Magneto (2014) #21 Final Issue Review
And so it ends here, with Magneto #21. There’s not a lot to say folks, so I’ll be quick in condensing my thoughts on the conclusion of this series and its perspective on Magneto! Read on!
Okay, the comic opens with a flashback to Magneto’s first fight with the X-Men. In this fight, he pronounces mutants as the new overlords of humanity while handing them their asses, and when we go to the present we find him acknowledging the irony of the situation. The world thinks he’s here to turn a new leaf, a lie the desperate tell themselves as the world is coming to an end.
Another flashback shows when he sinks a Russian submarine because they are preparing to launch a missile in retaliation for him threatening all the governments of the world. He intends to use them as an example. As they die and he watches, he knows there is no redemption and that hasn’t changed now. He sees and himself as a monster, now and forever.
Polaris can only watch on as he does this, having lost her powers. Briar comes up to her and offers her a hand, explaining that he took them because he didn’t want to sacrifice her. Polaris simply states he’s only lying to himself and her believing that. For him, the ends justify the means.
In another flashback her words are proven true as Magneto is talking with Charles and the X-Men, refusing to come to court for laws he doesn’t recognize. Charles warns that the way he does things won’t get the results he wants because it does more harm than good, but then some suits come up to him and tell him they acknowledge Genosha as his land. Not the good way to send a message.
It seems like he’s pushing back the other world back in the present, but Briar can see that’s not the case. His body can’t withstand the power and turns to ashes with nothing left behind, realizing that everything he’d done to this point has taken away everything from him for nothing. The comic ends with the world being destroyed.
Okay, review time.
There’s not much to write home about in the issue. It was the final one and, as we see, Magneto failed in the end. For both the issue and the series itself… well, there was no getting around how it was going to end. This massive crossover crap was always going to ruin it. The art was about the same and we mostly just looked into the final thoughts of a man who thrived on violence and murder to accomplish a goal, only for it to all be meaningless in the end. It’s a shaggy dog story, with the best anyone will be able to say was that he tried.
That’s it.
I give the issue a 3 out of 5, and the series as a whole a 3.5 out of 5. I liked the introspective into it, but the art wasn’t spectacular. The ending was screwed by the crossover, and ultimately everything that was sacrificed for was for nothing.
Magneto #20 Review
I’m back folks, or rather I never left. There just hasn’t been much in the comic world that’s interested me with Secret Wars. But I still read Magneto and some secrets are coming out in what I think is the second-to-last issue of his own series. So read on my review of Magneto # 20!
The comic opens with Mags bleeding from his mouth and nose, wondering if his doppelganger is on the other side trying to do the same and which has gone to greater lengths. He has no clue his doppelganger went nuts, caused that Ultimatum event that ruined the Ultimate-Universe, and is dead. It’s for the best.
Anyway, it turns our Briar was wealthy and bored when she got caught in his attack in Seattle that left her leg injured. She claims she tried to minimize the damage by manipulating him, but it also turns out that she likes the monstrous side of him and pain makes her feel alive. He tells her there’s more to be done before the end.
In the present we see Lorna trying to tell him to stop since he’s killing himself. He reasons that since they keep sending sentinels they have a chance and he was going to keep going, he just needed more power. The Marauders provide him with amplifiers and the charging will take five minutes.
He’s bought that time because Briar contacted SHIELD with her agent and gave them information about the Incursions so they’d back him up as he continued. Lorna also came because she was invited to a club for people who like Magneto, despite the fact he’d maimed them at some point. Yeah, it gets weird, but to each its own.
Anyway, she informed Lorna that he was going to die and it would be best to have his child by his side. The comic then cuts to him draining her powers, so that he can finish up and ends with him looking like he’s exploding with power.
Okay, review time.
All in all, I find this issue a conflicting thing. On the one hand, I know he’s going to end up failing because Secret Wars is a thing and this is hopeless. On the other, I think he’s doing great things and he makes a fair point.
I’ll give it a 4 out of 5.
Magneto (2014) #17 Review
Magneto’s attempts to rebuild Genosha have come under threat by a murderer that has a mysterious past with him. Who is this killer? How does it end? Read my review of Magneto #17 and find out!
Okay, so the comic begins with the Marauders clones searching for the killer, while Mags thinks on why mutants are returning to Genosha. Some seek asylum, others a home, but Magneto thinks that it was pride that had him move to rebuild his fallen utopia. Pride has a heavy-cost, and more than once it’s been paid for in blood.
Briar points out that he believes a mutant is responsible, leading to a memory where he watched as fellow escapees from the Holocaust were being gunned down and Hitzig narrowly missed him, though his parting words still manage to haunt Mags. Turns out this is horribly relevant as Hitzig is alive and the murderer haunting Genosha. So that issue where we saw the psychic creation of the Nazi surviving after Red Onslaught had been dealt with turned out to be a lot more relevant than we thought.
The thing is from Mags’ mind, brought into the world and made real. This makes killing him again rather difficult for Magneto, and he slips away. Magneto realizes he will continue to do this because the only way for it to continue to exist is to make him suffer, meaning it will never end up less he does something drastic.
Meanwhile, Briar goes to sleep in her own quarters, where Arclight is jealous of her. It turns out that the shade of Hitzig is there and decides to kill her to make Mags suffer, as nightmares like it usually do. Magneto remains blissfully ignorant of this, instead going to confront a mutant who he believes has something to do with this.
It turns out that the illusionist mutant, Amy, could bring things to life, but she couldn’t control them. After what the Red Skull did to her, she ends up pulling Hitzig out of his head accidentally and she can’t stop it. She didn’t come to a remote beach to hide, but because she knows what he has to do to end it and doesn’t want anyone to see him when he does it, otherwise everything would fall apart.
The comic ends with the Hitzig shade turning to ashes and Magneto contemplating how his legacy has spoiled under the ruins of his own darkness, having to kill the child to save what he had left.
Okay, review time.
Once more, Magneto’s tale ends with blood being spilled in order to do what is best for mutants. This time, much like the knock-off Omega Sentinel, it was someone who had no control over what they were doing, but because of an outside power influencing them. It’s tragic, as expected of this series.
5 out of 5.
Magneto (2014) # 16 Review
The comic opens with a flashback to the events of decimation, when Utopia was established. Somehow, Magneto found out about X-Force and had them go after someone. Despite that, he needed to see the body. Whoever it was, you could be sure they had to be someone twisted for Mags to send out X-Force rather than do it himself.
In the present, Mags is rebuilding Genosha and Briar is helping to foot the bill. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go since she’s helped him out so brazenly, but he’s understandably confused why she did all this for him. Her response is to lower the blinds and kiss him, regardless of the fact he’s thee reason she’s wearing a brace in the first place. Dude has skills.
While Mags is getting busy, some of the other mutants are hiding away from the camp. They came to his island, but don’t want to live under his rule until they see what he’s all about, being a former terrorist and all. Naturally, someone cloaked in the cover of darkness comes and prepares to kill them.
Post-coitus, Mags finds himself dreading that a new beginning often serves as a preamble for disaster. He’s proven right when they stumble upon one of the boys from last night’s corpse. He can tell it was placed there deliberately and the one who did it relished the act of cruelty.
They follow a blood trail and find the others, along with a Nazi Swastika painted in blood on the wall. Whoever started clearly doesn’t intend to stop. It’s made worse when Mags returns to find that the killer had apparently be inside their trailer while they slept and painted it in the bathroom mirror, with a message telling him to keep the furnaces warm as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Well, a new plot-line begins and it starts with a murder mystery. I liked how they pointed out the symbol commonly recognized as a swastika existed thousands of years before the Nazis in several different cultures, yet Hitler’s ass managed to taint the entire thing. It goes to show how one very large act of evil can dye everything associated with it in it’s color.
4 out of 5.
Magneto #15 Review
Okay, last time we checked Magneto surrendered to SHIELD for some inexplicable reason. We find out that reason in Magneto #15. Here’s my review and recap.
The comic begins with him being walked into a Helicarrier, soon to be moved to a more permanent location because he’s too dangerous. When she calls him out on killing people in cold blood, he asks her how many mutants are murdered each day and she tells him that they aren’t her department before leaving out. We then get a flashback to Magneto visiting Charles and warning him about Cerebro falling into the wrong hands.
Two guards are left to watch him, with one being a callous asshole because Magneto crippled their colleague. I get why he did it, but he signed his own death warrant once the power dampener goes off and Magneto breaks free as Briar is being told they’ll have to debrief her. Magneto’s inner-monologue reveals he broke on-board because he was told they had a version of Cerebro by an Agent Rodriguez, who is helping him because her boyfriend had been a mutant who was killed by a hate-group.
He deletes every one of the catalogs the government has on mutants and decides to make a grand spectacle so they remember this day by unleashing clones of the Marauders. He finds Briar and explains he doesn’t want to completely destroy them because SHIELD still has its uses and he doesn’t want to go to war just yet. Someone didn’t tell the Sabertooth clone that, so Magneto puts him into the plane engine and turns him into a smoothie to kill him off.
Agent Rodriguez then tells him to surrender, keeping her head down so she’s still of use to him. He then warns the lady that this was a demonstration and if she comes to Genosha again, it will be worse the next time as the comic ends.
Okay, review time….
No complaints. In fact, this brightened my day give what happened in Uncanny X-Men #31. 5 out of 5.
Magneto #13 Review
After the events of Axis, we go to a look into a day in the life of his new assistant, Briar Raleigh. She gets out of a taxi and enters into what may as well have been a super-villain fan swap meet, with booths and stands set up to peddle goods around, like photos and videos of attacks. There she meets with one guy named Henry.
Like her, Henry bears a scar from when Magneto attacked Sacramento and he was a camera man filming it. He was part of a program named Mutants Among Us and, to keep a long story short, he loses his eye in the process. It’s then some of the other girls come up and are willing to tell her the story of how they got their scars if she tells them how she got her leg brace.
The story they tell if obviously fake, but she gives them a DVD that tells how she got her leg brace. She thinks its fine since they all are connected thinking Magneto hurt them some way, even if self-inflicted. It’s then that those annoying agents of SHIELD show up and ask her Magneto is.
Magneto, as it turns out, is wandering around the ruins of Genosha as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
This comic was more filler than I would have liked. But it was a somewhat unique look into the lives of those who were touched by Magneto….
I’ll call it a 3 out of 5.
Magneto #11 Review
Okay, Magneto is involved in the whole Axis event and despite me not covering the main event I will chip in with my review of issue #11 of his solo series! Read below for more!
The comic opens with Mags thinking how heroes rise during the worst of times and he may have been responsible for several coming into creation, but that doesn’t matter now that they are dropping like flies again Red Onslaught and the two Adamantium Sentinels that he picked up courtesy of Tony Stark. They’re picking off heroes, so Mags is needed to step up. Rogue tries to backtrack on what she said about him being no better than the Red Skull for killing him now that they need him, which doesn’t do wonders for her image since she just compared him to one of the most evil men in Marvel, but he pretty much sees through it and goes to help anyway.
He gets shot in the back and then feels guilty since the original Onslaught was born from his own hatred and rage and killing the skull set it free once more. So he’s afraid that if he kills it then something worse would come about. So he runs away from the fight and back to Raleigh, wondering that when he’s dead and gone will his legacy be all the bad things he’s done.
I know he seems a bit whiny, but he makes a point. For all he’s done his people, mutants, are still suffering and he’s unleashed hell on the world. I don’t blame him for that since, like Raleigh said, he couldn’t have expected that and the skull was a powerful telepath who egged him on. He had it coming.
Still Raleigh decides tough love is in order and pulls up all the bad things he’s one both before and after his power loss and she doesn’t hold back. But she shows him he also saved someone, using his anger. It’s hollow, but it shows that not everything he’s done has been completely bad and the mutant race is better off because of him, not the things he’s done.
Mags takes the advice to heart and goes on a little trip around the world, recruiting Mystique and Sabertooth, Carnage, Absorbing Man, Hobgoblin, Loki, Doom, and Enchantress. Deadpool finds him though. They all team-up to take on the Red Onslaught since heroes just aren’t cutting it as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
Once more we got a look into Magneto’s head and Mags recruits everyone through different means. Mystique and Sabertooth via their loyalty to their race, Hobgoblin by force, Doom and Loki since they see him as equals and have had fair dealings, Absorbing Man by telling him to do something with his life, and so on. I’m getting Forever Evil vibes from this and I loved that DC event.
5 out of 5.
Magneto #8 Review
It’s time to put an end to the MGH hunt in Magneto #8. Read my review of how he does so with surprisingly little bloodshed.
The comic begins with our useless agents of SHIELD coming to the site of where the Predator X remains are. Turns out they’ve managed to piece together what happened pretty well and they even manage to get a computer that the master of magnetism trashed working again. Because of this they claim they know exactly where he’s heading.
Magneto himself is venturing into a ghost town, noting that like any living thing it can die. But it’s in this town where the ones who’ve earned his ire are holed up and making MGH. The men shoot up instantly with the stuff when he walks through the front door and gain powers, but he claims he only wants to talk. They don’t believe him, which is smart, but rather than simply ganging up on him they reveal they admire mutants and don’t hurt them since the ones they get are already dead.
He wants it to stop, but it’s a very good business and he doesn’t think that Mags can take them down because he’s lost his powers. Mags knows he’s goading him, but he’s also right. Still, he notes that the difference between someone who’s a real mutant and a MGH-user is that they haven’t been persecuted and think they’re immortal just as SHIELD busts in and starts shooting with rounds meant to kill Mags, who he notes only shoot because they look like mutants at the time.
The head of the operation tries to run with his cook, but Magneto puts a stop to that. The useless agents chasing him tells him to stand down, but he rightfully points out that if they did a better job of stopping this crap he wouldn’t need to keep doing what he’s doing. The agent ignores him and thinks he’s just a feeble old man hurting people to make himself relevant.
Magneto promptly states she doesn’t understand him and he doesn’t answer to her, before escaping with the MGH cook. He takes the cook to a lab that his new friend bought and tells him to perfect the MGH formula so he can regain all his lost powers as the comic ends.
Okay, review time.
What can I say, Mags is a man with more than one goal and this time he only personally killed one person. It’s clear he pretty much set it up so SHIELD would do the dirty work for him, and he got what he wanted without having to strain himself. That’s a master planner for you, folks.
The air was a little off at the end, but other than that it was a solid issue at 5 out of 5.
Magneto #7 Review
Magneto has more work to be done and this time he’s going overseas to do it in Magneto #7.
The comic starts with him in a cell in Hong Kong, having allowed himself to be captured by some douchebags in order to get the drop on who’s been kidnapping mutants off the streets according to Briar, who has a private jet to get him there. Like he said, most people don’t recognize him without the helmet. If they did, they wouldn’t have nabbed him of all people.
To his surprise, they have not only sentinel tech, but a creature called a predator x. This thing is covered in metal and hunts down mutants, but Magneto is more than his powers. He was defined by his experiences, and once the predator x gets some of his blood and establishes a psychic link, it got a full blast of them and ended up crippled long enough for him to shove a bone through its brain like a boss.
He then gives everyone else five minutes to clear out before he beats the hell out of the assholes setting up the fight, letting them have a taste of what the mutants they sentenced to death felt like. Passing two more predator x creatures, he comes to the holding cells with only two mutants left alive. The mutants reveal the bad guy sells those who can’t fight off, only for Magneto to learn he’s been making MGH from the captured mutants, which Mystique pulled on Dazzler up until recently.
He grabs the guy, gives him a shot of it in the eye, and then tosses him down to the two remaining predator x creatures so they can munch him as the comic ends.
Okay, review time…
A quick issue with Mags dishing out his brand of justice is always something I can respect. While it has ties to the plot of someone giving tech to people way above their means, it is somewhat skippable overall. Not that I would recommend it.
4 out of 5.
Magneto #5 Review
A short and late review is better than no review at all as I cover Magneto Issue #5.
The comic begins Magneto pondering that there was comfort in basic activities, living an ordinary life. But because he’s the Master of Magnetism he doesn’t find any comfort in it like the flock of sheep normal people are, merely that he’s wearing a mask at present and the people around him will become causalities once he takes it off. That’s why he likes small towns, less people die when he goes on the war path… at least that would be the case if he believed that he can be redeemed, but in truth it gives him a chance to recover away from prying eyes.
Except there’s one nosy lady who gets involved in his business and he corners her in an alleyway. She, Briar Raleigh, claims to be a friend who wants to help him and knows about his mountain base. Since she knows that eventually he’s going to go berserk on people again and it’s only a matter of time, she wants to keep him busy by giving him targets to go after that she knows he would want. She even knows his favorite Brandy, so she’s been stalking him for some time.
Briar reveals she has information on even the SHIELD Taskforce assembled to take him down and the Marauders. She tells him that she knows he’s going to war again, and she won’t stop him. She just wants to make sure that only the ones he’s targeting are the causalities, rather than innocent people like she was.
As the comic ends we get a flashback to the aftermath of one of Magneto’s rampages in what looks like Seattle, where Briar’s family was killed and her leg was damaged. He sees her as a shepard of the flock of people, and muses should he let her live.
Okay, review time…
So, like the other chapters we deal with the aftermath of Magneto’s rampages, only this time we have someone who was crippled by him. It’s interesting to see that Briar should hate this man with a passion, but instead she’s helping him out. She’s figured that he’s going to keep being who he is and the only thing she can do is to help minimize the number of people who have suffered for it by giving him a guiding hand.
She doesn’t like him, but it seems like she isn’t letting her personal feelings get in the way of something she deems important. And then she apparently has decent detective skills to get all that information, so she’s got my respect.
Despite lacking action, I give the issue a solid 5 out of 5.
Twilit Dreams Circle 