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From SCIFIPEDIA
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| Magneto
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| Gender
| Male
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| Publisher
| Marvel Comics
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| Origin
| Somewhere in Eastern Europe
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| First Appearance
| X-Men #1 (1963)
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| Creator(s)
| Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
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| Alter ego
| real named unrevealed, possibly "Magnus"
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| Aliases
| Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Erik Magnus, Michael Xavier, The Creator, Gray King, the White Pilgrim, Eric the Red
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| Abilities
| Controls all magnetic forces.
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| Affiliations
| in the past, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the X-Men, head of state of Genosha, currently unaffiliated
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Magneto is a super-villain for the superhero team the X-Men, fictional comic book characters owned by Marvel Comics.
Magneto is one of Marvel’s oldest and most powerful villains. He is the first foe of the X-Men, and their official arch nemesis. Since he’s been around for decades, various comic book creators have found all sorts of interesting and creative ways to use his magnetic powers. Because of this, Magneto has done incredible things, and there seems to be no limits to his power. His background as a Holocaust survivor, and his sincere desire to protect and benefit mutant kind, has made him sympathetic enough to even act as a “good guy” at times, and was at one point even placed in charge of Xavier’s school for mutants during one of Professor X’s extended leaves of absence. Still, in the long run, the writers usually find a way to return him to his villainous self.
Magneto has true ideological reasons for what he does, and is in many ways the opposite number of his old friend and arch foe, Dr. Charles Xavier, known also by the code name Professor X. While Charles feels that the way to handle relationships between humans and mutants is to form a team of mutants, educate them how to use their powers effectively and ethically, and to use them to protect others. Magneto feels that humanity will eventually be forced to eliminate mutants whom they fear will replace them, and the only way to assure this does not happen is for mutants to rule the human race. Since part of the X-Men’s charter is to protect humans from evil mutants, this makes Magneto their natural enemy.
Magneto is the biological father of two of Marvel’s most interesting mutant characters, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. He wears a helmet that covers his head and face, and protects him from the mental powers of Professor X.
Magneto is a mutant, born with the superhuman power to control magnetism. He can control existing magnetic fields or generate them within himself. Magneto’s power seems limitless. He once lifted a cargo freighter weighing 30,000 tons 50 feet into the air from a distance of 300 feet away. He has, at times, manipulated other forms of energy that are part of the electro-magnetic spectrum. He has even been known to exhibit control over people by affecting the iron component in their blood.
In addition to his powers, he also seems to be an expert on genetic manipulation and has mastered many technological fields. He has designed devices and aircraft that are powered by his own magnetism. He has assembled complicated machines within seconds with his powers. He has manipulated the genetic structure of human beings and created genetically altered clones.
Magneto has been through many changes over the years, and has attempted to conquer and control human civilization several times, always thwarted by Marvel’s heroes. He has also sought a separate homeland for mutants.
Character Origin
Magneto is of Jewish descent. He and his family were shot by the Nazis, but Magneto survived, to be sent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where he served in the Sonderkommando, the squad of Jewish men forced to help their Nazi masters operate the gas chambers, ovens, and fire pits of the camp. He grew up as a teenager in Auschwitz. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. These experiences educated the young survivor about the potential of human cruelty from a majority group to a minority considered different, a lesson he was to apply his whole life in dealing with the mutant/human relationship. During this time, due to the cruelties and the physical deprivations of the camp, his mutant powers did not manifest themselves.
While serving in the Sonderkommando, Magnus met a Gypsy, or Roma girl named Magda, whose family had also been imprisoned at Auschwitz. He fell in love with Magda, and saved her when the entire Gypsy Family Camp was destroyed in August of 1944. Approximately one week before the Russians liberated Auschwitz, Magneto and Magda escaped the camp, and made their way through the iron curtain countries of Europe, settling in a Carpathian Mountain village. Magnus married Magda, and began learning a trade in construction. They had a daughter named Anya. When Anya was a young child, Magnus felt constricted and stifled by the idyllic village life, and decided to move his family to a bigger city in order to further his education. They arrived in the Soviet city of Vinnitsa in 1957, and on the very first day of a new job, Magnus used his powers to assault his foreman who tried to cheat him out of his pay. Returning to the inn where Magda and Anya were staying, Magnus saw that the inn was on fire. Magda had escaped, but Anya was trapped. Magnus tried to rescue Anya with his newfound powers, but was accosted by police and angry townspeople. He was beaten, and prevented from saving his daughter, who fell burning to her death at her father's feet. In blind anger and grief, Magnus unleashed his powers, killing hundreds of bystanders and destroying part of the city of Vinnitsa.
When Magda saw what her husband was capable of, she panicked and fled from him in terror, without telling him she was again pregnant. This led to the birth and concealment of the twins Wanda and Pietro, who would grow to adulthood as the mutants Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch without knowing who their father was. It was many years later that Magneto discovered his link to them and revealed to them the truth of their origin.
Magnus searched for Magda over the next several years. He went to a master forger, Georg Odekirk, who created a false identity for him of "Erik Lehnsherr the Sinti Gypsy" in order for Magnus to hide from the KGB hunting him, and to help him locate Magda who he thought would be hiding amongst her own people.
Sometime later, Magneto came to live in the newly formed nation of Israel, where he worked under the name Erik Magnus as an orderly at a psychiatric hospital near Haifa helping other Holocaust survivors. It was there he met another powerful mutant, Charles Xavier. With much in common, he and Charles became good friends, and debated endlessly the future of mutants in modern society.
Magnus tried for years to stay on the path of righteousness. He worked for Mossad and an unidentified Western intelligence agency hunting Nazis. He worked on his own to stop early government programs that kidnapped mutants and turned them into living weapons. But during this time he was abusing and misusing his powers, and he became more and more mentally unstable, more and more consumed by his rage and pain. He became more and more convinced that violent action was the only way to protect mutants.
Years later, Magnus would go by the name Magneto and would become a terrorist for the mutant cause, believing that conquering human civilization was the only way to protect mutants. Xavier would counter him with his group of mutants trained to use their powers to protect humanity, the X-Men.
Magneto Portrayals
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
