34 Years Ago Today, Magneto Recruited The X-Men’s Greatest Heroes As His New Brotherhood of Evil Mutants

1991 was a huge year for the X-Men. Writer Chris Claremont’s run on Uncanny X-Men had been massively successful throughout the ’80s, and Marvel had decided to give the team another book. However, editor Bob Harras was pushing the ideas of artists like Jim Lee over Claremont, leading the scribe to leave the team after 17 years. However, he had one last story up his sleeve, a story that focused on Magneto, resetting the villain’s status quo for the new decade. X-Men (Vol. 2) #1 became the bestselling comic ever, and led to a three-issue story that showcased one of the biggest surprises in X-Men history.

Chris Claremont changed the X-Men forever, and pulled out all the stops for what was thought to be his last X-story. X-Men (Vol. 2) #1-3 introduced an all-new team of mutant villains, revealed a huge truth behind the change of heart Magneto had over the years, and saw the X-Men Blue Team joining Magneto’s crusade against humanity. It’s one of those stories that basically every X-Men fan has read or heard about, but is much more shocking than they remember. It gave readers a massive twist 34 years ago, one that is much more interesting than it has any right to be.

Magneto Learned a Terrible Truth that Reset the Character for a New Decade

X-Men (Vol. 2) #1 and #2 did a great job of setting the stage for the shocking final issue of the story. A group of mutants were chased to Asteroid M by SHIELD and saved by Magneto. This group, who would be called the Acolytes, revealed that humans were targeting mutants again and that the mutant master of magnetism needed to rejoin the fight. The new mutant villains attacked Genosha and the X-Men Blue Team sprang into action. The second issue saw Magneto get involved, defeating the heroes, leading to a confrontation between Xavier, Magneto, and Moira MacTaggert.

This was an important moment in the history of the three of them, as Magneto learned what happened when Moira and Xavier aged him up after Erik the Red made him into a child. Moira revealed that she had tried to use science to change his mind, to make him good, and this was the reason that Magneto ended up a member of the X-Men in the ’80s. He brought the two of them to Asteroid M, where he had Moira use her method on the Blue Team, making them into new allies in the mutant master of magnetism’s fight against humanity.

This was an interesting inverse to what had happened with Magneto in the ’80s. During this period, the former villain joined the cause of his friend Xavier with his whole heart and became one of the group’s most important allies. At this point, readers were led to believe that Magneto joining the team was because of manipulation, but X-Men (Vol. 2) #3 — which was sold as a battle between the Blue and Gold Teams — revealed the truth: that once mutants used their powers, the mental conditioning vanished.

Claremont sold readers a bill of goods, one that seemed to overwrite all of his work on the Jewish mutant, which would have been a major change to the canon. However, the next issue showed that Magneto had decided to stay with the team because he actually believed in Xavier’s dream. It was a bait and switch of the highest order, and canonized Claremont’s idea that Magneto wasn’t a monster, but a man who was victimized by a hateful world. In a lot of ways, it proved the power of Xavier’s dream. The former villain had grown to believe in the dream on his own, and became the team’s most important ally for years. Magneto became a villain again in the ’90s, but Claremont left an escape hatch if future creators wanted to use his version of the mutant master of magnetism.

X-Men (Vol. 2) #3 Proved that Magneto Is the X-Men’s Most Complex Character

Magneto joining Xavier in Uncanny X-Men #200 was a huge change to the character’s status quo. While Claremont had spent the intervening years making the villain more sympathetic, no one expected for him to become a hero. No one expected him to give up his old ways and embrace Xavier’s dream. He even went so far as to take on the name Michael Xavier in public, a long-lost brother to Charles. He embraced the dream, the hope, and became a mentor of the next generation of mutants.

The ’90s were the X-Men’s decade, and the loss of Claremont and his ideas would be a huge blow to the team and their books. X-Men (Vol. 2) #1-3 was a soft reboot of the team and their mythos; after this story, Magneto would become a villain again, which would last until 2004. However, Claremont used this story to make sure that anyone who wanted to bring Magneto back to the dream could.

Magneto lived a terrible life. He lost his family to the Holocaust and his wife Magda and their child to human bigots. He battled the X-Men for years, becoming a mutant supremacist, but chose to change. Xavier’s dream was so powerful that he realized that it was the right way to go. X-Men (Vol. 2) #1-3 could have showed that Magneto changed because of mental manipulation, but instead it proved that there was a good man in Magneto, the power of Xavier’s dream showing him a better way.

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