Max EisenhardtMagneto

Lose the earrings, watches and any other metal accessories—this metallic manipulator can turn the simplest things into weapons of subjugation. Dubbed the “Master of Magnetism,” Magneto experiences a tumultuous upbringing that leads the young mutant to become obsessively protective of his people’s rights, knowing that any day society could turn on them. But what starts as a noble cause quickly morphs into something more sinister, as Magneto begins to believe that mutants should rule over humans. Though usually at odds with Earth’s Super Heroes, Magneto comes to mankind’s aid on multiple occasions, showing there is still hope for this tragic figure…

Maven of Mutants

Max Eisenhardt starts his life in a world amid mass turmoil and intolerance—Germany, World War II. He witnesses the worst the human race has to offer and while he survives, his family and his people are persecuted and torn apart. Upon the death of his parents and sister, he lands in Auschwitz where he reunites with his childhood crush, Magda. Growing to adulthood in the camp, Max continues to urge his fellow captives to fight for their freedom.

Eventually implementing a revolt against their Nazi tormentors, Max and Magda escape and flee to a small city where they marry and have a daughter, Anya. Caught in a house fire, the future Magneto’s mutant powers finally emerge as he tries to rescue his family, but due to the interference of angry authorities, Anya does not survive. Enraged, he lays waste to the onlookers causing Magda to flee, fearing the evil within him.

Max obtains forged documents to change his name to Erik Magnus Lehnsherr and settles in Israel where he befriends Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X. The two enjoy debating at length the prospects of a superhuman race before revealing their true identities to one another to thwart a Nazi criminal. The ordeal brings to light Charles and Erik’s vastly different stances on the matter of mutant rights and the two go their separate ways, each championing their ideals.

Magnetic Mastery

Among Earth’s most powerful mutants, Magneto’s abilities are essentially limitless. He can manipulate all forms of magnetism, summon force fields and shoot electromagnetic pulses that can disable electronic devices. He can assemble complex machinery in seconds and manipulate the iron in blood to take control of people’s actions. He has even shown power over forms of energy on the electromagnetic spectrum like visible light and gamma rays, though he rarely uses these abilities. On top of these gifts Magneto possesses genius level intelligence in multiple technical fields and genetic engineering. He is a brilliant tactician, a natural born leader and, though he rarely demonstrates it, a trained hand-to-hand combatant.

Repelling Rivals

Professor Charles Xavier and the X-Men both claim the role of Magneto’s principal and longest standing foes; however, they do often find themselves on the same team. This holds true for other heroic groups like the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Defenders and Inhumans as well. Magneto has also had run-ins with Hydra and given his upbringing always remained their opposition. The entire United States Government also lands on the foe list—which makes sense considering the amount of times Magneto has threatened, destroyed, or held something hostage in an attempt to take control of the world at large.

Attracted Allies

Magneto’s allies tend to fluctuate, but the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Acolytes have established their places as support groups. Charles Xavier and the X-Men occasionally fall into this category as well, though they always remain wary. And finally the New Mutants, Hellfire Club, Savage Land Mutates and Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary, have all found themselves backing this magnetic madman at some point in his long and complicated run.

Push and Pull

After parting ways with Charles Xavier in Israel, Magneto began a career tracking down Nazi war criminals for a covert agency. But this affiliation ended poorly and Magnus finally stepped over the line he’d been skirting, beginning down a path of aggression to gain mutants their rightful status as Earth’s dominant race.

Early on in his career, Magneto acquired Asteroid M as his orbital base and established a team known as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, which notably included Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch, and Pietro Maximoff, AKA Quicksilver, with whom he would share a complex future relationship.

Magneto traveled to the U.S. to seize the military missile base at Cape Citadel, Florida but former friend Xavier and his newly assembled team of crime fighters, the X-Men, disarmed the escalating situation. He then laid a trap for his new foes by occupying the small South American nation of Santo Marco and setting a bomb to detonate upon their arrival. The team managed to foil these plans as, uneasy with Magneto’s obsessive war against humanity, Quicksilver helped them defuse the bomb. He and his twin sister Scarlet Witch soon left the Brotherhood to join the Avengers.

Magneto had several run-ins with the X-Men after this, usually ending in explosions that led them to believe him dead, only for him to resurface with a new group of mutants and fresh plans for world domination. Some notable attempts were his discovery of the Savage Land and his manipulation of Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner.

After each failed scheme Magneto established different versions of the Brotherhood until he eventually used his knowledge of genetic engineering to create Alpha the Ultimate Mutant who, instead of joining his progenitor, reverted him into a powerless infant. Professor Xavier entrusted baby Magneto to his colleague Dr. Moria MagTaggert, who performed experiments on the child to alter its mind. Later restored to his adult form, Magneto resumed his war with the X-Men.

After almost killing the young mutant Kitty Pryde, Magneto began to realize the error of his ways and aligned with the X-Men. Learning of a supposed relation to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver as their father, he attempted to reach out, but understandably the two remained wary of their so-called reformed former master. Magneto aided in the fight against the Beyonder and finally turned himself over for his crimes against humanity. However, an attack on the trial left Professor Xavier badly wounded and Magneto reluctantly took up the mantle of headmaster in his absence, joining the X-Men on missions and mentoring the New Mutants.

This transformation did not last as Magneto’s old supremacist personality began to reemerge after he and X-Men leader Storm sought an alliance with the Hellfire Club. Magneto dethroned the Black King, Sebastian Shaw, becoming the Grey King and in so doing alienated himself from the New Mutants. He then regained control over a grief stricken Scarlet Witch who had just lost her husband and children. Quicksilver also rejoined his purported parent, conspiring to save his sister and turn Magneto over to the Avengers. The plan worked but ended with the heroes believing the Master of Magnetism had once again died in an explosion.

rom there, Magneto went on a side adventure with Rogue of the X-Men and Kevin Plunder, AKA Ka-Zar, in the Savage Land that ended with Magnus killing his alleged daughter Zaladane. He then retired to solitude on Asteroid M until the mutant group known as the Acolytes pleaded for his help reclaiming the island nation of Genosha. The X-Men once again intervened and destroyed Asteroid M. Undeterred, Magneto converted the space station Graymalkin into a new base named Avalon as haven for mutants, recruiting all he could to his cause. The government and the X-Men tried to intervene and after a series of events, Magneto removed James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine’s Adamantium skeleton—so Professor Xavier wiped his mind in retaliation.

In a form of revenge, a mutant named Astra restored Magneto’s mind while creating a clone named Joseph to destroy him. The duplicate failed to kill the original, and gave its life saving the planet: Magneto attempted to free mutants from mankind by threatening total world destruction, demanding that the United Nations cede Genosha to him. They did so with reluctance, with the caveat that he not attack any other nations.

Magneto was revealed to be one of the Twelve, a roster of mutants prophesied to bring in a new era for their people; Apocalypse captured the group, hoping to use them for his own gain. However, Magneto tapped into another mutant’s powers to compensate for his waning ones, and defeated the genetic tyrant. He then returned to Genosha with Lorna Dane, AKA Polaris, yet another of his offspring—this one legitimate—and began to teach her to expand her own abilities while seeking to restore him to full capacity.

After the Legacy Virus was cured, Magneto used the mutants at his disposal to declare war on mankind but the X-Men wounded him during their opposition, rendering his nation defenseless. Genosha was destroyed by Cassandra Nova’s Sentinels and its 16 million mutant residents executed. Again, humanity and the X-Men believed Magneto among the dead, but he remained on the island in secret to rebuild it, eventually joined by none other than Professor Xavier.

Magneto then began caring for the Scarlet Witch after she’d gone insane and attacked the Avengers. Quicksilver convinced his sister to alter reality into the world Magneto fought for with mutants as the dominant species and their father the ruler of them all. Unaware of the previous state of the world, Magneto soon regained his memories and killed Quicksilver as recompense for his actions. This led the Scarlet Witch to resurrect her brother and revert reality to its original state simultaneously stripping many mutants, including Magneto, of their powers. To restore the lost mutant gene, Magneto teamed up with the High Evolutionary; however they only succeeded in reinstating his own powers.

Viewing their work to be noble, Magneto joined Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops’s X-Men on their island home, Utopia, where he worked with the team to protect the remaining mutants and fight in missions around the world. During this time he helped Rogue battle the Children of the Vault and learned that two members of the Young Avengers may be reincarnations of Scarlet Witch’s lost sons, Billy Kaplan, AKA Wiccan, and Tommy Shepherd, AKA Speed. Though warned not to interfere, Magneto sought out his possible grandchildren and joined them on their mission to find the missing Scarlet Witch and restore her memories and sanity.

Magneto struck up a relationship with Rogue, who thus far had rebuked his romantic advances. However, when the X-Men split into two groups with conflicting feelings over the return of the Phoenix Force, Magneto stayed with Cyclops on the West Coast where he slowly worked to gain the trust of his allies, while Rogue returned to the newly opened Jean Grey School for Higher Education in New York.

With the eventual dissipation of the Phoenix Force by Hope Summers and the Scarlet Witch, the mutant gene was reestablished. Magneto joined S.H.I.E.L.D., supposedly as a double agent to protect his group of rogue X-Men; he recruited new mutants to the New Charles Xavier school, helped the world’s heroes defeat Johann Shmidt, AKA Red Skull, who had taken over Charles Xavier’s brain, and fought to stop the reality-ending Incursion of the Beyonders. During this time, Scarlet Witch revealed her and Quicksilver’s purported parentage to be a falsehood.

Magneto once again found himself leading the X-Men, or at least a group of them, as they searched for a cure to the mutant-poisoning Terrigen Mist. During the second superhuman Civil War, he fought to stop the Inhuman Ulysses and predictive justice, mentored the teenage time-displaced X-Men, and battled against the altered Captain America and his Secret Empire. There may be hope for his reformation after all.

He soon faced a cabal of mutants, Frost, Alex Summers, AKA Havok, Bastion, and Claudine Renko, AKA Miss Sinister, who intended to make mutants the dominant species using a virus called Mothervine. He formed a team of X-Men and when the virus was released, Magneto defended himself and killed mutants under Renko’s control. Regretful about having to take action against fellow mutants, Magneto retreated to Asteroid M and created a new iteration of the Brotherhood.

When Nate Grey, AKA X-Man, created a pocket dimension where everyone was mutants living in peace, Magneto was taken to that reality but with altered memories along with most other mutants. In this Age of X-Man, he was part of the X-Men and responded to threats to their world while intimate relationships were outlawed and policed by Department X and revolutionaries like Apocalypse supported the concept of love. When Magento shared a vision with Storm of their past lives, they spoke in private and she surmised that Apocalypse was behind it. They were soon called away by X-Man to investigate rips in the fabric of the world where everyone’s old memories were bleeding through and to solve a murder of a Department X clerk. When the murder was solved, it was also revealed that X-Man was behind the reality-warp. Magento and the X-Men confronted him, only for him to admit it all and revert reality to its true form.

Magneto soon joined with Xavier and Moria MagTaggert to establish a sovereign nation-state on the living island of Krakoa as a safe haven for mutants. They succeeded and provided cures to humans grown on Krakoa. They also established Resurrection Protocols which allowed them to bring back their fallen brethren. They accomplished such a feat with the Five—five mutants with the power of resurrection—in combination with Cerebro’s saved backup of all mutants’ consciousness.

Magneto and Xavier soon learned of the anti-mutant organization Orchis, and their space station Orchis Forge where they were creating a new Sentinel, the Mother Mold, and feared Nimrod would be created. Sending a team of X-Men to destroy it, they succeeded but at the cost of all their lives. However, they brought them back using their Resurrection Protocols, a secret they kept from the world. They created Krakoa’s governing body, the Quiet Council of Krakoa, and held seats at the table with Sinister, Apocalypse, Storm, Jean, Frost, Raven Darkhölme, AKA Mystique, and decided the fate of criminals like Victor Creed, AKA Sabretooth.

When Krakoa’s twin island Arakko became stranded on Earth, Magneto negotiated with Isca the Unbeaten, who led millions of mutants on Arakko. Fearing their war-like nature, he proposed to terraform Mars and make it a suitable new home for the Arakkii, and Isca accepted. After terraforming the red planet, this news was revealed at the mutant’s Hellfire Gala, a party for mutants and their human allies. At the party, he met Wanda in private and despite no longer being her biological parent, he told her that she’d always his daughter in a loving embrace. Wanda wanted to cast a spell to bring back mutants that weren’t saved in Cerebro, but it required her death. She asked Magneto to kill her to make it happen, and bring her back through the resurrection process, and he obliged. But he quickly became the prime suspect in her murder, which led to infighting and a battle with the Avengers.

Though Wanda was eventually resurrected and cast her spell, which put 20 million mutants in line for resurrection.

Magneto and Xavier conferred with Moria, who had lived many lives thanks to her power of resurrection and could reset time, something they knew about. They became afraid of resurrecting precogs like Irene Adler, AKA Destiny, who would learn the truth and destroy their Krakoan creation. When Mystique pressed Magneto and Xavier to resurrect her wife Destiny, they avoided it. Mystique took matters into her own hands by resurrecting her without them and got the council on her side by placing Destiny on it. They soon received a distress signal from Moira and when they arrived at her location, Nimrod, who had been created despite their efforts to stop Orchis, and his ally Omega Sentinel were waiting for them. A battle followed that left both Magneto and Xavier slain. When they came back through the Resurrection Protocols, Emma was waiting for them. She revealed that Moira was depowered by Mystique and Destiny and their secret plotting with Moira, though she escaped. Magneto resigned from the council and joined mutants on Arakko where he soon was asked by Storm to join her Brotherhood of Arakko. He defeated Tarn the Uncaring and took the Seat of Loss as an advisor to Arakko. But since he and Storm were both Krakoan mutants and had access to resurrection, the Arakkii saw them as immortal which went against their cultural beliefs. To gain favor with the Arakkii, Magneto deleted his backup consciousness from Cerebro.

The mutant’s resurrection capability caught the attention of the Eternals, who were created by the alien space gods, the Celestials, to protect Earth against deviation. Mutant resurrection gave them carte blanche to attack the mutants. Leading the attack was Prime Eternal Druig and he sent his fellow Eternal Uranos to take care of Arakko. While Magneto and Storm fought Uranos and won, it was at the cost of Magneto’s life.