#magneto testament

[pacing-er]

I've seen ppl talking about how Cherik may get a different name if it becomes more widely known that comic Magnetos birth name was Max Eisenhardt, but am I the only person who thinks that really won't need to happen? In the comic timeline(s) where he was called Max as a child, he still chooses to be called Erik Magnus Lehnsherr in adulthood. That is a name he chose for himself, not one imposed on him, which means he wants to use that name. Given that "Max Eisenhardt" would be very dear to him since his family would have known him by that name, I see the change of name as more of a "Max died"/loss of innocence symbology. He cannot become the boy that he was before Auschwitz, it has changed him in a way he can't come back from, just like he can never get his family back. He is a different person now, so he chose a new name for himself. Not that he would hate being called Max, I just think that he would feel more disconnected from it or not want it to be used by people he dislikes or doesn't care about. It would be something very personal with a lot of baggage.

Additionally, if the Magneto: Testament comics can be seen as applicable to the rest of the Marvel canon, he chose "Erik" because it was his uncle's name. Erich Eisenhardt was someone who Max had looked up to and seen as a courageous and strong person, so an adult Erik would want to wear that name to carry on his legacy. I think that is a beautiful name choice and I don't feel it's necessary to erase it by calling him Max.

(DISCLAIMER: of course I know the whole name debate originated from inconsistencies in the early comics, and that the movie-verse erased that particular origin anyways, but I think it is a beautiful part of his characters history and should stay)

[keepsmagnetoaway]

X-Men: Magneto Testament 5 (March 2009)

Greg Pak/Carmine Di Giandomenico

The last issue. I honestly don't even know if I recommend this series or not. It's outstandingly good, incredibly accurate and faithful, but it's also a horrible experience, by design.

In this issue, the Sinti/Roma part of the camp is liquidated, though Magda survives: she does this not through Magneto's actions or through some story contrivance but through an extremely specific, true incident of a train being sent to Buchenwald and then back for complicated reasons. The details aren't worth going into here but the point is that once again Greg Pak has rooted this story very deeply in historical fact, and made young Magneto into a powerless bystander, disarming him and us.

There is, then, a sudden and desperate escape at the end, and Max and Magda get away, to live and to fight.

But this, again, is nothing but the pure historical fact. There was a Sonderkommando uprising in the camp, and the comic gives us the details. It is true - we think - that a handful of inmates really did escape this way, though many more died.

And so...yeah. The end.

This really is a comic unlike anything I've read before. I mean, I've read Maus, obviously, and you should too, and this isn't in Maus' league, but to do this in the context of an X-Men comic is stunning. This issue has an epilogue that tells the entirely true story of an artist who was an inmate in Auschwitz, Dina Babbitt, a story I won't go in to here but which is deeply important, and its inclusion here along with a reading list - an actual reading list! - is a further hallmark of how seriously this project was taken.

There is a lot else that could be said about this comic and how it fits into other comics, but it honestly feels absurd to look at this and go "hmmmm, how does Magneto's work in an Auschwitz crematorium inform his decision to work with the Blob?", because that's a question of a totally different moral and narrative universe. In that sense this arguably fails, strictly speaking, as an X-Men comic, but I'm deeply glad to have read it. Then again, I'm also pretty glad to be getting away from it and back to the stupid stuff next.

[magnetic-regent-magneto]

[burningfudge]

just finished reading magneto testament

i’m not okay.

[magnetostits]

i’m rereading magneto testament bc i’m making a reading guide for magneto and this scene is so heartbreaking

[evilwickedme]

[transcript in ID]

From: Retroactive Continuity, Holocaust Testimony, and X-Men’s Magneto, by Charlotte F. Werbe.

Highlighting my own.

Doing some reading for my Magneto lecture, and God it is affecting

[inkfireflies]

As it’s holocaust memorial day, i’d like to share with you these comics. They are part of marvel universe and the story talks about max, a german jewish boy.

I think they’re wonderfully written and powerful, they should be read in schools

[marvelstars]

I agree and I believe it was done on purpose, for Magneto this was a repetition of that event, just this time he wanted to reassure Leech just like his father did with himwhen he was a child.

this might be (will be, likely is) me over-thinking stuff but I just noticed that the head wound Magneto has in his last scene in Remember Me mirrors in shape and placement the head wound he has in Magneto Testament in the scene where his family is killed (and in both scenes, everyone around him dies and he is mistaken for dead but survives)

[thisiseditsandstuff]

MAGNETO & WICCAN

"The Avengers don't want to find [Wanda], William. If they find her, they'll have to kill her. And the minute you step out of line, they'll kill you too."

[earmo-imni]

I just bought my first comic books! The first volume of the X-Men Epic Collection and the first two issues of X-Men (2024)

[newfuturegirl]

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

She was a badass professor. She's retired now but keeps up with us former students on FB, so whenever I run across interesting war movies or whatever, I fling the suggestions her way. We read Maus II for that class with her, so we were already doing a comic in that class, and that's what made me think that she'd like the Magneto comic. She LOVED that Marvel put the money toward buying back the Holocaust survivor's paintings, and she loved that the comic had actual teaching tools for using it in the classroom for different ages.

Magneto is such an interesting character. I've never considered him a villain, and I think it's wrong to villainize a Holocaust survivor who's just trying to keep another Holocaust (but toward mutants) from happening. Whereas Charles has used his powers to erase his own students' memories, to change their memories (I believe), and otherwise is just a manipulative dickbag (who was in love with his favorite student from the time she was 16), but he's always hailed as a hero and the perfect example of how mutants are supposed to be.

ive been on a Magneto reading spree lately and every time i am more on his side someone free me

[keepsmagnetoaway]

X-Men: Magneto Testament 1 (November 2008)

Greg Pak/Carmine Di Giandomenico

This is a difficult series to talk about.

X-Men: Magneto Testament (stupid punctuation is original, hereafter just Testament) was pitched as the definitive origin story of Magneto, and we're reading it now as part of our "Era 0" set of pre-1963 stories: it's set between 1933 and 1945, with the context and content that those dates imply.

We already know, from our read, a little about the experiences of Magneto/Erik Lehnsherr/Max Eisenhardt (the latter name is his true birth name, first revealed here) during the Holocaust: it first came up for us in Classic X-Men 12. It was first mentioned in an issue of the mainline story, 150, that we've not quite gotten to yet, but aside from those two mentions (and some stuff in another classic back-up, 19), there had been relatively little concrete detail on this. Indeed, for a long time there was some confusion about Magneto's Jewishness, given that he also spends a while pretending to be Sinti/Roma while looking for his wife Magda, whom he meets in this series and is herself Sinti/Roma.

Testament sets out to be an authoritative version of Magneto's origin, but what makes it remarkable is that it's not actually very interested in that story, or in the parts of that story that we would presume to be important. At no point in these five issues does Magneto consciously use a superpower, nor does he meet or hear of another superpowered person or mutant: nothing fantastical happens. Testament is instead an extremely meticulous, near-documentary account of the Holocaust.

That's entirely intentional, and that intent is on display in a note from the writer, Greg Pak, at the end of the first issue. This is a remarkable comic but obviously one that doesn't fit very neatly inside my "make dumb jokes about men in spandex" wheelhouse, so the next few posts will be a little heavy: but so is this comic, and so it should be.

[magnetic-regent-magneto]

𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐨 -- small Max Edits. Magneto:Testament & X-Men Red. ||

[papa3slut]

[samasmith23]

The comic Magneto Testament says otherwise:

From X-Men: Magneto Testament #1 by Greg Pak & Carmine Di Giandomenico.

Magneto is not Jewish.

everyone point and laugh