Writing: Scott Lobdell
Art: Roger Cruz
What Went Down: A group of South American orphans discover the unconscious body of Magneto. The children are scared away when he wakes up, but Magneto is met by an attractive nun with a shotgun. Reacting with his powers, Magneto pushes the gun away, and then falls unconscious again.
When he next wakes up, Magneto is tied to a bed. The woman introduces herself as Sister Maria, offers Magneto food, and unties him. We learn that Magneto has amnesia, and when he shaves his beard we also discover that he has de-aged to his twenties; even he comments on how wrong this feels.
Not knowing his true identity, one of the children names him Joseph. Sister Maria has an old issue of Time with the X-Men on the cover, so she is aware that he might be a mutant. Joseph tries to share a romantic moment with Sister Maria, but she is committed to her faith.
A month later, Joseph is busy fixing a tractor with his powers when a man named Colonel Ramos approaches. All of the children explain that he is a jerk, and possibly corrupt. A week later, Joseph finds the barn on fire. He catches up to the Colonel and threatens the man with his powers to find out where Sister Maria and the children are.
In a basement, Sister Maria comforts the children. After they hear a commotion, Joseph opens the door. Unfortunately, he killed many men to get to the children, and this causes all of them to be frightened of him. Joseph leaves the next day. Sister Maria gives him the issue of Time, suggesting that he search out the X-Men.
In the end we learn that Sister Maria was recounting the story to a priest. She claims that she suspected that Joseph was Magneto and wonders if she did the right thing. The father reassures her that all they can do is pray and hope for the best.
How It Was: Scott Lobdell keeps switching it up with the unexpected formats. This issue we get a single self-contained story: no subplots, no recaps of other stories. There aren’t even any X-Men in this story; it’s just catching up with Magneto from beginning to end. The big twist of the story is that Magneto is now Joseph: a younger Magneto without his tragic past. Lobdell is obviously taking on the “nature vs nurture” debate by exploring what Magneto might be like if he didn’t have all the emotional baggage from suffering through the Holocaust.
And that’s a pretty interesting direction to go as far as giving Magneto a second chance after all the bad things he’s done. Inevitably though, it leads to the same reoccurring character beats of Joseph feeling guilty for being a former villain and frustrated by his amnesia and its cause. Although it seems like Scott Lobdell is really pushing the fact that Joseph is the true Magneto, Joseph’s origin eventually turns out to be a generic clone story, which is really disappointing.
As for the story itself, it’s a stock plot of an amnesiac finding family among strangers, but it still works rather well. Yes, Joseph doesn’t have a full personality yet, and Sister Maria is a little too “perfect” as far as looks and personality. Really Maria and the children are more of a plot device, and the point of the story is to show that Joseph can potentially become good or evil. The best part of course is Joseph’s return to darkness where he tortures the Colonel and murders all of the children’s captors. It’s a shame that later Joseph issues didn’t play up the will he/won’t he turn evil aspect as much; Joseph stays pretty benevolent and guilt ridden for the most part during his career as an X-Man.
The twist that Joseph is younger than Magneto does add some mystery and speculation to the character, but the twist itself is mostly superficial. Joseph’s control over his powers seems absolute even though he should be a novice, and most artists just draw him as Magneto with long hair, so there is no real differentiation other than his personality. Normally this would be too big of a tangent to take away from the main X-Men storylines, but at this point, with Age of Apocalypse just ended and Onslaught still being worked out, this is the perfect time for this story. And unlike the similar Adam-X aside in X-Men #39, this character actually turns out to have an impact on the book for a significant amount of time. It’s not exactly redefining the genre, but it is one of the more competent efforts during this era in X-Men.
B
No comments:
Post a Comment