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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 135085
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 5:51am | IP Logged | 1
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Plus General Immortus had a past with the Chief similar to Xavier and Magneto but I guess again that would be more like Reed and Doom come to think of it.•• Especially since Magneto's past relationship with Xavier was a much, much, much later retcon. After MY time on X-MEN, in fact!
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Keith Thomas
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 3082
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 7:19am | IP Logged | 2
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Magneto's past is so convoulted now (Magnus, Eric Lehnsherr, Max Eisenhardt), what should it be JB? Was his past ever discussed while you were on the book? I think I read where Stan Lee now says he intended him to be Xavier's brother...
Edited by Keith Thomas on 23 February 2010 at 7:21am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 7:39am | IP Logged | 3
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I very much doubt that Stan intended Magneto to be Xavier's brother -- mostly because Stan would not be likely to REMEMBER it, if he did! (And that's not a knock. Stan has never been coy about his terrible memory.)Magneto was introduced as a cypher, and a cypher he should have remained. That does not mean certain elements could not be added to his story -- such as revealing him to be the father of Wanda and Pietro (altho that was also meant to be forever an "open secret") -- but nothing retroactive. And especially not by writers who are not familiar with the EXISTING backstory, such as it is!
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Michael Penn
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Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13022
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 8:51am | IP Logged | 4
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A major aspect of Magneto's appeal as a villain is that there's no backstory to it. Stan presented him straightforwardly as a perfectly BAD guy -- I've got mutant powers, that makes me fit to rule, to enslave, ordinary humans, and that's it, that's my mission, be-all, end-all. Stand in my way and be crushed. Simple, direct, amazing! Having him possibly be the father of Wanda and Pietro, that's just a minor tweak. The character remains who he was, perfectly. And "tweak" is not meant derogatorily! These kinds of decidedly small-scale "adjustments" are all on the level of super-fine tuning. Nothing essential is touched in any way. But a good comicbook writer can take even a little tiny tweak and make an excellent story out of it.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 9:18am | IP Logged | 5
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When I suggested that Magneto was the true father of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, it quickly revealed itself to be one of those moments of what we used to call "Marvel Serendipity" -- where something was suggested, and when we looked, we found all the "parts" were laid out as if the suggestion was the INTENDED outcome.There have been fewer and fewer such moments, over the years, as writers have focused more and more on leaving their "mark" on characters and books, rather than building on what already exists.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 9:25am | IP Logged | 6
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I would hazard to guess that the Doom Patrol's Brotherhood of Evil came first.++ Just did a web search...looks like BOTH debuted in March of 1964. Weird! •• There have been so many such oddities, over the years. Consider these two issues, both shipped around the same time in 1974. (SWAMP THING was bimonthly) 
As if the illustrations on the covers were not close enough, open 'em up and find splash pages that both show the monstrous hero standing in the foreground gazing off at the ruins of the building where his "origin" occurred.
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Michael Todd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 September 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 4114
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 9:28am | IP Logged | 7
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It`s parallel!
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James Johnson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 2205
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 9:49am | IP Logged | 8
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It's Amalgam Universe:
Swamp-Man!
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Brad Krawchuk
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2006
Location: Canada
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 11:34am | IP Logged | 9
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James - I think you mean Thing-Thing!
As for Doom Patrol, I'm enjoying the current series in so much as it's the only Doom Patrol I've ever read. So a bunch of quasi-self-hating people who love each-other and a rampant ego-maniac in a wheelchair leading them is what I know, but the stories are well told and entertaining enough. I like the banter between Cliff and Larry, the Chief seems like a prick, and Rita is the heart of the team.
Now, my enjoyment could change in an instant. I see a set of JB's Doom Patrol and you know I'm going to be picking that up! I may even try a Showcase of the 60's stuff if there is one - and that's saying a lot considering I usually wait for more expensive colour reprints.
If, in the end, the only good thing I have to say about the current Doom Patrol is that it got me interested in the characters long enough to start looking into them a little deeper, then so be it. I didn't know the real FF until I read Lee/Kirby, I didn't know the real X-Men until I read the first Uncanny Omnibus and then, later, the first Omnibus of the 60's material. It's usually at that point I quit reading the modern versions because the ones from before are so much better - and the same thing may happen with the Doom Patrol.
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Jason Czeskleba
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | 10
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Keith Thomas wrote:
| I think I read where Stan Lee now says he intended him to be Xavier's brother... |
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Aside from that, Stan has also claimed he didn't think of Magneto as a villain, and that he thought of Professor X and Magneto as analogous to MLK and Malcolm X even back in the 60s. Clearly, this is a case of the tail wagging the dog of Stan's memory. In the 60's, Magneto was quite obviously a Hitler analogue, one of the many that WWII vet Kirby created or co-created. Believing he was part of a master race, wanting to enslave those of the "inferior" race. How much more Hitler can you get? Turning him into a Holocaust survivor is hilariously ironic.
Regarding Man-Thing and Swamp-Thing... the most amazing coincidence is that Gerry Conway and Len Wein were actually roommates at the time they were writing the respective first appearances of those two characters, yet they didn't talk about it and neither one was aware of what the other was doing until the issues hit the stands.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | 11
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Aside from that, Stan has also claimed he didn't think of Magneto as a villain, and that he thought of Professor X and Magneto as analogous to MLK and Malcolm X even back in the 60s. Clearly, this is a case of the tail wagging the dog of Stan's memory. In the 60's, Magneto was quite obviously a Hitler analogue, one of the many that WWII vet Kirby created or co-created. Believing he was part of a master race, wanting to enslave those of the "inferior" race. How much more Hitler can you get? Turning him into a Holocaust survivor is hilariously ironic.•• One of the key points I set for myself when doing HIDDEN YEARS was that I would treat all the characters as they had been in the original run of X-MEN. As I put it at the time, if Marvel decided to reveal that Xavier was really a Skrull, it would make no nevermind to me, as he did not behave in any way that suggested such a thing back during the time period my stories would in habit. Obviously, this made things a lot easier when dealing with Magneto!
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Matthew McCallum
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Joined: 03 July 2004
Location: Canada
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| Posted: 23 February 2010 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | 12
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I'd always wondered if model for the "wheelchair bound genius" -- both the Chief and Professor Xavier -- was somehow related to Dr. Strangelove. However, given that the movie premiered in January 1964 that blows that theory out of the water. Which gives rise to a new question: Was there a "wheelchair bound genius" that was the basis for all three characters?
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