Magneto (Marvel Comics)

Magneto (Max Eisenhardt) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, commonly in association with the X-Men. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, the character first appears in The X-Men #1 (cover-dated September 1963) as an adversary of the X-Men.

The character is a powerful mutant, one of a fictional subspecies of humanity born with superhuman abilities, who has the ability to generate and control magnetic fields. Magneto regards mutants as evolutionarily superior to humans and rejects the possibility of peaceful human-mutant coexistence; he initially aimed to conquer the world to enable mutants, whom he refers to as homo superior, to replace humans as the dominant species. Writers have since fleshed out his origins and motivations, revealing him to be a Holocaust survivor whose extreme methods and cynical philosophy derive from his determination to protect mutants from suffering a similar fate at the hands of a world that fears and persecutes mutants. He is a friend of Professor X, the leader of the X-Men, but their different philosophies cause a rift in their friendship at times. Magneto's role in comics has varied from supervillain to antihero to superhero, having served as an occasional ally and even a member of the X-Men at times.

Early life


Magneto was born "'Max Eisenhardt'" sometime in the late 1920s to a middle-class German Jewish family. Max's father, Jakob Eisenhardt, was a decorated World War I veteran. Surviving discrimination and hardship during the Nazi rise to power, the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and Kristallnacht, Max and his family fled to Poland where they were captured during the German invasion of Poland and sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. Max and his family escaped the ghetto, only to be betrayed and captured again. His mother, father, and sister were executed and buried in a mass grave, but Max survived, possibly due to the manifestation of his mutant powers. Escaping from the mass grave, he was ultimately captured yet again and sent to Auschwitz, where he eventually became a Sonderkommando. While at Auschwitz, Eisenhardt reunited with a Romani girl named Magda, whom he had fallen in love with when he was younger, and with whom he would escape the concentration camp during the October 7, 1944 revolt.

Following the war, he and Magda moved to the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, and Max adopted the name "Magnus". Magda and Magnus had a daughter named Anya, and lived uneventfully until an angry mob, spurred on by the first manifestation of Magnus' powers, burned down their home with Anya still inside. Magnus was enraged at the mob for preventing him from rescuing Anya, and his powers were unleashed, killing the mob and destroying a part of the city. Magda, terrified at Magnus' power, left him and later gave birth to the mutant twins Pietro and Wanda before she died. Wanted by the authorities for the deaths and destruction in Vinnytsia, and while searching for Magda, Magnus paid a Romanian forger, Georg Odekirk, to create the cover identity of "Erik Lehnsherr, the Sinte gypsy". "Erik" moved to Israel, where he met and befriended Charles Xavier while working at a psychiatric hospital near Haifa, where Gabrielle Haller lived. There, the two debated the consequences humanity faced with the rise of mutants, though neither revealed to the other that they were mutants. However, they were forced to reveal their inherent abilities to one another while facing Baron Strucker and Hydra. After the battle, Erik, realizing that his and Xavier's views were incompatible, left with a cache of hidden Nazi gold, which provided him with the finances to pursue his goals.