X-MEN #25: Dreams Fade (Fatal Attractions)

Magneto vs. Xavier for the last time!

Originally Published October 1993

In response to Magneto's most recent fit of pique, the governments of the world -- that is the U.S. President and the President of the newly democratic Russian Federation -- have decided they have no choice but to react by protecting themselves with a compliacted doohickey that surrounds the entire planet with lasers.

Electromagnetic? Are we sure that's the way to go on this one?

The very idea of the people of Earth putting up some kind of defense against Magneto comes across, to him, as an act of aggression. Like professional wrestler C.M. Punk, Magneto can tolerate absolutely no resistance to his will and immediately sets about retaliating by escalating the situation.  

He destroys the array, resulting in a destructive and deadly worldwide fashashash...

...creating an electromagnetic pulse that plunges the world into darkness and gives us cameos from the Fantastic Four, Excalibur and Sunfire just to sell just how global the effect is.

Hey Kurt, shouldn't you be invisible right now?

In Westchester, Beast and Banshee get the mansion's power back online thanks to that always-helpful Shi'ar tech they have. The Professor debriefs the team on how this spectacularly awful plan seems to have backfired and made Magneto even madder.

We are told that hundreds or maybe thousands are dead, meaning Magneto is now a mass murderer of the highest order. It's time for the X-Men to stop kidding around.

Soon after, some of the original X-Men -- Cyclops, Jean and Beast -- are standing around and, as they are wont to do, can't help but think about how times have changed, and things have gotten so complex and dark the longer they do this. It's not like the old days when they used to go up against clowns like the Vanisher and Unus who never really hurt anybody and it was all good times. I mean sure, Charles mind-wiped the Vanisher with hardly any provocation and, Magneto once commandeered United States missiles and later used his powers to strongarm an entire island nation imder his bootheel and the team were also once the only thing standing between Earth and nuclear annihilation, but the colors were a lot more vibrant back then so things must have been easier.

Nevertheless, they take a moment to reflect on their supposedly fallen ideals, but Charles shows up to tell him he has found a new way.

That's right, when Charles straps on his leg braces, it's time for an Xavier ass-kicking.

The Professor plans to lead the strike force himself, because what he plans is going to require the utmost mental power. Never mind the fact that using his walking apparatus is taking up a huge portion of his telepathic abilities -- even at half-power Charles is more mutant than you could ever hope to handle. He dismisses Scott's not-totally-inaccurate assessment of Charles' field prowess (Or lack thereof.)

He introduces his plan, which requires a specially-built team of mutants with particular skills:

You need stealth and telepathy but you're not sending either of the two psychic ninjas you've got standing around claiming to be Psylocke? Really?

Scott notes that since this mission will be taking the team to an enclosed space station, all them mutants with blasty powers, save for sneaky sneakster Gambit, have been left out. But Wolverine, whom Cyclops specifically said he would never send after Magneto, is in. Let's see how that goes for them.

I actually like the idea of purpose-building a team of mutants for a particular mission rather than sticking with the established Blue and Gold rosters, but it's rare that they can come up with a proper justification for it. 

Xavier then reveals to his former students his big plan to end the conflict with Magneto once and for all, which they find shocking and extreme. We, however, are not privy to the specifics, which more or less guarantees it will be successful.

As the heroes get into their toyetic new space suits, we pause for one more round of gazing at our navels and building of the moment.

They teleport aboard Avalon, and once again Xavier takes care to note that Magneto clearly stole a bunch of Shi'ar tech while he was acting as Headmaster at Xavier's school. I love this idea of Magneto resigning as Headmaster but stuffing as much random tech as he could into his luggage before he went In case it ever came in handy (and why wouldn't it?) They keep pushing this narrative to, I guess, discredit the idea that Magneto was ever good and also to explain why he has so much fabulously advanced technology, which nobody except a person writing a comic book would probably think to care about. (Magneto once had his own asteroid base without any allegedly stolen tech at all.)

The plan gets off to a good start, with the X-Men being undetected thanks to some mysterious "inside help" -- perhaps from former Xavier student Amelia Voght or one of the Kleinstock brothers, who knows. They initiate a teleport sequence to take the Acolytes off the board and prepare to attach Magneto when he isn't looking--

Psych! Magneto is always looking!

The fight is on. Wolverin--attcks and -- who could predict this -- is sent hurtling across the room by his magnet-friendly skeleton. While Gambit throws some cards at the villain, Xavier and Jean link up to execute the main part of the plan: attack Magneto's mind.

Magneto lashes out, saying he wants to destroy the humans because they want to kill mutants, like the Nazis. Gambit retaliates by saying if you want to kill all the humans, maybe you're the Nazi. This whole thing starts to feel suspiciously like a social media exchange in the present-day.

In all the chaos, Quicksilver makes his stand -- as a former follower of Magneto (albeit a reluctant and frequently insubordinate one) -- and offspring of Magneto, he can't abide the idea of Magneto's worldview coming to pass. Magneto's thoughts of Quicksilver undermining him was, "Well, it was nice knowing you, but I guess I have to kill my own son."

Wolverine intercedes, wounding Magneto, but, um, about that...

And thus, in an utterly gruesome display of power, Magneto extracts Wolverine's metal skeleton through his skin, taking the presumed effect of his powers on Logan to its logical and extreme conclusion.

For Charles, that's a major party foul. With some final words about how he does what he does in the name of peace and harmony, he unleashes the full might of his telepathic powers...

Magneto falls, and Charles too, exhausted, as the remaining X-Men wonder what exactly they've just seen.

With Jean using her powers to maintain telekinetic and telepathic triage on Wolverine, there is little to do but get away. Unfortunately, the battle has knocked out the teleporters. Colossus arrives -- having not been sidelined in any way, but remained off the battlefield -- and says he has called for the Blackbird.

It was he who had helped mask the X-Men's presence on Avalon, surprise surprise, but that doesn't mean he's ready to rejoin the team. He has decided it will be his job to care for Magneto in his vegetative state. Ok then.

With that, the X-Men go wait for their ride home.

Further Thoughts:

"Hey, did you ever notice how one of the X-Men's biggest enemies is Magneto, and one of their biggest heroes is Wolverine, who has metal bones? Well, what if Magneto got, like, super mad at Wolverine, and like, ripped out his bones?"

"Shit, yeah! And then Xavier had no choice but to like... erase Magneto's mind!"

"Holy shit! That'd be crazy!"

I have to believe they came up with this idea and realized that it would make an incredible milestone to mark the then-upcoming 30th anniversary of the X-Men. And reading the previous issue of Uncanny followed by this one certainly feels like a massive moment, a blockbuster of epic proportions, something unprecedented and memorable. Something that was worth charging $3.50 USD for. 

This is a worthy way to celebrate an anniversary: to shock readers, to introduce a massive change to the status quo, and to put the X-Men's very core beliefs on the line against their most iconic antagonist. For this iteration of the X-Men, this is a huge peak: a stylish blockbuster that meaningfully caps off -- for now at least -- the longest-running antagonist of the series.

This issue is dedicated, in part, to Chris Claremont: in honor of the X-Men's 30th anniversary, it's only fitting to acknowledge the man who guided them for more than half of that time. Which is funny because, just over a decade and 150 issues ago, Chris Claremont began the process of redeeming Magneto, introducing his tragic backstory, his ideological association with Xavier, and ultimately his place guiding the next generation of adherents to Charles' dream of human-mutant coexistence. This has almost nothing to do with Claremont's vision of the Magneto or the X-Men.

But that's not fun. People don't want thoughtful, reformed Magneto, they want that maniac in the purple cape!

As I noted before, this is something of an overcorrection. Although many references are made to Magneto's tragic past, none are meant to excuse his behavior and in some ways it works to condemn him, that he let life make him so hard and unyielding. Magneto is now more bloodthirsty and prone to retaliation than he's ever been. And the crimes are certainly amped up in scale: we spent years working out the ramifications of sinking one submarine in Uncanny X-Men #150, and now we are told that Magneto has killed hundreds or thousands of largely civilians. There's no coming back from that. It's a lot.

So that's the push-pull of Magneto and the X-Men. I know that for modern audiences, there's a huge attraction to the "Magneto was right" version of the character: the extremist revolutionary with the tragic backstory who just happens to find himself on the wrong side of Homo Sapiens society. This is not that. The people writing X-Men in 1993 want you to see Magneto as a tyrant who is fully in the wrong, too far gone to be reformed, who must be dealt with in an irrevocable way. Whether you buy in or not, this is the story they're telling.  

Even though Magneto has become a somewhat uncomplicated villain, the X-Men's moral conflict here is worthwhile: dare they sink to this level, even to stop an ultimate threat? Have they crossed a line, or have they done what's right? I gripe about all the "it used to be so much simpler back then" but in a sense it's true, as Xavier would mind-wipe the Vanisher and nobody would think "Holy shit, that was a huge abuse of power" -- but that's more about how the X-Men are depicted than about a real change in their situation. What I'm saying is, at least we're acknowledging the moral complications in the X-Men's existence and their fight against their evil mutant brothers, here in this monumental issue. In that way, they honor the X-Men's 30 years, and set up many more to come.