X-MEN #87: No Surrender!

The final clash between Magneto and Joseph!

Originally Published April 1999 

We begin with a woman purporting to be Trish Tilby, reporting live on air with CBNC to cover the end of civilization as we know it, as Magneto has seized control of the Earth's valuable magnetosphere. Rumor has it he's going to rename it after himself -- the Eriksphere.

"What does Trish look like again?" "Woman. Blazer. Desk." 

Little does our intrepid reporter realize it's not that simple -- boy, is it ever -- as Magneto and his de-aged, transporter-pattern bio-replication person Joseph are currently duking it out for magnetic supremacy, throwing massive quantities of purple at each other as we speak.

For those of you wondering about the star of the show -- Astra -- she's watching on, titillated at the prospect of defeating Magneto once and for all and co-opting his world domination schemes for her own. It's a simple matter of killing one of the most famously un-killable and powerful mutants on Earth and replacing him with his younger, sexier, doppelganger. 

And sure, said doppelganger hates Astra, but she's banking pretty hard that he's enough of a mama's boy to come to heel.

At this time, our special guests the X-Men arrive in their stolen borrowed commandeered Magneto-proof Acolyte ship. Charles is surprised and dismayed to sense the presence of Astra, as we all are.

Wolverine, however, is more focused on Magneto himself, still holding a grudge about the Master of Magnetism using his magnet-mastery to rip the metal right out of his bones and thus reducing his marketability by 40%... unless an artist happens to forget that the claws are made of bone now.

Ahem

The X-Men split into three mini-squads to each deal with Astra, Magneto and Joseph. Astra reveals that she knows Kurt from when he was a baby, because perhaps adding one more Cool Mysterious Deep Lore Thing will cause this character to turn the corner and become enjoyable.

Magneto, meanwhile, resists Rogue's appeal, being one of the only people on Earth capable of leaving Uncanny X-Men #274 in the past.

Wolverine is up next, slashing away with his non-metallic claws and insinuating that Magneto is just jealous because Joseph still has the rest of his life ahead of him (unlike Magneto, who canonically has the body of an ancient 30-year-old man.)

Meanwhile, Joseph, free from Astra's influence (although, are we ever truly free of our parents' influence?) is working to repair the magnetosphere. It's a big job, one that threatens to consume Joseph's entire being. Charles works to ground Joseph's mind and body telepathically while he initiates this grueling process, which also incorporates Storm's lightning and Colossus' steel body. It's nice that everyone gets to participate.

The brawl continues, including one of the biggest "super nuh-uh"/"magnetism is magic" moves I've ever seen in 35 years of recapping this comic, and think of the ground that covers.

Joseph comes to the realization that maybe he should just be the magnetosphere.

Meanwhile down at the UN, word gets around that the magnetosphere is being repaired and Magneto is being thwarted as we speak, so maybe Dr. Huxley's crazy secret plan isn't necessary!

Then again...

And so, against Charles' protests, Joseph -- whose body is aging from "romance cover model" to "ancient hippie" right before our eyes -- gives in and becomes the live-giving magnetic force of all Earth, leaving a few choice words about he and Magneto coming to a compromise instead of always trying to kill each other.

 

Left in the rubble and dust of Magneto's schemes, Astra escapes, sure to return to menace the X-Men again and again for many years.

No. Please. Don't go.

The Magneto War comes to a standstill. Can they turn Magneto into the authorities? Would that accomplish anything? Or should they kill him, as Wolverine prefers?

Rogue stops him, either because the X-Men don't kill, or because death has never stopped Magneto before, or because she still kind of has a thing for him even in megalomaniac mode.

Some women like bad boys. She likes evil ones.

The conflict is interrupted when Dr. Huxley arrives with Ambassador Ferris in the UN's flying car (??). Her somewhat wild proposal: invite Magneto to become the sovereign of his own country, specifically the wartorn nation of Genosha.

This seems like a natural outcome, except there's no word on whether the people of Genosha -- particularly the non-mutant ones -- want this, or what they're supposed to do if not (kick rocks I suppose.) I guess they figured, Magneto's always trying to rule the world, why not give him a slice of it and see how he does.

Wolverine objects and resumes his attempted murder, but Charles tele-roofies him.

And thus it ends.

Further Thoughts:

It was not very pretty in getting there, but this issue had exactly two things to accomplish and stuck the landing on both: resolve the existence of Joseph once and for all, and establish the new paradigm with Magneto as the leader of Genosha.

In Joseph, one of those things that began as an intriguing mystery -- is he Magneto, and if not, what is he and how did he come to be? -- hung around a bit too long, into its third creative regime before finally reaching resolution. I may not be the biggest supporter of Astra as New Character of the Year, but she was a blunt instrument that served a purpose: explain the origin of Joseph, give him some kind of purpose, and tie him into the returning Authentic Magneto. Messy, and with a bit more Forced Pizzazz than I would have liked, but effective. It also gave him something to do, where he could use his Good Magneto powers to counteract the Bad Magneto Plan and sacrifice his life (No, stop, there's gotta be another way...) to save Earth.

Was it possible to care about something even the characters were calling out as the same-old-same-old Magneto plot? I think not. It basically amounted to Magneto standing in his big energizer menacing the Earth, humans hemming and hawing about it from afar, and the X-Men too preoccupied to get into the story until the last, leaving Astra as the straw the stirred the drink. As.a.four-parter in sum total, this is X-Men by rote, a last-minute homework assignment, but it got us where we need to go.

So far as that goes, I think Davis and Nicieza did fine with the finale, injecting the personal issue with Wolverine, the Rogue-Gambit-Joseph/Magneto stuff, the endless cycle of mutant violence, and the calm-after-the-storm as Charles and Magnus come face to face for the first time since X-Men #25 all those years ago. The comic wasn't great but it was made by people who know what they're doing, and I appreciate that.

I'm not going to get into the ickiness of colonialism, forced relocation, and statecraft. Obviously there are tons of horrifying implications of just giving someone a country and I'm not expecting the X-Men comics of 1999 to cover this topic with nuance and sensitivity, but in the world of comics you can sweep that under the rug for the sake of a good story or even an okay one. Magneto finally getting a chance to govern -- having effectively terrorized and threatened the world into submission -- is a premise the comics haven't been able to touch yet, ripe with possibilities, the kind of Big Idea that powered the best parts of the Claremont Run. That excites me, and I hope it even somewhat lives up to its potential before inevitably being undone by... well, we'll get there when we get there.