Mags Facts

Are you a fan of the Master of Magnetism? Well, we've got One Dozen Magneto Facts for ya!

1. In a 2008 interview, Magneto's creator Stan Lee claimed he never saw Magneto as a villain, but as a man trying to defend his people in less than positive ways. Magneto's alignment has been a topic of change over the character's history. Sometimes Magneto is a mutant terrorist striking humanity out of spite and defense for his people. Other times he has renounced his hatred for humanity and agreed to side with The X-Men and their goals of peace with humanity. Even in 1984's "Secret Wars" when The Beyonder summoned both heroes and villains to combat, Magneto was put with the heroes because The Beyonder did not see the difference between his goals and The X-Men's goals.

2. Magneto's was born in the late 1920's and has the distinctive origin of being a Jewish child in Germany during World War II. It was his experiences during the Holocaust that shaped his ideology. Due to his origin, he is one of the only Marvel characters with a set age, as changing his year of birth would alter his origin story. If this year of birth is still to be believed it would mean Magneto is in his late 80's to early 90's.

3. Magneto has had four children. His lover Magna delivered twins before her death, twins that would meet Magneto later in life, Wanda and Pietro. The twins would grow up to be The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver respectively. The briefly joined Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before renouncing evil and joining The Avengers. However, in 2014 it was revealed Wanda and Pietro were not his biological children and the twins were never mutants, but instead children biologically altered by The High Evolutionary. It was thought this change was made by Marvel Editorial because of the shared movie rights for Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver between Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox.

4. The third child was Lorna Dane, a child Magneto had with another woman and left behind. In her teenage years she would join The X-Men and use the name Polaris as her mutant ability was magnetism like her father. Before the birth of Wanda and Pietro, Magna and Magneto had a daughter named Anya, but an angry mob burned down their house while Anya was inside and the prevented Magneto from saving her.

5. Due to the marriages of his children over the years, Magneto has been related to The Vision, Crystal of The Inhumans, and Cyclops' brother Havok. He also temporarily had two grandsons when The Vision and Scarlet Witch used magic to create children, but they were later recreated as The Young Avengers Speed and Wiccan.

6. Magneto's birth name is Max Eisenhardt. After escaping Nazi Germany he ran off with Magna and used the name "Magnus". After Magna's death, he changed his named to "Erik Lehnsherr". He has also used the disguise "Michael Xavier" while leading The X-Men as Professor X's cousin. He's used the super-villain identity Erik The Red. During "The Onslaught Saga" his mind melded with Professor X's mind and created the psychic super-villain Onslaught.

7. Magneto's strangest relationship lies between himself and Rogue. Beginning during a mission to The Savage Land-a prehistoric island where mutant superpowers become inactive-the two shared physical interactions due to Rogue's powers being gone. In 1996, a clone of Magneto named Joseph was also romantically involved with Rogue. In the series "Exiles", one of the teammates of the first Exiles team was Magnus Lehnsherr who came from a reality where Magneto and Rogue got married and lived in The Savage Lands and raised a son there. He dies in issue one of "Exiles" and never returns.

8. In 1975, the band Wings released a single called "Venus and Mars/Rock Show" and the B-side of the record had a song called "Magneto and Titanium Man". The song was written by Paul McCartney and was a musical story about Magneto, The Titanium Man, and Crimson Dynamo. McCartney had apparently been a huge fan of Marvel Comics and had met both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Stan Lee even said the song was "terrific". The Roots played the song as walk-on music for Michael Fassbender during his appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon" to promote "X-Men: Days of Future Past".

9. In 1992, The X-Men got their own beat-em-up arcade game made by Konami. This game's dated form of voice recording led to several infamous quotes by the final boss, Magneto. He calls the player an "X-Chicken", calls himself "The Master of Magnet", and greets the player with "Welcome to Die". The last quote is a result of poor voice timing as the sequence when Magneto says "Welcome to" is cut off by the sequence when he orders the player to "die".

10. During the production of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", the Origins series was to continue with "X-Men Origins: Magneto". However, due to the first film being a poorly received and Magneto's history being covered in "X-Men: First Class", the project was shelved.

11. Magneto's bases include Asteroid M-a huge, hallow, space-faring structure created from metal to circle the globe. Genosha was an island used for slave trading until Magneto liberated it and turned it into a nation exclusively for mutants. Genosha had been destroyed and rebuilt twice over, as had a Asteroid M which once became the island Utopia. His current home is a mansion on the fictional oriental island of Madripoor.

12. Writer Grant Morrison created a new X-Men character named Xorn in the mid-2000's. Xorn was a Chinese mutant with a skull mask that contained his raw mental abilities. Later, Xorn betrayed The X-Men, killed Jean Grey, and revealed himself to be Magneto in disguise. However, Marvel Editorial liked the character of Xorn so much they urged Grant to bring him back despite invalidating his previous story. When Grant refused, Editorial had another writer establish that Xorn wasn't Magneto, but he was manipulated by Magneto to pretend to be him and attack The X-Men. Then-because Xorn was dead-another Xorn appeared claiming to be that Xorn's twin brother. Grant Morrison hasn't written an X-Men story since.
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