22 Years Ago, This Controversial X-Men Story Is Still the Best Magneto Story (Even If It Isn’t a Magneto Story)

The X-Men have become icons over the years, and a huge reason for that is Magneto. The mutant master of magnetism was introduced alongside the team in 1963’s X-Men #1, and played the perfect opposite to Xavier and his team of young mutants. However, early Magneto is something of a cliche; he was basically a Stan Lee special, a hyperbolic villain with the depth of a puddle but with room for improvement. Writer Chris Claremont made those improvements, making the villain into one of the deepest characters in comics. Over the years, we’ve gotten some amazing stories from the character, but the best of them is one of his most hated. Also, it’s not technically about Magneto.

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“Planet X” was the penultimate tale of Grant Morrison’s outstanding New X-Men run. Over the four years Morrison was on the book, they were building their ultimate Magneto story, one that took the character in very different direction from what many fans were used to. The story has become one of the most hated for Magneto fans because of what it said about him. They wouldn’t have to deal with that for long, as the story was retconned soon after it was released. However, it’s the best Magneto story ever, all because it makes fans acknowledge the hypocrisy at the heart of their favorite leftist murder grandpa.

“Planet X” Showed Fans that Magneto Isn’t All Sunshines and Rainbows

“Planet X” was developed over the span of New X-Men. It all started with the destruction of Genosha, where we were led to believe that Magneto was killed. The character was “dead”, but he was always a presence in the book, from the “Magneto was Right” iconography to a return to Genosha that dealt with the death of the character. Eventually, we’d be introduced to a Chinese mutant named Xorn, who had a star for a head. He healed the X-Men of the nano-Sentinels they were infected with by Cassandra Nova, and became a Zen presence on the team, even teaching the “special class” of mutants. However, we started to get the idea that the character wasn’t all he seemed during “Riot at Xavier’s”, and it would all lead to “Planet X”.

“Planet X” reveals that Xorn was Magneto the whole time. He had survived the destruction of Genosha and decided to make humanity pay. He pretended to be Xorn, and used his magnetism to control the nano-Sentinels, “healing” the team. He set up them up and enacted his plans, taking them out, and taking over Manhattan. He was going to kill all of the humans in the city and reverse the magnetic poles of the Earth, but he was stopped by the X-Men. He made one final stab at the team, killing Jean Grey for the umpteenth time, before he was beheaded by Wolverine.

The question of Magneto’s morality has been a big part of the character, and after 9/11, Morrison decided that it was time to show Mags for who he really was. He was a mutant terrorist and supremacist, someone who allowed the hate that forged him to make him into the thing he hated. Now, back then, this wasn’t a huge change. Magneto had been a villain again since 1991, so fans were more okay with him as a bad guy since a lot of ’90s X-fans grew up with him as a villain. However, the modern fans have a huge problem with the story.

Magneto has spent most of the last 20 years as a hero, and he’s not seen as a villain anymore. His tragic backstory shows that he’s right about humans and their racism, so he’s “justified”. Modern fans like the character because he represents the oppressed fighting their oppressors. However, Magneto has always been a racist himself. His actions to fight for mutantkind have targeted the innocent of humanity. His “eye for an eye” methods can be heartening, especially in a world like the one we’re in, but Morrison wanted to show the character was the ultimate hypocrite. He hated the racists who killed his people, but they made him into one of them. Hate won, and that’s the tragedy at the center of Magneto, the one that “Planet X” reminds fans of. A lot of X-fans don’t want to see leftist murder grandpa as anything but a hero, but he’s always been a monster.

The Modern Reaction to “Planet X” Shows a Misunderstanding of Magneto

Magneto is a legend and an amazing character. The fact that he’s both a justified person who had suffered the worst things imaginable as well as a man who was blinded by his own hate is what makes him so great. Like the best characters, he contains multitudes, and “Planet X” shows the sides of him that no one likes to think about. A lot of fans like to write the story off because of the retcon that Xorn was never Magneto, only pretending to be the villain, and ignore it. However, that’s ignoring a huge part of Magneto.

Magneto is a complex man, and Morrison wanted to show that to readers. “Planet X” is the kind of story that made sense back when it came out, because most fans were used to the more villainous version of the character. It dug into who Magneto was under it all, and retconning the whole thing away is one of the worst things that could have happened. It allowed fans to ignore something important about the character, writing it off as a bad performance. However, this hypocrisy is key to understanding Magneto and shows why “Planet X” is the best Magneto story ever.

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