Morrison's Magneto: Success or Failure?

[dianakingston]

While randomly trawling the Internet, I stumbled onto a blogger who's been analyzing Grant Morrison's run on "New X-Men". I can't seem to find the link now, but what got my attention at the time was a side remark he made during a review of one of the earlier issues: he considers Morrison's Magneto to be the great failure of the run, for obvious

Comments

[dianakingston]

Don't be sorry, I love long posts. :)

I agree with pretty much all of your points here; as far as I know, Morrison was the first writer to treat mutants as a community, and to conceptualize mutation itself as having infinite variety. The swing back to tradition was unfortunate, but probably inevitable - after he left, there was no one with the backbone to keep his momentum going.

The Scott/Jean/Emma triangle turned out pretty well, because they all come out of it in both positive and negative lights. Jean's partly to blame for the disintegration of her marriage (especially since she'd been dragging the Logan thing out for decades), but she gives Scott up to save the future. Emma only wants to shake things up at first, and ends up falling in love with Scott. And Scott, the big decision-maker, has this particular choice taken out of his hands - at the end of "Planet X", Scott tells Emma that he's made up his mind, but we never find out what he decided.

With regards to villains, as I said in an above post, I do feel there's something artificial about "taming" the bad guys when they get popular. You mention Doctor Doom, and that's really the perfect example: it wasn't until he became Marvel's premiere villain that we were suddenly finding out about his poor mommy, and that his people loved him, etc. Now, on the one hand, Morrison does seem to be rejecting that school of thought entirely and saying "No, this man is evil, and you can understand him but don't you dare sympathize with him", but I think there's something more at work here. I think that "Planet X" is Magneto's ideology taken to its logical conclusion, at least from Morrison's point of view: even at the height of his popularity/antiheroism, Erik Lehnsherr still espoused beliefs that, when put into practice, would've looked very much like Morrison's penultimate arc. In fact, it might be fair to say that the only reason "Planet X" is so shocking is because Magneto never came that close before. For all we know, this is exactly what the character would have done under Claremont, under Lobdell, under any writer who could've had the clout to put the man within a heartbeat of victory.

[ian_karkull]

Thanks for the positive reply, a reasobale debate is always enjoyable, even more so as those tend to get out of hand pretty quickly when it comes to comic book fandom. At the very least this topic got me thinking, and I went through the trouble of digging into my longboxes and rereading the last two story arcs of Morrisons New X-Men and stumbled across something astounding that I had previously overlooked/forgotten, just like everybody else apparently, as I've never heard it being mentioned in this debate before:

Morrisons last arc, "Here comes tomorrow". In case you need to refresh your memory: The story takes place in a dystopian alternate future timeline (typical X-Men trope), roughly 150 yrs after the end of Planet X, when, following Jean's demise, Cyclops disbands the X-Men against Emma's protests. Most of the world has been annihilated by a prolonged global "gene" war between scattered mutant and human populations on the one side and the nation of Transatlantis on the other. Transatlantis' military forces are consist of thousands up on thousands of artificially grown Nightcrawler clones (Crawlers), that have additional mutant traits (such as Cyclops force beam) spliced into their DNA. They are lead by the "Great Beast", who, as the name suggests, is none other than our Dr. McCoy of the X-Men, now with snow white fur. His objectives: 1.) Eradicate all of mutantkind and 2.) obtain the Phoenix egg, from which Jean will eventually be reborn as the "Prime Phoenix of the Crown". Long story short, his troops collect the egg from the Institute (home of the few surviving mutants of "Megamerica" and base for the last few X-Men) and after successfully hatching the egg, tells Jean his "origin" of sorts: Hank, now referring to himself as "Sublime" (does that ring a bell?) states that after Jeans death and Scotts departure, Xavier's dream began to fall apart and that he tried to hold it together singlehandedly, as well as devising a cure against mankinds demise, but eventually succumbed to stress and, as a form of relief, took the mutant performance enhancing drug "Kick", which had 150yrs earlier driven both Quentin Quire and Magneto into insanity. As it turns out, Kick is not a synthetic, but rather a highly evolved, sentient bacteria colony from outer space, that had crashed on earth billions of years earlier, just when the first indigineous lifeforms began to form (recapping Morrison plots sure is weird sometimes.. *g*) These bacteria viewed themselves as the pinnacle of genetic perfection, a microscopic master race, if you will. They called themselves.. wait for it.. the Sublime. For millions of years they have lain dormant within all biological organisms, mocking them for their imperfection, deeming themselves the hidden masters of the world, until the X-gene began to emerge. This mutation was a random factor they could not hope to control or predict and thus, they began to fear it and sought to cleanse Earth from it. As a result, they began to subtly influence humans and mutants alike, in order to trigger an all out interspecies war, that would eliminate the threat. From the very start of Morrisons run, the Sublime have been influencing all major story arcs. The Leader of the "Third Species Movement"? A certain Mr. Sublime. The Mastermind behind the Weapon Plus program? Curiously named Dr. Sublime. The main ingredient in Kick? Sublime bacteria colonies. Everything that has happened up until this very moment is has been caused by the millenia long efforts of ethnic cleansing, triggered by sentient alien bacteria, which is very reminiscent of many long-term Morrison projects, such as his run on JLA or the Invisibles. And it affects Magneto in a very special way:

[ian_karkull]

...During the entire Planet X storyline, he had been under the constant influence of Kick and therefore, a host to the Sublime bacteria, which have been subtly manipulating his actions. Upon rereading Magneto's dialogue and actions in Planet X, it became apparent to me (even without this knowledge), that he had gone insane. His motives and actions had stayed the same in principle, yet there was so much less reason, so much less careful planning behind it than usual. All he did was causing constant mayhem and slaughter on a grand scale, which would have inevitable lead to an all out war between himself (and by extension, all Mutantkind) and the US government, which is exactly what the Sublime had secretly planned all along. This would by no means fully redeem him from his initial motives (which are still very elitist and genocidal in nature, the Sublime only forced them to their logiacl, if extremely violent conclusions), it does, in hindsight, take the subject matter somewhat out of his hands, since he had been acting "under the influence" of an extremely hateful third party. There is an underlying dualism between Magneto's originally benevolent and idealistic motives (equality, an end to prosecution) and the actions he ultimately derives from them (violent agression, genocide) that becomes more and more obvious, as Planet X progresses. Towards the end, he seems to develop a multiple personality disorder, as he hallucinates that the Xorn helmet is talking to him, mocking him for his unreasonable, counterproductive behaviour. In this "interior monologue", the helmet takes the role of his conscience, stating that the Xorn persona he had been forced to exhibit for so long actually is a part of his very own being, the idealistic core beliefs of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation which Magneto secretly shares, yet is too proud and too wounded to admit and thus derives a contradictory course of action from. It is this fundamental flaw of pride and dishonesty that makes it so easy for the Sublime to manipulate him and drive him towards their ultimate goal, without him ever realizing it. And thus it is not a similarily violent and dismissive approach that defeats him, but rather the superior reasoning and compassion of the X-Men (embodied in Beak, Angel, Jean and the Professor himself, all of which are willing to give their life -rather than taking another's- for their a higher cause) that defeat him. Magneto, still defiant and unrelenting in the face of defeat, rather chooses death at Wolverine's hands than to admit that his actions where indeed wrong, which makes him the weaker of both parties. (...)

[ian_karkull]

That being said, the initial statement of Planet X still remains it's validity. Magneto's beliefs, if taken to their full, logical consequences are indeed an elitist, utterly racist creed and his behaviour in Planet X is merely reflecting this without the usual sympathetic sugar-coating. From his very first apperance in the X-comics, it is his firm belief, that, in order for *his people* to survive, those who are not like him have to perish. Had it not been for the moral and intellectual censorship that generally overshadows comic book writing, Magneto would have tried something like this far sooner than after 40yrs of publication history, as you've correctly pointed out. In fact, I believe that Morrison shares roughly the same views on the character as we do, since the reversal of the magnetic fields is indeed a plan that Magneto had devised about five years (in real time) earlier in an arc of (Uncanny, I believe) X-Men, which lead to his rulership over Genosha. Planet X rejects the idea that a threat of global genocide should be rewarded in any way and thus, a second attempt leads to his fair and just punishment, death. Other than that, it's of interesting note that Magneto, an alleged Holocaust survivor, would resort to exactly the same methods as his former torturors, as soon as he found himself in a position of power, that allowed him to take the whip into his own hands and administer the same, cruel, inhuman punishments, based on the same, prejudiced notions of racial superiority as he had had to endure. There is something to be learned about the nature of power and it's influence on the human condition from that story. Even though Magneto knows very well of the pain and suffering that come from assuming superiority about your fellow man/woman, he does not shy away from it once he reaches that level. Indeed the mechanisms with which he seeks to assume control are the very same he would have condemmed as a young boy (falsifying information, propaganda/midn control, public execution of (political) antagonists, ethnic cleansing). Therein lies the ironyof this character. For all he had to suffer from those phenomena, he can not see beyond his personal ("righteous") fury and recognize the pattern repeating itself. In the end, he is no better than the Nazis that executed his family or those that created the Sentinels to hunt him and his people down, since he, given the chance, would just act in the very same way. And for that, he deserves no pity. His doctrine, as Xavier points out, is one of ignorance and hatred and thus has no place in a (hopefully) enlightened future, the days of bloodthirsty conquerors such as him belong firmly into the past, for if mankind, in all it's beautiful variations is to evolve, it has to overcome those barriers first (this is a trope that is often repeated in Morrisons stories, like Invisibles or DC One Million and one of the reasons why I adore his writing).

[dianakingston]

Well, I can understand why Morrison's run is so controversial: for better or worse, it was Chris Claremont's vision that ran the X-Men for the better part of two decades. Ironically, for a book strongly tied to the themes of change and evolution, every writer that came after Claremont worked within his stylistic context. There had always been just the one way of telling X-Men stories, so Morrison's decision to not follow those rules was a jarring change. If it had been the process of gradual development, that'd be one thing, but Morrison pretty much dropped out of the sky and turned things on their head.

Re: Magneto and Sublime, I hadn't actually forgotten about that, but I've always been undecided when it comes to interpreting that subplot. I mean, yes, it becomes clear by the end that Sublime has been responsible for everything - he supplied Cassandra Nova with the Nanosentinels (and perhaps even gave her a body to begin with), he created the U-Men, he sent Kid Omega off the rails, he corrupted the Special Class, etc. But "Here Comes Tomorrow" is really the only case where Sublime is shown to actually possess someone, as opposed to just influencing them - so the question becomes, who destroyed New York in "Planet X"? Was it Magneto being influenced by Sublime (and manifesting his own subconscious conscience as Xorn), or was it - as Dino Pollard of ComiXtreme suggests - Sublime performing as Magneto? Pollard mentions that there's an unquestionable Silver Age streak to Magneto's characterization; is this evidence of Sublime miscalculating, and playing the role of Magneto as though he truly were a Silver Age villain with cliche sayings and plans for world domination? (And, perhaps, this is the reason why no one recognizes Magneto, not the crowds and not the X-Men.) Or does Sublime's influence unlock an aspect of Magneto that had always been there? I think it can be read either way, but it's an interesting ambiguity in its own right. And one of my favorite lines in "Planet X" is "I am your inner star, Erik. I am the conscience you can never silence. I will never let you be." :)

But of course, whether it's one or the other, it makes no difference - Magneto had to die. Not just as a way of becoming a symbol again, but because as you say, he had become a freakish mirror of the monsters that destroyed his own family. Once the Holocaust context really came into play, the justifications for Magneto's actions were that he was desperate to prevent another genocide (which he felt was inevitable)... the irony being that he couldn't see any other way but to do just that, wipe out a species (or at the very least oppress them as harshly as he could).

As an aside, it's interesting that Magneto's death more-or-less coincided with the deaths of Doctor Doom (Waid's "Fantastic Four") and Red Skull (Brubaker's "Captain America"), and with the final (at the time) fall of the Kingpin (Bendis' "Daredevil"). While it's never been explicitly confirmed or denied, there seemed to be an unspoken policy at the time that the old-school villains, the ones who came up again and again and again, were to be set aside at long last. It says a lot about how far ahead Marvel was looking in those days... and the resurrection of each of those villains says more about how many steps back the company has taken since the current regime came to power.