Magneto's Bio/Specs
Erik Magnus Lensherr AKA Magneto. As the self-styled Master of Magnetism, he wields the electromagnetic fields of the planet as if it was child's play. With his command of his powers, he has stopped armies, moved mountains and changed the course of rivers. He is an elemental force given human form. As one of the most powerful mutants in the world, he has been one of the most misunderstood characters in the X-Universe. At times, Magneto has been the X-Men's closest ally, at times, he has been their most bitterest foe. He has dealt them their most painful defeats, crushing many of the team's members and he has also suffered from their victories. His past is a window into his mind, and to the reasons he is whom he is.
Essentially, Magnus believes in the same cause as Xavier but with a small difference. Unlike Xavier's plea for tolerance and equality, Magneto believes the Homo Superior can only survive by lording it over the rest.
Since the beginning, Magneto has tried to conceal the facts about his early life. He came from a family of Gypsies in Germany. During the Nazi regime, he and his family were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Sentenced to death, Erik Magnus Lensherr was the only member of his family to survive. It was there where he met Magda, his future wife. They managed to escape together to Russia. His bitter experience showed him how inhumane a majority could be towards a minority, a lesson he would remember when his mutant abilities surfaced.
During his time after the war, Erik started making his way south through the Iron Curtain. Magda was already married to him and they had a daughter, Anya. While making a living for himself in a town called Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, he was frequently cheated in his work. Once, when an employer refused Erik his pay, a furious Erik attacked him accidently by making a crowbar fly at him. This is the first known time Erik's powers surfaced. In retaliation, his home is soon found burning. Magda managed to escape the fire but Anya was trapped inside. Erik tried to rush in but was stopped from going in by his employer. The police and his employers started to beat him while the house was totally consumed in flames. As he heard his daughter's last screams, Erik finally unleashed his powers on his oppressors. Everyone was killed except for Magda. Horrified by what he husband had done, she left him, not telling him she was once more pregnant.
After abandoning his search for his wife, Erik wandered into the newly independent nation of Israel. There, he started working in a psychiatric hospital near Haifa, where he met his future friend, Professor Charles Xavier. Together, they prevented Baron Wolfgang Strucker and his H.Y.D.R.A. agents from obtaining a large cache of Nazi gold. It was then that they found out that the other was a mutant.
By the time Xavier founded the X-Men, in part to combat mutants who threatened humanity, Erik had decided that the only way to safeguard superhuman mutants from persecution was for mutants to conquer human civilization. Now under the alias Magneto, garbed in his familiar purple-red costume battled with the X-Men at the American missile base on Cape Citadel.
Afterward, forming the team called Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Magneto continued fighting for the cause that he believed in. Coincidentally, two of the original members of his team were his own children, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, now known as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Magda, who had died in childbirth, had left them in the care of Bova, a servant cow-thing of the High Evolutionary. Bova gave them to a gypsy couple who raised them as their own. Years would pass before Magneto learned that they were his children.
At one point Magneto came across what seemed to him to be a treasure trove of alien records and scientific equipment, which had actually been left for him to find by the master geneticist Maelstrom. Using all of this, Magneto created an artificial humanoid which he named Alpha the Ultimate Mutant. Alpha rebelled against his creator and turned Magneto back into an infant. Xavier placed the baby in his colleague Dr. Moria MacTaggert's care on Muir Island, Scotland, who tried to curb his ways. Unfortunately, the infant Magneto was found by the alien Shi'ar agent Shakari who transformed Magneto back into adulthood all but a little younger than he had been.
While in one battle, Magneto struck down the young adolescent X-Man, Kitty Pryde AKA Shadowcat. Shocked and appalled at himself for trying to harm such a youung girl, he immediately began reconsidering the moral path he had chosen. For a while there, Magneto allied himself with his former enemies, Xavier and the X-Men.
His time with the X-Men and Charles slowly altered his views on the roles of mutants in the world. Finally, Magneto surrendered himself to the law so that he could stand trial for his past crimes. A special tribunal of the International Court of Justice was set up to try him for crimes against humanity. Magneto fully intended to abide by the tribunal's verdict, and also used his trial as a forum for declaring his opposition to the persecution of mutants. Unfortunately, the trial was interrupted by the attack of Fenris, who were actually Andrea and Andreas Strucker, the children of Magneto's now-deceased evemy, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker,. Fenris was summarily defeated, and a wounded Xavier begged Magneto to look after the X-Men and to take over the helm of his School for Gifted Youngsters. Magneto agreed.
Eventually, Magneto was exonerated of his crimes by the International Court of Justice. However, he was still regarded as a major criminal. Following an attack by Nimrod, he and Storm forged an alliance with their erstwhile foes, the Hellfire Club to protect mutants, and Magneto was named the White King. Assuming the role of Xavier's cousin, he headed Xavier's school and was the mentor of the New Mutants. In time, the X-Men were presumed to have died and the New Mutants started to rebel against his autocratic rule. It all ended with the Inferno Saga when the teams under him fell apart and Magneto was left to his own devices again.
Rouge, who had gone through the Siege Perilous, had landed in the Savage Land where she met Magneto again. It was seen that Zaladane had absorbed Lorna Dane's AKA Polaris, powers and was slowly getting control of all magnetic energies, consequently draining Magneto's powers. After a long battle, Magneto managed to seize back his awesome powers and incapacitated Zaladane. Despite Rogue's pleas, Magneto killed Zaladane and reverted to his old beliefs, leaving the X-Men. It should be noted that Magneto and Rogue had sort of an affair when Rogue's powers were not functioning properly.
The next time Magneto appeared, he once again attempted to conquer the world with his Acolytes. During this attempt, he was attacked and badly wounded by Wolverine. His stronghold, Asteroid M, was also destroyed by an attack by the X-Men. This defeat left Magneto out of the picture for a long time, which gave him the opportunity to plan his comeback.
When Magneto made his encore, it was a grand one; he offered any X-Man to come under his protection. To everybody's surprise, the disillusioned Colossus accepted. In retaliation to Magneto's attacks, the United Nations initiated the Magneto protocols in defense. These set up an electromagnetic web around the Earth's atmosphere, presumed to negate Magneto's powers. The Master of Magnetism scorned this puny attempts to control him and released an electromagnetic pulse which shorted out the entire world for a moment.
The X-Men brought the battle to Magneto. In this eventful battle, Wolverine lost his adamantium when Magneto ripped them out of his skeleton. In defence, Professor X fought psychically with Magneto and plunged him into a comatose state.
In the recent aftermath of the AOA Saga, the evil henchmen called Holocaust escaped to this world and landed in Asteroid M. Creating havoc, the whole space station blew apart. Before the explosion, Colossus managed to escape in a pod with Magneto.
The Master of Magnetism now supposedly suffers from amnesia, after regaining consciousness in a village in South America. He was taken care of by a young nun, Sister Maria, in an orphanage. Magneto awakes as a young man in his twenties and starts calling himself Joseph. Looking through her books, Sister Maria remembered a group of mutants like him and sent him off to search for the X-Men.
In his search for the X-men, Joseph meets up with Rogue. She isn't terribly inclined to believe his admittedly lame amnesiac story and beats him up a little before finally agreeing to help him battle against Bastion and Humanity's Last Stand. When the Onslaught crisis takes the X-Men unawares, Joseph joined in their battle and effectively became part of the team.
Joseph repeatedly denies remembering his past misdeeds, blaming it on amnesia but certain flashbacks have shown that he hasn't totally forgotten the man that he used to be. Very few of the X-Men truly believe him especially Gambit. Joseph's obvious fascination with the lovely Rouge also strengthens Gambit's distrust of the new Joseph.
Recent issues have shown the re-appearance of Magneto (who takes part in setting up the trial of Gambit ). Then who is this young man who calls himself Joseph? A clone? A son? It may never be know with his recent death...
It has also been reviled that Magneto is one of the Twelve (UMX 375). They are fortold in Destiny's Diary to be the ones who save the world, and he has agreed to help Xavier and the X-Men defeat the horsmen and Apacalypse (X-Men 96).
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 190 lbs.
Eyes: Blue-gray
Hair: White
Other distinguishing features: Magneto has been literally rejuvenated by Alpha the Ultimate Mutant, so that despite his much greater chronological age, he appears still to be a relatively young man.
Known superhuman powers: Magneto has the mutant ability to control magnetism and other related electromagnetic forces. He also possesses minor psychic abilities, such as the ability to create a psychic shield against psionic attack.
Bio courtousy of Marvel Comics.