-Men willing to lift a finger or a voice to defend mutants and their fundamental rights (in-universe), and the X-Men's efforts generally being for naught despite their heroism, Magneto looks and sounds appealing as pretty much the only person willing to overtly fight back against the forces and institutions seeking to wipe out or subjugate mutants, and if that means humanity as a whole, so be it, because humanity has already disowned and disinherited mutantkind. What have they got to lose?

[uebersoldat]

He's committed far too many atrocious acts to be considered a hero by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think anyone is ever completely beyond redemption but *hero*? No.

[Michael Watkins]

He's committed far too many atrocious acts to be considered a hero by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think anyone is ever completely beyond redemption but *hero*? No.

he didn't steal someone's memories and leave them comatose.

[Michael Watkins]

Magneto is a cold blooded murderer, racist, and all around bad egg.

Now there are times when he ISN'T murdering people and the race that he favors needs his help and he offers it, but just because he's not doing something bad at that exact moment doesn't mean he's not a bad guy. It would be like saying Dr. Doom isn't a badguy because sometimes he's not trying to take over the world.

Magneto has tried to be good before, but he's gone about it in the wrong ways and he's right about some of the things he says, but at the same time, he's probably done more to harm mutant/human relations than any other mutant on the planet.

oh really? how were human/mutant relations prior to Magneto's debut? you don't think Mystique assassinating Graydon Creed contributed? or how about Stryfe killing Charles Xavier? or the Weapon X program?

[Michael Watkins]

Fair enough, though I don't think "saving someone" especially "saving someone incidentally or to impress them into service" is the same as "saving someone," but yeah, if you go looking for the devil, you'll often find him in a mass murdering slave-owning bigot.

I'm not saying Magneto is "all evil" or something. But, he's no hero and he is a bad, bad, bad man. Saving two or three people over a lifetime of murder, theft, assault, slavery and torture does not do much to counter all that badness.

I guess where we disagree is in the definition of a hero. you see it as a personality (speculatively). I see it as a way to label actions. you aren't a hero. your actions are heroic. some of Magneto's actions are bad. some are heroic. some are beyond those descriptions. you name me pretty much any X-Man and i'll show you something crappy that they've done. I think it's crappy that they haven't done more for the Morlocks. i think it's crappy that Illyana cavorts with demons. Magneto isn't Sabretooth pre-inversion. he doesn't kill for sport. he's convinced himself that he's at war with those who would kill mutants. his actions in the service of this war are often barbaric. but it's not like he's going after pro-mutant humans. unless some hack is writing, he's not killing children to prevent them from growing up to become the enemy (like Stryker). plus, he's lived a few lifetimes. if you're being fair, you'd have to weigh his early career as Magneto (pre-mutant alpha) against his time as a holocaust victim. he was an innocent through the majority of it. and he was a deranged elderly person during that period where he was a clear cut villain. that's what Moira was trying to fix. in his second lifetime, he took Xavier's place at the mansion. are we going to discount the considerable amount of time that he spent with the X-Men; where he was far less bloodthirsty than Wolverine? or when he was secluding himself on Asteroid M? he wasn't going around slaughtering humans. a lot of his actions were defensive (brutal but defensive). count the actions up and i bet that he's 50/50; good and bad. if he weren't, Rogue wouldn't have taken to him.

[Doctor Know]

To put Doctor Know in the know... Anybody want to post the pages of him destroying a Russian submarine then creating a volcano in Russia (UXM #150), murdering the people who stopped him from saving his daughter then murdering the soldiers who came after him (UXM #304) or Mags blasting the EM field and murdering thousands of people across Earth (X-Men v2 #25), please? Hell, throw in the times he's created life just to enslave and use it as soldiers (Savage Land Mutates, Alpha)...

Mags has done utterly deplorable things but I'd rather have him on the side of mutants against the Inhumans and speciest humans with big guns and Sentinels. He's currently written as a dark character trying NOT to go around destroying random innocent lives... and I find him utterly fascinating.

A common one cited is Fatal Attractions in the early 1990s, when Magneto basically snapped and used his powers to warp Earth's electromagnetic field, causing blackouts and power outages all over the world, which explicitly led to at least thousands of people dying because of car crashes, plane crashes, or lifesaving equipment not working anymore. Then he ripped Wolverine's adamantium out through his pores, and the only reason Wolverine didn't die from that is that Jean Grey telekinetically held his body together long enough for his healing factor to work, though it was overtaxed that it actually burned out afterwards. And Xavier, who had given Magneto chance after chance after chance to be a better man, decided enough was enough and wiped Magneto's mind clean of everything, including the anger and hate that powered him through so much of his life and his darkest days and deeds, leaving Magneto effectively braindead.

That aside, the reason it's so attractive to cast Magneto as any sort of heroic figure is the universe he lives in. If you look at the Marvel Universe as a whole, despite the good deeds of the X-Men, none of it changes the minds of humanity at large on mutants, particularly not authority figures who see the X-Men as just a few steps removed from Magneto's Brotherhood, and mutants continue to be persecuted with borderline, sometimes even outright genocidal intent. It doesn't help, either, that anybody who isn't a mutant in the MU generally regards mutants and their situation with either apathy or outright hostility, with even superheroes turning a blind eye for the sake of not inconveniencing their government connections or discomforting their allies in the Inhuman Royal Family. With almost nobody outside the X-Men willing to lift a finger or a voice to defend mutants and their fundamental rights (in-universe), and the X-Men's efforts generally being for naught despite their heroism, Magneto looks and sounds appealing as pretty much the only person willing to overtly fight back against the forces and institutions seeking to wipe out or subjugate mutants, and if that means humanity as a whole, so be it, because humanity has already disowned and disinherited mutantkind. What have they got to lose?

Thanks for the info. I forgot all about Uncanny X-Men #150. Fair enough.

Uncanny X-Men #304 and Fatal Attractions though. GAH, the Lobdell era! I have some of the volumes in paperback and hardcover but haven't read them. I forgot all about Lobdell's run on X-Men. I remember Magneto removing Logan's adamantium, because Wolverine didn't have it on his Deadpool appearances in the mid 90s.


Magneto disrupting the EM field of the Earth sounded like what they did on Ultimatum with Mags. Now I know where Loeb got the idea from. SMH.

[The_Phenom2893]

I don't know, to be completely honest. I mean the beyonder put magneto the side with the heroes, because he didn't see the difference what professor x was doing, and what magneto was doing.

I remember when he was undercover, and somebody ask him the....''would you kill hilter as a baby''. And man I love his response to that. I think that's how he got genosha in the first place when he lash out.

Edit: I guess right now he's a hero, because jean said he's fighting alongside the x-men. Idk

[electr1cgoblin]

I think it's a wonderful thing that there is enough depth in a comic character to be able to spark these types of arguments. I think it's a testament to the quality of Marvel's writing through the decades that one could make these same arguments about many of their villains. Some, like the Red Skull or Bulleye, are pretty much straight up evil with little if any redeeming qualities. But others, like Magneto, bear closer and more intense scrutiny and discussion.

I think everyone (fictional or otherwise) exists on a moral spectrum. Somebody like Ben Grimm or Peter Parker might exist at the far end (but not all the way) of the good side, and others at the far end of the bad. Most are somewhere in between. For me, Magneto also exists along that plane. What is being discussed, of course, is exactly where. And it's hard to pinpoint because he's been so many things to so many different writers.

I do get upset when people just sort of shrug off past evil deeds. For me, the Kingpin is unadulterated scum and yet people will argue that "he loves his wife", as if that somehow mitigates the horrors he has perpetrated on hundreds, if not thousands of innocents. People can and do embody completely opposing impulses, but one doesn't negate the other.