A Humble Jewish Carpenter

There are two sides to legendary comic supervillain/antihero Magneto.

I didn’t like early versions of him. Too many cringe-worthy evil monologues, and who could like that whole mutant supremacy shtick?

But later, his origin story comic, X-Men: Magneto Testament, was compared to Maus¹ for its handling of the Holocaust, and he captured my intrigue as the first Jewish comic book character to make it big.

I first saw Magneto in the first scene of the first X-Men movie. He was in Auschwitz. I will never forget that scene. Even after other parts of the film have faded, I can still picture it clearly: Magneto as a little boy, fighting to reach his mother in a Nazi extermination camp. How could I forget seeing my history on a screen?

Comic book franchises have dozens of writers throughout their lifetimes. Among the X-Men writers, one stands apart as the man who defined how we see them today: Chris Claremont, an ethnic Jew who spent time on an Israeli kibbutz.² During Claremont’s era, Professor X, the leader of the heroic X-Men, was often compared to Martin Luther King Jr. for his pacifist ideals. Magneto, the leader of the mutant-supremacist Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, was often compared to Malcom X for his less-than-pacifist ideals.³ This was not the explicit intention of any writer or artist, but it was never Superman vs Lex Luthor.

When Magneto first appeared on screen in 1992 in X-Men: The Animated Series, he often attempted to slaughter and/or conquer and/or enslave all of humankind in the spirit of eugenics and world domination. In response, X-Man Wolverine said, “I don’t know what corner you crawled out of, bub, but [the majority of mutants] don’t find nuclear missiles all that liberating.”⁴ Comic-Magneto later tore Wolverine’s metal skeleton out of his body. Normal supervillain stuff, right?

In X-Men: Dark Phoenix,⁵ his last big screen appearance, he traded armor for flannel and, in his own words, “had a change of heart.” Normal superhero stuff, right?

Therein lies the beauty of Magneto. He is an atrocious villain who is fond of commenting on the horrible parts of humanity, and he convinces readers that he is right.

Magneto is a confusing character. To explain as simply as possible, I hope you’ve watched Star Wars. Darth Vader has supporters, but most Star Wars fans aren’t arguing Darth Vader’s actions and the whole genocide of the Jedi were right. If any of your friends make this argument, I suggest reevaluating your friendship. Darth Vader has a supervillain-appropriate fashionable outfit, complex backstory, iconic lines, and plenty of minions to go around.

Darth Vader was Magneto in his infancy.

But in 1981, a Jew named Chris Claremont took a leap. He wrote Magneto, the mutant mass-murderer terrorist, as a Holocaust survivor. He showed the horrors of Auschwitz.

He made the villain a Holocaust survivor.

In the comics, Magneto grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Germany. His father, Jacob, was a decorated veteran of WWI, but that didn’t save Jacob when Kristallnacht came or when his family faced a firing squad. Magneto’s powers emerged at just the right time; he could control metal, and he stopped the bullet from killing him. He lost his family, but he found a new one, had a child, became a peaceful carpenter, and didn’t even know about his power that would shake worlds—literally. But when he lost his child to a fire and a mob afraid of his mutant powers, he lost this peace. Out of the flames, the villain Magneto emerged.

Clearly, Claremont couldn’t stop there. Imagine if the X-Men comics told this story: the noble and pacifist Professor X and his crew of entirely white, entirely American, entirely Protestant, entirely straight, mostly male, anything-but-a-discrimination-metaphor mutants must protect the humans from a Jewish Holocaust survivor/evil mutant supremacist.

No, his reimagination of Magneto was only one part of reshaping the wider X-Men.

Claremont established Professor X and Magneto as “old friends,” diversified and globalized the main and supporting cast, and created a setting where Magneto’s claims were somewhat legitimate. In a world where humans turned on the mutants over and over and over, Magneto went from complete mutant-supremacist terrorist to maybe-antihero.

Now the morally complicated Professor X and his crew of diverse mutants must protect their oppressors from the morally complicated Holocaust survivor who doesn’t want to see history repeated.

Here, where serious ethical debates and the average vibe of cartoons-based-on-comics meet, Magneto reaches the pinnacle of his awesomeness. In a single X-Men: The Animated Series episode, Magneto offhandedly mentions that he brought back dinosaurs and talks about how he lost his village to a war as a boy. In a different, subjectively awkward, plotline, Magneto throws aside his entire character development and deep-set ideals that define his every waking moment for the slim chance he might save Professor X’s life. In X-Men: Evolution,⁶ he is explicitly a Holocaust survivor, and Captain America saves him from a concentration camp in a censored TV-Y7 scene. In Wolverine and the X-Men, he leads a mutant nation. Five stars for comic-book-craziness. Two stars for consistency.

As the 21st century continued, Magneto started to make more sense to everyone, including me. Every early superhero carries Jewishness in them, from Superman to Spider-Man. Most comic writers of legend were Jewish. When exploring my Jewish identity, I turn to comic books as often as Torah, yet, for decades, none of these heroes went out and wore a Star of David.⁷

Many Jewish comic book nerds/fans/readers, including me, love the villain called Magneto. I haven’t found a Jewish author writing about Magneto with a completely negative outlook.⁸ He isn’t easy to hate. If he were less sympathetic, less human, less vulnerable, less determined, less resilient, less Jewish, hatred would be easy.

In the first movie, Magneto attempts to murder a child, almost slaughters millions through either arrogant negligence or maliciousness, and never stops doing really questionable things.

But he maintains his role as a powerful Jewish character.

At the start of the movie, he is a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The camera sees a tattoo of numbers embedded into his arm.

He sees the Holocaust happen once, and he says, “Never again.” He will not wait until the Kristallnacht, as he once did. He is not a hero. The world calls him one, and he is not. Calling him a hero is a disservice. He has endured, and he has emerged alive and frustrated and broken.

He says everything without saying anything.

The Holocaust did that.

The Holocaust did not just produce the heroic, the humanist, the men and women of goodwill and faith. The “Good Jew” should not be admired.

And Nazi Germany did not disappear in 1945. I’ve seen the ramifications on survivors, their kids, and their grandkids. It’s still there, and still horrific, and Magneto embodies this. This is why Magneto is one of the greatest characters of all time.

In prequel movie X-Men: First Class, Magneto murders Nazis for three scenes straight.⁹ Throughout the movie, the X-Men are formed. The first few members include Professor X and Magneto. In a perilous adventure, Magneto murders another Nazi, uses his powers to control hundreds of missiles, and stares down at every ship involved in an inaccurate Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Iconic, yes, and the first movie in superhero film history in which a character was so Jewish.

Jewish.

Arrogant, selfish, genius, brave, charismatic, merciless, relentless, cruel, and Jewish. Jewish experiences created superheroes, and some 73 years later, a complex character known as Magneto finally can’t be separated from his Jewishness.

As Professor X begs him not to murder thousands of humans, Magneto delivers one line that defines his character. X-Men: First Class goes from the hero origin story of the movie’s Professor X and the villain origin story of the movie’s Magneto to the story of how Magneto became loved. In the history of the X-Men, this is Magneto’s defining quote:

“Never again.”^{10 11}

Endnotes

¹ A widely acclaimed and brutal graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about his father’s experience in the Holocaust, portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. It is often considered one of the greatest narratives about the Holocaust ever written.

² Within a few years, Stan Lee, the original creator of the X-Men, had begun to expand this metaphor, but it was Claremont who is credited with most of the X-Men’s modern incarnations.

³ Claremont states he wrote them intentionally to mirror two Israeli political figures, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin, stating he imagined Magneto would be a terrorist-turned-statesman like Begin (which, granted, did happen a few times in the vast world of comics. In my personal favorite alternate universe, House of M, he rules the world).

⁴ The cartoon’s real name is X-Men, but it’s often referred to as X-Men: The Animated Series to avoid confusion

⁵ I won’t call Dark Phoenix the pinnacle of cinema; I resent how easily they forgave a mass murderer and terrorist who nearly destroyed the world in the last movie. The prior movie, Apocalypse marks when I begin to resent the movies’ portrayal of Magneto, but it does not weaken his character’s other versions.

⁶ I love X-Men: Evolution the way America loves football. I love Magneto in the same way. Magneto’s Evolution portrayal comes on the heels of some questionable decisions by his comic version’s writer at the time, who wrote him as if he were Darth Vader. Later, Claremont swooped in and declared he was totally an imposter all along.

⁷ While Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) did literally wear a Star of David a few times, it’s not often enough and she has little of Magneto’s popularity with a casual audience.

⁸ The most negative critique of him I’ve seen simply pointed out the complexities behind having a Jewish Holocaust survivor as a mass murderer. It could so easily be an almost-perfect caricature created as the fantasy of too many antisemites, but this commentary acknowledges the truth to Magneto’s story. It’s a truth most modern media seems to deny.

⁹ Most specifically, the opening scene is him attempting to reach his mother in a German extermination camp. The deaths of the Nazis are assumed. Then the antagonist of the movie murders his mother, and he kills every other Nazi in the room in an outbreak. His third scene, where he is an adult, involves him accidentally running into two Nazis who had fled to Argentina. Naturally, the now-adult kills them.

¹⁰ The full context requires a response to Professor X’s plea: “They were just following orders.” The Nuremberg trials deemed this to be an invalid defense. Magneto’s response: “I’ve been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again.”

¹¹ “Never Again” comes from a 1927 poem with the verse “Never again shall Masada fall.” He is referring to an incident considered Jewish heroism by many, and it has become a slogan associated with the Holocaust and other genocides.

Works Cited

Carlson, Jim, and Terrence McDonnell. Enter Magneto. Directed by Harry Houston, season 1, episode 2, 27 Nov. 1992.

Claremont, Chris. Uncanny X-Men #129. Illustrated by Terry Austin, 129th ed., vol. 1, Marvel, 1963.

Hemblen, David, performer. X-Men. Marvel Entertainment Group, 1992-1997.

“Magneto.” Comic Vine, comicvine.gamespot.com/magneto/4005-1441. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023.

Mohall, Susan. “Do Marvel Movies Have an Anti-Semitism Problem?” The Forward, 14 May 2015, forward.com/culture/film-tv/308199/do-the-latest-marvel-movies-have-an-anti-semitism-problem. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023.

Morse, Benjamin. “Magneto Was Right: How the Holocaust Shaped an X-Men Antihero.” UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones, May 2021, https://doi.org/10.34917/25374069.

Morse, Benjamin, and Benjamin Burroughs. “Magneto Was Right: The Vulgar and Genteel Shaping of a Holocaust Antihero.” Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, vol. 14, no. 3, Nov. 2022, pp. 426–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2022.2138929.

Pak, Greg. X-Men: Magneto Testament. Marvel Comics Group, 2009.

Plowright, Frank, and Peter Sanderson. “X-Men | Origin, Creators, Characters, Movies, and Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Dec. 2008, www.britannica.com/topic/X-Men#ref1072059. Accessed 2 December 2023.

Schperling, Schmuel. “The Deeper Meaning of ‘Never Again.’” ResearchGate, Dec. 2020, www.researchgate.net/publication/347514739_The_Deeper_Meaning_of_Never_Again.

X-Men. Directed by Bryan Singer, 20th Century Fox, 2000.

X-Men: First Class. Directed by Matthew Vaughn, 20th Century Fox, 2011.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix. Directed by Simon Kinberg, 20th Century Fox, 2019.