When Did We Learn Magneto Was a Holocaust Survivor?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Dec 27, 2018

In their latest spotlight on notable comic book firsts, CSBG reveals when we first learned that Magneto was a survivor of the Holocaust.

In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

My friend Chris asked me this question the other day. He said it had come up in a Facebook Comic Book History group.

The answer is a bit on the predictable side of things, but hey, it's still an interesting question, so I'll gladly give an answer.

As you all know, for years, Magneto was a pretty cut and dry super villain. You know, the typical mustache-twirling, tying women to train tracks type of guy.

When Chris Claremont brought him back to the pages of the X-Men (once X-Men became a reprint-only title, Magneto became a general supervillain in the Marvel Universe, fighting the Avengers, Fantastic Four and the Defenders. It was during a fight with the Defenders that Magneto was reduced to infancy. He was brought back relatively early in Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum's run on the All-New, All-Different X-Men, and when they brought him back, he was the same basic villain he was before...

However, a year later, Claremont showed that the character had grown a bit due to the awful experience of being reduced to infancy and we see in X-Men #112, while he is still a very bad dude who plans on torturing the X-Men for the rest of their lives by treating them like babies, he is at least prone to a LITTLE bit of introspection...

We next see Magneto in a rather odd scenario. Even though he would not actually appear again for another TWENTY ISSUES, we check in with him in X-Men #125. I'll get into the origins of this moment in a future column (there's a very good reason for this scene appearing at this specific point in time)...

Clearly, though, Claremont has been giving some more thought to making Magneto a bit more sympathetic character.

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Okay, so now, Claremont is prepared to bring Magneto back and he does so when Cyclops and Lee Forrestor (a ship captain that Cylcops had grown close to - Lee oddly enough later has near flings with both Magneto AND Cable. Weird, right?) show up on his special weird island base.

Magneto essentially declares war on the world in Uncanny X-Men #150 (by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and Joe Rubinstein) and so the X-Men show up to fight him.

Of this period, Claremont later recalled, “I was trying to figure out what made Magneto tick… And I thought, what was the transfiguring event of our century that would tie in the super-concept of the X-Men as persecuted outcasts? It has to be the Holocaust."

And so in Uncanny #150, when Kitty Pryde tries to shut down Magneto's powerful energy weapon, Magneto shocks her with an almost fatal charge of electricity and he is disgusted with himself for nearly killing a girl. His disgust leads to him revealing his past in the Holocaust...