In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just one of the five examples that I chose. Today, we look at some of the more outrageous things that Magneto has invented over the years.

On top of Magneto being one of the most powerful mutants in the world with his mastery of one of the key elemental forces of the Earth - magnetism - he also is shockingly good at building overly complicated and powerful machines!

In X-Men #5 (by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman), Magneto built his own special headquarters on asteroid called, appropriately enough, Asteroid M...

In X-Men #18 (by Stan Lee, Werner Roth and Dick Ayers), we learn that Magneto has built a machine that can use the energy from Warren Worthington's parents to create new mutants!

In X-Men #62 (by Roy Thomas, Neal Adams and Tom Palmer), Magneto discovers a dead Angel in the Savage Land and puts him into a machine that CAN BRING DEAD PEOPLE BACK TO LIFE!!!

In the next issue, Magneto reveals that he has been using some other machines to turn non-mutants INTO sort of mutants (mutates)...

He attacks the X-Men with one of these mutates, Lorelei...

(Magneto later creates another, more powerful being named Alpha the Ultimate Mutant, but he used alien technology for that. He did do some of it himself, but since so much of it was alien tech that I figure I shouldn't count it here).

In X-Men #112 (by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin), Magneto captures the X-Men and takes them to an elaborate base that he has built in Antarctica...

In that same issue, he introduces the captive X-Men to a robot he built (in the Marvel Universe, if you know any science, you can build an impressive robot)...

He also reveals that he has built a machine that can cancel out mutants' powers! Even Jean Grey, who was the Phoenix, for crying out loud!

Not too shabby, right? But Magneto has even better machines a-comin'!

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Uncanny X-Men #150 gives us a triple whammy!']

In Uncanny X-Men #150 (by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein), we see that Magneto is holding the entire world hostage with a machine he has built that can create an active volcano anywhere on Earth at any moment...

When the X-Men head to his island base, their ship is knocked out by a tower that Magneto built to cancel out electromagnetic stuff...

It also can cancel out mutant powers from miles away...

You can see the tower later in the issue when the powerless X-Men try to shut it down to get their powers back...

Years later, during the Magneto War storyline (by Alan Davis, Fabian Nicieza and Mark Farmer), Magneto created a machine to amplify his powers to outrageous levels...

That's it for this installment!

If anyone has an idea for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!