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 "Never again" determination to protect mutants from suffering a similar fate to the European Jews at the hands of a world that fears and persecutes them.
Magneto's role in comics has progressed from supervillain to antihero to superhero, having served as an occasional ally and member of the X-Men, even leading the New Mutants for a time as headmaster of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.
His first solo title was a one-shot special, Magneto: The Twisting of a Soul #0 (Sept. 1993), published when the character returned from a brief absence; it reprinted Magneto-based stories from Classic X-Men #12 and 19 (Aug. 1987 and March 1988), by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Bolton.
An equivalent analogy could be made to [Israeli prime minister] Menachem Begin as Magneto, evolving through his life from a terrorist in 1947 to a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 30 years later.
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".
At Muir Island, MacTaggert discovers that the prolonged and extensive use of Magneto's powers has a disruptive effect on his nervous system and psyche, causing him to become increasingly paranoid and irrational the more he uses them.
In an attempt to cure him of this flaw, she manipulates the infant Magneto's genetic code, so that when he grows older, he will be able to safely use his powers while still remaining rational, to prevent him from becoming "evil" in adulthood.
[46] Magneto's first steps towards a change in character begin during an encounter with the X-Men, when he lashes out in anger and nearly kills Kitty Pryde, stopping short when he sees that the X-Man that he attacked is a Jewish child — precisely the kind of person he claimed he was fighting to make a better world for.
[63] Feeling that desperate measures need to be taken after the genocidal massacre in the Morlock tunnels, Magneto and Storm join the Hellfire Club jointly as the White King.
[69] When Zaladane is able to appropriate the magnetic powers of Polaris,[70] Magneto works alongside Rogue, Ka-Zar, and the American intelligence agent Nick Fury as well as a number of Russian operatives to reestablish peace in the Savage Land.
The X-Men respond by hacking into Avalon's own computer systems to teleport a small team to the station with the aid of Colossus[75] (who joined Magneto's Acolytes moments after his younger sister Illyana's funeral[76]).
[82] He rules Genosha for some time with the aid of many who had previously opposed him, including Quicksilver, Polaris, and Fabian Cortez, and engages in a brutal civil war with the island's former human rulers.
[90] During the House of M storyline, Magneto's daughter Wanda suffers a mental breakdown over the loss of her children and starts to warp reality to recreate them, until Doctor Strange put her into a coma to stop her.
[94] In the 2008 storyline X-Men: Divided We Stand, Magneto appears, apparently at the behest of Exodus and claiming to be powerless, to help restore Professor Xavier's broken psyche.
[102] In a final bid to gain their trust, Magneto enters a deep meditative catatonic state to focus his powers at an interstellar distance and reverse the path of Breakworld's "Earth-destroyer" Metal Bullet in which Kitty Pryde is trapped.
With an earthquake inbound for San Francisco, Magneto uses his powers to stabilize the city's buildings, structures, and metal vehicles and to smooth the earth movements themselves, thus preventing any major damage and saving many lives.
[126] After Daniel Drumm's ghost possesses Scarlet Witch and works with Doctor Doom to reverse the inversion spell, Magneto was affected by it and stopped being a threat to mankind.
[129] As the energies of Earth-616 and Earth-1610 inched closer to impact cascade and send chaos through the streets, Magneto (aided by his daughter Polaris) are taking the fight to this "other" Earth, battling the parallel Sentinels sent after them.
[volume & issue needed] Following the 2016 Inhumans vs. X-Men storyline, Magneto is killed by Psylocke per their agreement that she does this if he was to ever regress to his previous megalomaniacal approach to protecting mutantkind.
The most commonly used iteration of Magneto's resistance to telepathy is his helmet which he had specially built to prevent Charles Xavier or any other high level telepath of reading, influencing or controlling his thoughts.
He has built advanced weaponry, space stations, superpowered humanoid lifeforms, and devices that generate volcanoes and earthquakes, block telepathy, and nullify all mutant powers across a few miles except for his own.
Through his legendary role in Marvel Comics over the years as well as fantastic portrayals in film and animation, it's hard to argue that there has ever been a villain more complex, nuanced, sympathetic and yet irrevocably evil.
Through his legendary role in Marvel Comics over the years as well as fantastic portrayals in film and animation, it's hard to argue that there has ever been a villain more complex, nuanced, sympathetic and yet irrevocably evil.
[volume & issue needed] He and the X-Men fight against the forces of this world's Apocalypse who, having been wakened early by the battle between David and Magneto, was able to take over North America in the absence of Xavier's interference.
[volume & issue needed] In this timeline, Magneto is married to his former protégé Rogue, and being able to touch due to his magnetic mastery over his own bio-aura, are able to have a son together who they name Charles, in honor of Xavier.
[186] As the X-Men use the M'Kraan Crystal to send Bishop back in time to return the timeline to its proper course, Magneto and Nate Grey square off in one last fight against Apocalypse and Holocaust.
Just as the burden of maintaining the deception eventually begins to take its toll on an extremely stressed Magneto, he is secretly visited by Mister Sinister (who everyone has assumed to have been killed by X-Man), who reveals to him just what really happened when the bombs fell.
Magneto is forced to accept for the sake of preserving the current fragile peace of global mutant-human relations, which had improved primarily due to the general public's mistaken assumption that he had personally saved the world by singlehandedly stopping nuclear armageddon.
[187] In this possible future, when Sentinels rule North America, Magneto is in a wheelchair and, like the rest of the surviving X-Men save Wolverine, held in a mutant concentration camp, his powers suppressed by an inhibitor collar.
It is revealed in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days that he and Fabian Cortez made a deal with an unknown entity from another universe to damage the Earth to let mutants become the dominant force.