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franzbiblio · 5 years

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Where in the comics are Professor X and Magneto?

So it occurs to me that those not up-to-date with comics might be interested in a "where are they now?" for Professor X and Magneto, especially if you might be interested in jumping into the breach with this new launch of House of X/Power of X making it a bit easier than usual to jump into the insanity that is comics in general and X-Men comics in particular.

The short answer is that there isn't really a status quo established for this particular era of X-Men as of yet and as for Magneto and Charles Xavier's potential place in the coming status quo, I can't even really predict, which is both exciting and terrifying if I'm being honest.

Magneto:

I will start with Magneto who is a little more complicated to explain how he got where he is, but I do at least have a vague notion of the general trajectory we might be seeing from him in the next several months:

Until recently Magneto has spent most of his time running about being an anti-hero type from leading a distinctly shady team of the X-men in Uncanny X-Men (2016) #1-19, until Psylocke (Betsy Braddock) decided that he had been too shady and stabbed him and apparently killed him.

This being comics means that he got better immediately, but decided to not make this fact known and instead served as the secret mentor for the teenage time-displaced original five X-men in the pages of X-Men: Blue (2017) #1-28, that is until during the arc during issues #23-28 (collected in the X-Men trade titled Cry Havok) when Magneto is shown disillusioned with trying to be hero because his teenaged wards had run off into space (let the record show this is not the first time that Magneto has been driven back to villainy because his wards have a predilection for running off to space without so much as leaving a note) during a huge international crisis leaving Magneto to pick up the pieces in the only way he knows: being shady. This is then exacerbated when at the end of the arc Magneto is forced to kill brainwashed mutants he was attempting to save, fleeing to the future (there was a time machine in the basement… let’s not go into it) where he learned that him being an asshole is the only way the future will be saved, he then returns to the present seeking revenge on Emma Frost who was complicit in the whole brainwashing mutants thing. The original five X-Men freshly back from space objected to this whole killing Emma Frost thing and Magneto and the original five make their formal break in X-Men: Blue (2017) #31.

We are then shown Magneto fully returning to villainy with the destruction of a research facility, killing all the scientists inside, but because this is Magneto there are sympathetic "trying to prevent the future destruction of mutantkind" motivations behind this, but still kind of a dick move. He is then shown with a new Brotherhood of Mutants on a new Asteroid M (you know the secret asteroid base he has because he is not a dramatic bitch at all) setting him up clearly as a future threat for the X-Men.

Then Uncanny X-Men relaunched with an event called X-Men Disassembled that spanned Uncanny X-Men (2018) #1-10 where Magneto appeared as the brainwashed, bearded minion of Jean Grey's sort of alternate universe son who is now a reality warping messiah figure, Nate Grey AKA X-Man. While Magneto shakes off the brainwashing in Uncanny X-Men #10, joining the X-Men in attacking said reality warping messiah, he, along with every other mutant present, end up sucked into some kind of pocket dimension/alternate universe (it's a little unclear at the moment what exactly it is) and the results of this is being explored in the crossover event Age of X-Man. Magneto specifically is a principal character in the Marvelous X-Men (2019) #1-5 miniseries, which depicts Magneto as a part of the X-Men team in this alternate universe utopia with no memories of the regular universe. He has a half cape with a fluff and is pretty dapper, so I'm a fan. The last few issues have shown him along with the rest of the cast beginning to have flashbacks of the other universe and begin to doubt the Utopia.

This miniseries will be running until sometime in June where we can only assume that all the mutants currently trapped in the pocket dimension will return to the regular universe with their restored memories. It's impossible to know what the exact fallout of this will be.

It seems unlikely to me that Magneto would go back to being an ally of the X-Men after all the build-up to making him a proper "villain" again. They released a whole series dedicated to X-Men "villains" one-shots called X-Men: Black and there was a Magneto issue and the cover of Uncanny X-Men #13 that came out in March sorted Magneto along with other X-Men villains like Sinister, Apocalypse, and Cassandra Nova.

Most likely Magneto coming out of Age of X-Man will go back to being a “villain”, though whether future writers will necessarily follow-up on the story threads that were left dangling by the end of X-Men: Blue, I can only speculate.

For Charles Xavier:

So, Charles is a little easier to explain insofar as he was dead for a lot of the past decade of comics.

For those unaware during the Avengers v. X-Men crossover event back in 2012, Charles Xavier died at the hands of one of his oldest students and son-guy-figure, Scott Summers, in Scott's defense he was possessed by the phoenix force at the time and felt really, really bad about it after (like not bad enough to stop being part of the rad mutant rebelz, but you know, bad).

From thereon Charles would only appear in a limited capacity as some kind of ghost or psychic shadow or whatever you want to call it. Most prominently Red Skull would grave rob his brain and use it to manipulate the world in Uncanny Avengers (2012) eventually leading to the crossover event AXIS.

He'd also pop up as a spirit in heaven alongside Kurt Wagner in Amazing X-Men (2013) #2 and #5 and Charles's son David Haller would spend the majority of X-Men Legacy (2012) fighting against a malicious psychic entity that looked like Charles Xavier but is actually more of a manifestation of David's hatred... or something (the actual details are kept purposely vague).

It's not until Astonishing X-Men (2017) does the actual Charles Xavier appear and even then it's ambiguous until basically the end of the series whether it is really Charles Xavier back (it... mostly is) but in #7 he rejects being called Professor X, saying it doesn't feel right (I mean he's thirty, has hair and is drawn by Phil Noto, it makes a person feel different) and instead adopted the moniker X. At the end of the arc in Astonishing X-Men (2017) #12, Charles forgoes returning to the X-Men, claiming that Kitty was doing fine without him and then wipes everyone's mind who had been involved in the matter except Psylocke (Betsy Braddock), asking her to keep an eye on him and stop him if he's being too shady (sound familiar?) and then just vaguely refers to his "new dream".

Our next and as of writing last time seeing resurrected Charles is in Astonishing X-Men (2017) Annual #1 written by Matthew Rosenberg. It's a standalone story where the four of five original X-Men (Scott wasn't there because he was busy being dead or effectively dead at the time, I mean he was a student of Charles Xavier, he learned from the best) meet up and have a bitchfest about their fucked up lives. This is interrupted by Charles just strolling in, not explaining how he got back, stealing their wine and sort of apologizing for involving them in traumatizing superhero shenanigans.

He then promptly takes them out for some family bonding through more traumatic superhero shenanigans that ends with a warehouse full of people dead. It's capped off with Charles mind-wiping them, but they then get to have a do-over reunion dinner where they show that they can appreciate what they've accomplished instead of dwelling on missed opportunities, which I interpret as Charles's messed up apology to them, which is kind of sweet while being really messed up. Which I think is kind of what this take on Xavier is going for. He was trapped in the astral plane with the Shadow King for effectively centuries so I guess strange coping mechanisms are to be expected.

So with Cyclops back from the dead in Uncanny X-Men (2019) #11, it seems that some kind of reunion between the two is inevitable and it's more of a question of when, under what circumstances and will Scott get to remember it even happened after? With Legion (David Haller) being a part of how Nate Grey was able to suck everyone into Age of X-Man, I wouldn't be surprised if Xavier plays some key role in getting the X-Men back from the Age of X-Men. I really doubt that Xavier will blame Cyclops for the whole killing him dead with cosmic fire thing, but other than that I can't say.

The Charles Xavier we are getting is definitely a darker take on the character who is more comfortable with taking extreme measures, but how exactly this plays into what his "new dream" is remains to be seen. I definitely don't want Xavier to get too much exposure, he really works best right now as an enigma doing his own thing, with the Astonishing X-Men Annual playing this up to good effect with Charles being used sparingly but completely stealing the scene when he does appear. Since Rosenburg that wrote the Annual and is now writing Uncanny X-Men I'm feeling slightly optimistic, though I can't help but be worried that since things established in Astonishing (like Warren being in control of his Archangel persona) was ignored by later writers.

In a previous X-Men Monday on Adventures in Poor Taste (http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2019/03/04/x-men-monday-featuring-jordan-d-white-2-nightcrawlers-soul-sacrificial-goats-and-weezer/) senior editor in charge of the X-Men line at Marvel, Jordan White mentioned that Professor X will be back and play an important role in the future of the line and included an image of X, but absolutely no more context on what his role might be. So at least he doesn't seem lost in limbo.

In the back of my head I can't help but vaguely hope that since this Xavier is darker and seems to be cleaning up loose ends in secret that might threaten his students that we could see him joining up in some capacity with newly villainous Magneto since we've had Magneto join Xavier's side several times but never seen the reverse. That could at least be novel, but at the same time I can't really see Charles fighting against his old students even if he thought it was in their best interest as we saw in his emotional breakdown during Avengers v. X-Men.

From what we’ve seen of the promo materials from House of X/Powers of X, I kind of doubt that direction, Hickman has been making vague references to X trying to take the X-Men in a new direction, I guess that “new dream” vaguely referred to at the end of Astonishing.

All of this being a long-winded 1.5k way to say: we'll have to wait and see.

#x-men #professor x #magneto #x-men comics

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