Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without retconnng away the previous story. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, based on a suggestion by reader Bruce E., we look at how Marvel abruptly decided NOT to reveal Magneto as a bad guy during the original Avengers vs. X-Men crossover mini-series...

The original X-Men vs. Avengers mini-series from 1987 was written by then-Avengers writer Roger Stern, with art by Marc Silvestri and Joe Rubinstein. Stern's problem at the time was that he felt that Magneto got off too easy when he was put on trial in Uncanny X-Men #200, so he had the Avengers looking to take Magneto in again. Meanwhile, Stern also had an issue with all of those Russian sailors that Magneto had killed in Uncanny X-Men #150....

So both the Soviet Super Soldiers and the X-Men interfered when the Avengers tried to capture Magneto...

Magneto, meanwhile, is trying to build a machine that can manipulate people's minds. He wants to erase anti-mutant prejudice. Roger Stern was going to use this set-up to reveal in his final issue that Magneto was basically a bad guy again. However, Marvel editorial disagreed with this and Stern was removed from the project for the final issue, with Tom DeFalco and Jim Shooter stepping in to write the final issue (Silvestri also left the book, but I believe that was just because he had gotten a gig drawing the main Uncanny X-Men title).

Go to the next page to see how they resolved it...

So Magneto agrees to go on trial and then uses the mind-control device to erase any anti-mutant prejudcies in the chief judge and Magneto is found not guilty...

And that's pretty much it. Isn't that kind of weird - Magneto ended up actually USING the "evil" device Stern was going to set him up for using, but it was just "Oh, okay, that happened. Moving on."

Our own Matt Derman wrote an excellent review of the mini-series getting into how slapdash the ending reads.

Thanks for the suggestion, Bruce! If anyone else has a future suggestion for a dropped comic book story, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com (or my old e-mail address, bcronin@comicbookresources.com - it all goes to the same place).