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

[likeadeuce]

Scott Summers has a history of infidelity: he dated Colleen Wing when Jean was presumed dead (Claremont), took off with Lee Forrester when Jean really was dead (Claremont again), married Madelyne (still Claremont)

I know you're partly kidding (Achmed!) but I don't think that dating other people when you believe your significant other to be dead is good evidence of a history of infidelity. You can argue that the Colleen thing happened really fast, and that Maddy was just WEIRD with the looking like Jean, but Scott/Lee strikes me as the closest the guy ever got to an actual healthy relationship.

And I haven't read the Psylocke stuff, but I was under the impression nothing actually happened between them? (though the psychic aspect does seem to foreshadow Emma.)

[hdefined]

I agree with this.

When Morrison started the Cyclops/Emma stuff, it had come right off the heels of Joe Casey's first Uncanny issue - the one where Wolverine and Jean made out because, when facing a young new uncontrollable mutant, they feared they were going to die and hoped to go out hot and sticky.

Methinks it was just Marvel/Joe Quesada trying to get a rise out of readers by creating controversy. I dropped the book after the Imperial arc.

[likeadeuce]

Well, I like that issue. *is easy*

But I haven't read the whole Uncanny storyline, mostly only "New" from that period, so I don't know how it was resolved or how it tied into Morrison's arc -- his handling of Jean/Logan was one thing I did like. But the third Morrison trade basically left me with psychic scars, so I think you stopped in the right place.

[dianakingston]

That wasn't new, though - Jean/Logan had been going on for ages, all the way back to pre-Dark Phoenix. Actually, there's an amusing anecdote where every time Marvel published a story that had them getting together, the universe exploded ("Age of Apocalypse", "What If Phoenix Loved Wolverine", etc

[likeadeuce]

And, umm, I really don't care about comicsvere Magneto at all, never have, which is why I didn't comment on the other part of the post.

[hdefined]

I didn't read Planet X, so I can't really comment on whether or not it was effective, but they better quit it with the Magneto-wants-world-domination stories. I really liked Mags in the '90s X-Men animated series, second season, because it put him in the uncomfortable role of an ally and made him likable despite his differences.

[dianakingston]

Here's the thing, though (and I'll probably go into greater detail with Ian's post below): there's something artificial about Magneto after a certain point in Claremont's run. What happens with comic book villains, more often than not, is that they get popular, and their popularity somehow translates into a mitigation of their villainy. Think of how Doctor Doom went from being a psychotic despot to just misunderstood, and really, he's a man of honor even though he's still fixated on killing his college roommate on the off-chance that maybe said roommate was right about his exploding Heavenphone.

Venom going anti-hero in the '90s is another example.

Magneto's a little more complicated, because Claremont made him a sympathetic character without actually having him repent at first. It was, I believe, #150 again, where his backstory as a Holocaust survivor is revealed while he's launching another worldwide offensive. And even when he surrenders to the X-Men after almost killing Kitty Pryde, he basically tells them "I can't stop", he

[prodigal]

Amen!

Everything about Morrison's run on X-Men that I disliked at the time he was writing it (except for Quitely's art), I wound up loving once I got the chance to read it in one stretch. I believe it was Warren Ellis who said that comics should be full of mad, beautiful ideas - well, Morrison's ideas were as mad, and as beautiful, as anything Marvel put out in the years since.

[ian_karkull]

Actually, I felt that Morrison has been the only (or perhaps one of the few) writer(s) who was clearly able to grasp the core concept of the X-Men more than anyone else. Turning Xavier's back into a school dedicated to prepare the next step in the evolution of mankind (rather than a generic super-hero team that had all sorts of adventures but ultimatetly served no purpose beyond that) fullfilled my own personal version of Xaviers "dream" than any battle against the Shi'ar Royal Guard (for example) ever could. The Marvel U doesn't need the X-Men to defend the world against super-powered, terrorist maniacs or otherworldy conquerors (thats what the Avengers and the FF are for), but it needs the X-Men to teach them a broader scope of vision, a perspective of the future, in which those who are considered freakish and outlandish by current social standards could peacefully coexist with those that are considered the norm. That is the actual appeal of the X-Men, not the perpetual attacks by killer robots and would-be messiahs from ages long