Magneto #2 Review
It’s that time again. I’m back with my review of the most mature and violent X-Men comic in production right now, Magneto #2. Read on folk!
We begin with SHIELD interviewing some of those caught in the crossfire of Magneto’s last fight. You don’t invade a police station without someone being injured and there’s no getting over the fact that taking down the kid turned into a dime-store Omega Sentinel had shaken some people to their very core. However, we learn that he has some fans that rock ‘Magneto was right’ shirts harder than Quentin Quire and I must say I am slightly as disturbed as the SHIELD agents who ponder what unholy terror he would be if his powers ever got fixed.
Meanwhile, Magneto arrives at a shanty-town made of tents and people who fell down through the cracks of society called Down Acres. He finds their plight familiar because in the 1940’s he was in a similar situation when he and two others started smuggling food to survive and feed their families. He and another made it, but they could only listen in as the other didn’t and was held at gunpoint.
Magneto meets with the person in charge of Down Acre, a seemingly nice man named Samuel who welcomes him in and offers to feed and shelter him as long as he pulls his weight. Once in private though, Magneto gets to the point by asking about the men who took Colton, the poor young man who was turned into that killing machine last issue. Men come in the night and offer them work, but when the people wised up that they never returned the men started taking them—starting with the ones who fought back.
It was an all too familiar thing for Magneto as he recalls that fateful night, when his friend that got caught was given a choice out of desperation. He tells the name of the other friend, not Magneto, in exchange for being allowed to take his food back to his family. He is promptly shot in the head while the other friend flees, leaving Magneto to learn that desperation and hunger could make men break. He thinks back to that day, that his name wasn’t the one that was uttered, and wonders if it was necessary for him to do as he does to determine the course of history.
With that in mind, Magneto promptly kills the men coming with rusty nails. No banter, no declaration, just an ambush that graphically kills them all with the exception of one since he can’t afford the luxury that is mercy. To the final one he gives a similar ultimatum to the man who killed his friend, information so that he could walk away alive. The man talked in desperation to survive, and Magneto guns him down now that he knew where to strike.
Okay, review time.
This was a powerful issue. Rather than relying on action, we look at some of the hardships in the past and present, how desperate times makes men into monsters. Magneto has never shied away from being a monster, so long as it was for a cause that would ensure his people don’t go through the same shit he went through.
This issue gets a 5 out of 5.
Twilit Dreams Circle 