Hmm the Master Of Magnetism, two issues by a guy, named Bunn, is there some kind of Bunns of something joke here? Yes, but I won’t go for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magneto #1&2

Writer: Cullen Bunn

Artist: Gabriel Hernandez Walta

Color Artist: Jordie Bellaire

Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit

Assistant Editor: Xander Jarowey

Editor: Daniel Ketchum

X-Men Group Editor: Mike Marts

Magneto has stepped out of Uncanny X-Men and into his own book from writer Cullen Bunn and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta. If you liked the part of X-Men: First Class with Magneto hunting down Nazi’s that’s sort of the vibe of this book. The first issue of this series opens with a guy a describing a public execution by Magneto to a group of SHIELD agents. The man he killed it turns out has ties to various anti-mutant groups (The Right, The Purifiers, The Friends Of Humanity*) Magneto is working alone, striking out at people that are threats to mutants. He is traveling the country, watching for stories of crimes against mutants, aware SHIELD are seeding the media with false stories in an attempt to draw him out. The next target Magneto has decided to pursue, is a killer, a killer that has turned himself into police custody. Even though his powers are still not functioning properly, he strolls into the courthouse, and there is cool bit in the art, with metallic objects highlighted as Magneto enters. He makes his way down to the killer, a young man who doesn’t seem to be a cold blooded killer, and he turns into a mutant/Sentinel hybrid. Magneto is able to question the young man before he dies and gets a clue as to who did this to him.

Issue #2 sees someone describing Magneto’s attack on the courthouse as well as some fans of Magneto. He has now arrived at Down Acres, a tent city where the human/Sentinel hybrid was living before he became hybridized, looking for answers. Flashback to 1942, to Magneto as a child, with Magneto thinking back to how things would have been different if another child had told the Nazi’s who Magneto was when caught and how the world could have been a very different place. Back in the present day he discovers that someone has been coming to the camp, taking someone away every few weeks never to be seen again. These mystery people show up again and Magneto takes them down fairly easily, interrogating one of them and then executing him, drawing a direct to parallel to something Magneto witnessed as a child, with him now becoming the “monster” now.

I’m enjoying this book quite a bit. I’m glad Magneto has left Uncanny to go do his own thing, this is in a lot of ways, as I said, like the bit in First Class with Magneto off working as an avenger of sorts. Not the Marvel type of Avenger, but seeking out those who have harmed mutant-kind. This is a dang good start to the series, Bunn writes a Magneto that is complicated, contradictory, and self-aware of becoming the Monster. The art by Gabriel Hernandez Walta is great, this doesn’t look too much like a superhero book, which is good, because Magneto is hardly a superhero. He is a man that is not afraid to kill, and to kill publicly, to send a message, a man working to protect his kind, willing to do things the X-teams can’t. And for the second post on the second day in a row, much love must be given to the splendid colors of Jordie Bellaire, whether it’s the cold blues of Poland 1942, the orange of the evening sun, a beautiful California morning, or the red punctuation of panels where violence occurs(didn’t that happen in MK#2 as well?) her choices are wonderful, contributing greatly to the mood of the book. This might just be the best X-book on the stands.

-Kris

* Not these folks here