Lenses Tinted Red

There is no good or evil without perceptive. A man stealing a someone's money is a crime to the public, but to the man it is simply an act of desperate survival. This week I will go over villains in comic books who have struggled with morals and believe their actions to be the righteous path. To start this journey of villainy, turn your attention to the Master of Magnets himself, Magneto.

On the surface, Magneto is a Mutant who aims to lead his kind into rulership over the human race. He has raised a Brotherhood of Mutants to follow his cause and will stop at nothing to protect his kind. What you may not know is that Magneto is a Holocaust Survivor. Present for the Nazis rise to power, Max Eisenhardt-Magneto's birth name-witnessed the execution of his family. His manifesting powers allowed him to escape and survive multiple encounters with the Nazi forces, but no distance between them could separate Max from tragedy. After escaping a concentration camp with his lover Magda, Max settled down with her in a Ukrainian city and became a father. When the city people learned of Max's powers, they burned down his house and prevented him from saving his daughter inside. Enraged over the death of his child, Max unleashed his magnetic powers to kill the mob of people and destroy half the city. In fear of Max's abilities, Magda left him. Max took the name Erik Lehnsherr and relocated to Israel, it was there he met Professor Charles Xaiver. Both mutants with different beliefs, the two friends constantly argued over how mutants should effect the world. While Charles believed humans and mutants could live as equals, Erik's experiences convinced him that mankind will always destroy each other in fear of what is different. The two ended their friendship and continued on vastly different paths. Charles founded The X-Men to protect both man and mutant, Erik proceeded to make his stand against mankind as Magneto. Within the X-Men comic books, the alignment of mutants would be between Xaiver and Magneto, a decision that would question their morals beyond all else.

Magneto is not a super villain, he is the personification of an ideal. The doubt in humanities' ability to establish peace is common among most people, to many the idea of conflict and hate is infinite. While the dream of having a completely equal society isn't impossible, it may be unrealistic. An antagonist is simply a character designed to compete with the hero or heroes of a story, but characters like Magneto reach a different significance. He is a character devised to make readers think, to question the beliefs and morals of others by instilling his history upon them. Can we say Magneto's goals are wrong if we lack an understanding of what the world has done to him? Characters like these are the reason I love comic books, because it is within comics that we see such fleshed out personalities that seem real. It is within characters like Magneto that we ask ourselves, "What is evil". Thank you for reading.