salarta

Hello. I read a thing. I had thoughts about the thing. It’s time to talk about the thing. In-depth Polaris thoughts to come later.

Spoilers included in the cut below that talks about the thing.

This was a poignant issue for Magneto, and if the character at his end has to be summed up in a single issue, this does it extremely well. There are other ways that I think could have been better, but that potential is constrained by the necessities of tying it into Secret Wars and adhering to editorial and executive mandate, which includes not allowing Wanda and Pietro to be Magneto’s kids anymore. I’d say Bunn did great under the circumstances he finds himself in.

I started reading Magneto with Magneto #1, and to be honest, I did so entirely because I hoped Lorna would be on it some day – which she was, and it was good. But there are some things I’ve only recently noticed about how the Magneto solo worked out, where it went, and there’s no better time to talk about that than at the end.

First, I noticed the book’s tone got darker and grittier as time went on. There was always an element of that, but I get the feeling Bunn started to get sucked into feeling like he had to make it darker and more edgy the longer he wrote.

Which isn’t inherently a bad thing at all, but we have things like his early run-ins with the X-Men getting written as more brutal than they originally were here in Magneto #21, which feels more like it’s in service to maintaining the darkness built up in the book’s tone than anything else.

You can also see this in how in-universe Magneto fans are portrayed as the book goes on. In the very, very beginning, the fans of Magneto we saw were merely naive and innocent, as we saw with the kid wearing the Magneto Was Right shirt. But as the book progressed, Magneto’s fans became more macabre and gruesome, from making up stories about Magneto terrorizing them as badges of honor to priding themselves in disfigurements he gave them. Magneto’s fans in the Marvel universe had to be made more disturbed as the solo went on in numbers.

It doesn’t come out of the blue, it’s very gradual and deliberate. It raises a lot of food for thought too, especially in the nature of fandom and cults of personality. How do you define fandom? Is there such a thing as going too far with your fandom? How far might you go to justify your obsession with something toxic, something that only hurts you as a person?

These are all interesting questions, and they’re worth asking.

But, it’s also what made the bystanders talking and acting creepy about Magneto from Magneto #18 – #21 feel so awkward to read. And if I’m being honest, I wonder if that creepy behavior might have been too much for most readers.

Also, toward the VERY end (I mean Magneto #19), the behavior of other characters started to seem like they were tweaked to be more in Magneto’s favor at their own expense. We saw this with Sugar Man when he brought metal weapons to a meeting with Magneto, and with Polaris not really being able to predict that Magneto might try to siphon power from her… even though she clearly knows he’s in the kind of self-sacrificial state of mind that would result in him wanting to take the entire burden on himself.

Lastly, specifically when it comes to this last arc, I feel doing constant flashbacks in the middle of the action broke the flow. The Sentinels showing up at the end of Magneto #18, for example, is something that feels like it should’ve happened within the first few pages.

Flashbacks are useful, but in this case, they had the effect of making the present-day action look too uneventful. Present-day action can be summed up as “Magneto fought Sentinels, a few people were saved, and then Magneto died.” It doesn’t help that readers already knew Magneto would fail, so there was no real stake in reading the solo for most people unless there was some shocking and unexpected development – which didn’t happen.

A lot of what I said above might look negative, but it’s not. The Magneto solo is still good. It’s definitely worth reading. But it’s my opinion that if you see something, you should point it out, and it’s an injustice not to do so. Also, some things that look like flaws to me might not be flaws at all. Maybe a different reader thinks they’re excellent. Maybe they were intentional, and served a purpose I don’t quite see. That’s the nature of fiction.

I was originally going to end with my thoughts on Polaris in Magneto #21, but I realized I have a lot more I want to say, and this is already a lot of text. So, I’ve decided I’m going to make my Polaris-centric thoughts into a separate post.