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Erik and Charles in comics canon, part 3
Brace yourselves, everybody, this is the part where it gets unpleasant. Magneto's return to villainy through the 90s and early 00s led to some of the most iconic (and controversial) Magneto storylines. Charles and Erik both end up doing some pretty horrible things to each other, and we move from the “they're so married” dynamic of the 80s to “that abusive boyfriend you just keep coming back to”.
The rumours of Magneto's fiery death from the previous post where, of course, exaggerated. He reemerges during the funeral of Illyana (she succumbed to the Legacy Virus, an epidemic targeting mutants) to convince the X-Men to join his cause. His sales pitch could use a little work:
I have to agree with Iceman on this one: uncool, dude. This whole bit especially pisses me off since Illyana was one of the New Mutants Magneto was once in charge of, and they had an interesting rapport (consisting of Illyana going “But whyyyyy can't I kill our enemies? Didn't you used to be a supervillain?” a lot). Then again, this isn't the first of last time when the writers have shown selective amnesia for past character relationships, both when writing Magneto and in general.
Ok, so I can't deny that in his OTT comic book villain moments, Magneto's got flair! Literally ascending his Acolytes (freaking Acolytes, FFS!) to his space base subtly named Avalon. His slight God complex still doesn't stop him from asking Charlesto be his queen rule by his side though. As far as romantic overtures go, this definitely falls under the “coming on too strong” category.
What kind of kills me here is both for how long Charles still tries to get through to him, and the actual arguments he uses, which have little do with general philosophy and the inherent “makes a Bond villain look restrained” nature of Erik's current modus operandi, and everything to do appealing to what he believes is Erik's nature deep down and reminding him of their relationship. You don't even need to bring your own subtext to this dialogue: the promises they made to each other! Their dream! Charles literally crawling after him! Again, all of this in full view of the X-Men and Acolytes, who are probably wondering if either of them would notice if they'd just got up and left.
You can clearly see the exact moment where Charles loses all hope that what they had can be salvaged-it's no accident he switched from “Erik” to “Magneto”. And while Erik claims to want Charles to understand they are now in different sides, I doubt he has any idea what he's awoken.
After Magneto and the Acolytes get away (joined by mad with grief over his sister's death Colossus), Xavier decides to go on the offensive, with a newly discovered single-mindedness and aggressiveness that's starting to freak out the X-Men. And I must say, having three of the original team members quoting Xavier quotes to each other as gospel makes the X-Men seem a tad cultish.
Yeah, so resorting to improbable alien tech (remember, space empress girlfriend!) is meant to show how very Very Personally he takes this particular mission, but I'm too distracted by Charles' 90s buff physique, right down to his overly muscled LEGS.
Anyway, despite Scott's protests that Charles isn't Action Guy and that he's field leader, damn it (...shut up, Scott), Charles leads this particular attack on Magneto's base.
If Jean's desperate protests weren't enough of a clue: this is huge. All the threats, powerful foes and personal losses that the X-Men have faced over the years, and Charles has never gone there before. And Erik knows this better than anyone, which is why his “how very far you've fallen” is tinged with both surprise and disappointment. It's telling that the only thing that can makes Xavier abandon his principles is the level of betrayal he personally feels at Erik reverting to vintage Magneto mode. Not to mention being ruthless enough to make Jean complicit to something most telepaths (well, telepaths with scruples. For Emma it's probably another day at the office) consider abhorrent.
Between Charles bombarding Erik with Holocaust memories and Wolverine attempting to gut him, poor Jean tries to put a stop to the all-around dickery, but is unfortunately too late, because Erik proceeds to tear the rip the adamantium from Logan's bones. It's pretty gross, and leads to some marathon manpain for Wolverine and a permanent shift to “KILL!” mode where Magneto was concerned.
...yeah. That happened.
So Magneto basically spent some time in a vegetative state, Charles went on to briefly become the supervillain Onslaught because he was apparently infected by a piece of Magneto's soul (wtf, 90s) and the X-Men briefly gained an addition in the form of an apparently de-aged Magneto who went by the name of Joseph. He turned out to be a clone (and as any Spiderman fan can tell you, clone storylines rarely work out as awesomely in the comic book pages as they must have sounded in writer's heads).
The real Magneto eventually returns in an appropriately grand fashion, proceeding to declare full-on war on humanity, mess around with the earth's magnetic poles and nearly explode the planet (seriously, BOND VILLAIN plans!), battle the X-Men and get the Russian military to nuke him. In the end, Joseph saves the day and dies (there can only be one!)
Don't you hate those awkward conversations with your ex? I did crack up a bit at Magneto's righteous indignation at Charles wiping his brain clean-not that the act itself wasn't indignation worthy, but given that he just nearly made the world go boom, his moral high ground is somewhat shaky.
And this is how Magneto ends up in charge of Genosha, a fictional country where mutants were formerly enslaved and experimented on. For all the supervillain shenanigans that just took place though, the ones coming of worst in the scene are the UN: “Fine, whatever, have a country, just get off our backs!”
Charles seems to have suddenly aged a decade in these panels, and still manages to somehow make a global catastrophy and the fate of an entire country All About Them. Because Charles' brand of hubris might be of the more subtle variety, but it's no less potent.
For a while, Magneto is busy with ruling Genosha and attempting to bring his children to his way of thinking (in the most inappropriately named miniseries ever “Dark Seduction”), but he and Charles meet again in Apocalypse: The Twelve, in a complicated comic book event irrelevant besides its value as a contrivance to get Charles and Erik to reminisce about the past in secluded beach.
I can guarantee you that if anyone besides Charles had compared Erik to the Nazis to his face, he'd be a red stain on that beach. Also, the casual callousness of Magneto's last remark cracked me up in that “so going to hell for this” way.
I guess ruling his own nation gets boring for a while, because Magneto decides it's been far too long since he declared war on humanity. This time, just to keeps fresh, he adds the twist of kidnapping Charles, incapacitating him and tying him shirtless to a cross.
...I can't take this storyline seriously. Magneto's justifications are so thin it seems like he just felt like donning some all-black and reenacting his favourite NC-17 non-con fic with Charles. I think the writers were shooting for grimdark and ended up in high camp territory.
Charles is eventually rescued by Jean leading the most hilariously random X-Men lineup (I'm just saying, a team where the most experienced members are Northstar and Dazzler strikes fear in nobody's heart).
Erik is NEVER letting the mind-wipe thing go! I should also point out that this intimate conversation is taking place in the middle of what can only be described as a modern-day gladiator arena Magneto's set up for the occasion (seriously, what kind of fanfic has he been mainlining?).
Magneto's not dead here, although he was paralyzed for a while. So basically Charles cradles an injured Erik, gives a slashy speech, and then walks away from his paralyzed former friend...any of this starting to look a bit familiar?
The rumours of Magneto's fiery death from the previous post where, of course, exaggerated. He reemerges during the funeral of Illyana (she succumbed to the Legacy Virus, an epidemic targeting mutants) to convince the X-Men to join his cause. His sales pitch could use a little work:
I have to agree with Iceman on this one: uncool, dude. This whole bit especially pisses me off since Illyana was one of the New Mutants Magneto was once in charge of, and they had an interesting rapport (consisting of Illyana going “But whyyyyy can't I kill our enemies? Didn't you used to be a supervillain?” a lot). Then again, this isn't the first of last time when the writers have shown selective amnesia for past character relationships, both when writing Magneto and in general.
Ok, so I can't deny that in his OTT comic book villain moments, Magneto's got flair! Literally ascending his Acolytes (freaking Acolytes, FFS!) to his space base subtly named Avalon. His slight God complex still doesn't stop him from asking Charles
What kind of kills me here is both for how long Charles still tries to get through to him, and the actual arguments he uses, which have little do with general philosophy and the inherent “makes a Bond villain look restrained” nature of Erik's current modus operandi, and everything to do appealing to what he believes is Erik's nature deep down and reminding him of their relationship. You don't even need to bring your own subtext to this dialogue: the promises they made to each other! Their dream! Charles literally crawling after him! Again, all of this in full view of the X-Men and Acolytes, who are probably wondering if either of them would notice if they'd just got up and left.
You can clearly see the exact moment where Charles loses all hope that what they had can be salvaged-it's no accident he switched from “Erik” to “Magneto”. And while Erik claims to want Charles to understand they are now in different sides, I doubt he has any idea what he's awoken.
After Magneto and the Acolytes get away (joined by mad with grief over his sister's death Colossus), Xavier decides to go on the offensive, with a newly discovered single-mindedness and aggressiveness that's starting to freak out the X-Men. And I must say, having three of the original team members quoting Xavier quotes to each other as gospel makes the X-Men seem a tad cultish.
Yeah, so resorting to improbable alien tech (remember, space empress girlfriend!) is meant to show how very Very Personally he takes this particular mission, but I'm too distracted by Charles' 90s buff physique, right down to his overly muscled LEGS.
Anyway, despite Scott's protests that Charles isn't Action Guy and that he's field leader, damn it (...shut up, Scott), Charles leads this particular attack on Magneto's base.
If Jean's desperate protests weren't enough of a clue: this is huge. All the threats, powerful foes and personal losses that the X-Men have faced over the years, and Charles has never gone there before. And Erik knows this better than anyone, which is why his “how very far you've fallen” is tinged with both surprise and disappointment. It's telling that the only thing that can makes Xavier abandon his principles is the level of betrayal he personally feels at Erik reverting to vintage Magneto mode. Not to mention being ruthless enough to make Jean complicit to something most telepaths (well, telepaths with scruples. For Emma it's probably another day at the office) consider abhorrent.
Between Charles bombarding Erik with Holocaust memories and Wolverine attempting to gut him, poor Jean tries to put a stop to the all-around dickery, but is unfortunately too late, because Erik proceeds to tear the rip the adamantium from Logan's bones. It's pretty gross, and leads to some marathon manpain for Wolverine and a permanent shift to “KILL!” mode where Magneto was concerned.
...yeah. That happened.
So Magneto basically spent some time in a vegetative state, Charles went on to briefly become the supervillain Onslaught because he was apparently infected by a piece of Magneto's soul (wtf, 90s) and the X-Men briefly gained an addition in the form of an apparently de-aged Magneto who went by the name of Joseph. He turned out to be a clone (and as any Spiderman fan can tell you, clone storylines rarely work out as awesomely in the comic book pages as they must have sounded in writer's heads).
The real Magneto eventually returns in an appropriately grand fashion, proceeding to declare full-on war on humanity, mess around with the earth's magnetic poles and nearly explode the planet (seriously, BOND VILLAIN plans!), battle the X-Men and get the Russian military to nuke him. In the end, Joseph saves the day and dies (there can only be one!)
Don't you hate those awkward conversations with your ex? I did crack up a bit at Magneto's righteous indignation at Charles wiping his brain clean-not that the act itself wasn't indignation worthy, but given that he just nearly made the world go boom, his moral high ground is somewhat shaky.
And this is how Magneto ends up in charge of Genosha, a fictional country where mutants were formerly enslaved and experimented on. For all the supervillain shenanigans that just took place though, the ones coming of worst in the scene are the UN: “Fine, whatever, have a country, just get off our backs!”
Charles seems to have suddenly aged a decade in these panels, and still manages to somehow make a global catastrophy and the fate of an entire country All About Them. Because Charles' brand of hubris might be of the more subtle variety, but it's no less potent.
For a while, Magneto is busy with ruling Genosha and attempting to bring his children to his way of thinking (in the most inappropriately named miniseries ever “Dark Seduction”), but he and Charles meet again in Apocalypse: The Twelve, in a complicated comic book event irrelevant besides its value as a contrivance to get Charles and Erik to reminisce about the past in secluded beach.
I can guarantee you that if anyone besides Charles had compared Erik to the Nazis to his face, he'd be a red stain on that beach. Also, the casual callousness of Magneto's last remark cracked me up in that “so going to hell for this” way.
I guess ruling his own nation gets boring for a while, because Magneto decides it's been far too long since he declared war on humanity. This time, just to keeps fresh, he adds the twist of kidnapping Charles, incapacitating him and tying him shirtless to a cross.
...I can't take this storyline seriously. Magneto's justifications are so thin it seems like he just felt like donning some all-black and reenacting his favourite NC-17 non-con fic with Charles. I think the writers were shooting for grimdark and ended up in high camp territory.
Charles is eventually rescued by Jean leading the most hilariously random X-Men lineup (I'm just saying, a team where the most experienced members are Northstar and Dazzler strikes fear in nobody's heart).
Erik is NEVER letting the mind-wipe thing go! I should also point out that this intimate conversation is taking place in the middle of what can only be described as a modern-day gladiator arena Magneto's set up for the occasion (seriously, what kind of fanfic has he been mainlining?).
Magneto's not dead here, although he was paralyzed for a while. So basically Charles cradles an injured Erik, gives a slashy speech, and then walks away from his paralyzed former friend...any of this starting to look a bit familiar?
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He turned out to be a clone (and as any Spiderman fan can tell you, clone storylines rarely work out as awesomely in the comic book pages as they must have sounded in writer's heads).
Laura's fine though! Don't diss on Laura! :O
I think the writers were shooting for grimdark and ended up in high camp territory.
as often happens when writer shoot for grimdark >_>;
awesome series of post continues being awesome ♥
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Thanks for sharing this.
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Thanks for sharing!
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And then thank you for using Eve of Destruction. I've been using that to convert a friend (and it worked!) to the idea that they've been in a relationship in every single incarnation of the pairing. Also, I know that when I want to rally my troops, I kidnap my best friend/arch nemesis and keep him shirtless.
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So I guess Grant Morrison is up next? ooooh lord. *gets booze*
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Too Much Reading, Brain Melting..
Re: Too Much Reading, Brain Melting..
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It's like when they speak like normal people it just sounds weird. Sort of like how they're just more comfortable when they're shirtless and one of them is in the other's arms.
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</3
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I still get twitches.They really do go through some of the worst ups and downs in comic book history with their relationship, I can't help but love it though as heartbreaking as it is sometimes.(no subject)
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Did the writers actually KNOW they were being so slashy by this stage?? (WE're past Claremont here, right?)
It's worth doing Morrison for his White Queen she is a-MAZ-ingly sarky :)
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Twenty years is a long time to love a character that's perhaps semi-imagined from memories of jumbled storylines (I took to reading comic book magazines in my mid-teens, but oddly, not comics) but then there's that movie and it seems there are *things* that just permeates the entire X-Men. I feel so entirely justified my otherwise groundlessembryonic Charles/Erik shipping tendencies.
Sorry for that rambling comment, but I love that you're sharing this :DDD
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