Magneto: Testament Part 3

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers.

Here is part three of my X-Men: Magneto Testament mega-post.

Warning: this post might not be safe for work because of scenes of the Holocaust.

Max has arrived at Auschwitz and now must survive. I've included a scene that another poster described as "One sentence explains .... well, everything." I agree.






Max has arrived at the camp. During the induction process he runs into Herr Kalb, his old teacher. Kalb is a worker there now and warns Max to say he's eighteen and he wants to work.

Then he is "processed"



Max survives and tries to help others his age but to no avail. He runs into Kalb again who gives him a warning, "But there's no place for heroes here, Max. God himself turns his face from us. So listen closely, now..." Kalb is with the Kanada Kommando. They sort the belongings of new arrivals. He warns Max about the camp. "They'll kill you if you break the rules...but do everything just as they say, and you'll starve to death within a month."

Max continues to find and trade metals for food until the day a Kapo comes for him with a new work assignment.

Kalb and Max join an officer and a group of new arrivals.



Max and Kalb load up the clothes in a cart.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando

Max is reeling from this. Kalb tells Max he'll get him out of the camp, no matter what it takes. Max is given a box of eyeglasses and shown to a room.





These pages are the ones I mentioned up the cut.









In line for work, Max walk toward the fence-line, which is a common suicide method in the camps. If you go to the fence, you'll be shot. As he approaches he sees something start to shine and he sees....

Magda.



Max walks away saying her name.

Next, the conclusion.

Comments

[silverzeo]

... how did Mag handle that look a like that took his image as he prepared his own holocaust?

[crabby_lioness]

How many abuse survivors go on to become abusers?

[ian_karkull]

This, to me is Morrison's take on Magneto in a nutshell.

[domino_blue]

This is one of the most fascinating mini series I've read, though I will say at times you can changes the names and there would be not much to connect this to Magneto, on the other hand reading some it his thoughts, I can almost see Magneto rising to the surface.

[proteus_lives]

"reading some it his thoughts, I can almost see Magneto rising to the surface."

The conclusion will have another important scene that connects to that letter.

[silverzeo]

I had a class today that talk about the branding at these camps (as well as the people who had to do that dirty work just to live) and how all the witness of the this... inhumanity are passing away... which make me think... should Magneto still live afterward? Being the last living survivor of the Holocaust would be a interesting story, seeing if he can help draw out or destroy the shreds of humanity for humanity that Magento has. But still.. all stories have to come to an end...

[proteus_lives]

"should Magneto still live afterward? "

Well, the Xverse would be a poorer place.

[icon_uk]

Actually, I'm not sure about that, when Magneto was, to all intents and purposes, dead in the Morrison run. he became a much more interesting character as a sort of martyr figure than he had been for years. The Che Guevara of the mutant set as it were.

[glprime]

"Don't let this ever happen again..."

Unless the next time *we* get the swanky uniforms, and racial superiority, and killing women and children.

It's a great work, but as was said, is really a story that could be told apart from the Marvel character, and it hardly meshes with the megalomaniac supervillain of the earlier stories. It's sort of like seeing Hayden trying to make Anakin Skywalker some kind decent human being, but the morality change gulf between that and what you've seen before is so huge, you can't really believe it.

I can get Mags living through this hell and becoming a vengeful, cold shell, but the older stories peg him as taking on a lot of the ideologies the supremacists to a level that borders on Stockholm syndrome.

The "Holocaust survivor" retcon just never sat well with me, because of how sadistic certain writers took Magneto, versus this "rehumanizing" as it were. He went from an idealistic leader with Charles to a bloodthirsty psychopath, and even trying to whitewash the more outlandish stories, a lot of the strong stuff was showing how powerful and dangerous he was (compared to Charles Xavier and his largely peaceful/diplomatic tactics).

[punishermax]

I guess it could be the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" thing coming to pass. I mean, Magneto is absurdly powerful and when you have a past as utterly horrific and nightmarish as this and suddenly you have the power to destroy entire armies singlehandedly there's a chance for a mental break.

Humans can rationalize anything, so it's entirely possible that he rationalized his own hatred and attempts at extermination of humans as some sort of revenge or pre emptive strike action.

Keep in mind I'm pretty ignorant of X-Men in general apart from some general knowledge and other things so excuse me if I'm talking like a big dumbbass.

[drmcninja]

Well, if you are, then I am equally so. I agree, mostly. Here we see Max as a normal human being, with no more than an inkling about what kind of power he has.

Imagine living through this, then waking up one morning and realizing that you have enough power to have ended this single handedly, but couldnt? I dont think its that far of a tretch to see that now that he IS genetically different, he could make the conclusion that he needs to stop this from happening again before it starts. Especially with his new people.

And as for his personality, the only thing I can com up with is that I go by kind of select-canon. The events actually happened, but Magneto has different motives or ideas behind the scenes. I never really took him for such an radical terrorist. I took him as a more aggressive version of the man he was modeled after: Malcolm X. A militant revolutionary, but certainly not a straight up radical terrorist.

[crabby_lioness]

How many abuse survivors go on to become abusers? It's a powerful and seductive template that takes hard and dedicated work to overcome.

[tsunamiwombat]

You can't really blame the character for the actions of hack writers. It happens to all IP that isn't creator controlled, inevitably.

Also, in Anakin Skywalkers defense, Haydens major 'gulf' in that roll is in trying to portray a human being, the man was handed an excretable script and acted around inside a wet paper bag for a few hours.

Just couldn't break out of it.

[blackruzsa]

Which one is Kalb, again?

And seriously, this is absolutely powerful, especially every time you link the event mentioned at the end of each page.

[drmcninja]

Kalb is his teacher, the one who t ought him how to live in the Camp, and survive at his school. To be honest, its a much more powerful scene if you read the book, because the cropping constraints seem to have cut out almost everything with him.

On Sonderkommandos...

[nikariot.wordpress.com]

From what I know about the sonderkommados (which I actually learned this morning while doing reading for a midterm on human rights, so it's kinda fresh in my mind) they were set up at Auschwitz numbered from 700 to 1,000 members at any given time. They operated for a few months, after which the SS made sure that each squad was killed to the last man and disposed of by the succeeding generation. There were a total of 12 squads, the last of which rebelled in October of 1944, blowing up a crematoria. A few of the individuals of this squad survived.

This information comes from the article "The Gray Zone" by Primo Levi.

Considering these facts....Max could never have survived for 2 years working in the Sonderkommados...

This is just something that kinda bothered me and I wanted to address it. (DELURKING?!)

Re: On Sonderkommandos...

[proteus_lives]

Max survived the same way he survived in the Warsaw ghetto. Finding, stealing, smuggling and paying off guards and kapos.

"There were a total of 12 squads, the last of which rebelled in October of 1944, blowing up a crematoria. A few of the individuals of this squad survived."

That's part of the concluding post.

Re: On Sonderkommandos...

[crabby_lioness]

PL isn't posting the whole thing, but for a prisoner Max is stinkin' rich because of all the metal he "finds". He's got the guards bribed to leave him alone as much as possible and to bring in a limited amount of medical supplies for his friend the nurse (originally mentioned in the Claremont run, who remembered "all the good you did in the camp".) There isn't a lot of material goods his bribes can buy because there isn't a lot available in the first place in Germany at this stage of the war, but he can buy a lot of "blindness" as you'll see in the concluding part.

The SS were very diligent when the war began. Now that the war is winding down, they're becoming more desperate and corrupt.

[tsunamiwombat]

I'd like to point out to the people complaining about how facist and race dominant Max becomes later in life two things.

The first thing is from an OOC perspective. We need to remember the nature of comicbooks, especially in the era Max came about, had characters fall under dozens of different writers, who might slant or abuse a characterization for their own benefit. Max was a supervillain in an era of cardboard cutout supervillains, in addition to being subjected to the usual rigamarole of hack writers.

The second thing i'd like to point out is at no point is it implied Max ever recieves counciling for the many trauma's he endured as a survivor of the holocaust, and has been mentioned many times the abused can -easily- become the abuser. Magneto's behavior is ultimatly, and always has been, a child angrily lashing out at the world that killed his papa. Logic does not necessarily follow an orderly train for such a mind, no matter how brilliant.

Also, hey, maybe the magnetic fields mess with his brains electrical chemistry and make him bypolar. Yeah okay thats a stretch.

[valtyr]

His first daughter was also killed by an angry mob.

[proteus_lives]

"Also, hey, maybe the magnetic fields mess with his brains electrical chemistry and make him bypolar. Yeah okay thats a stretch."

It's been stated in several storylines that Magneto's powers are hard on him mentally.

[crabby_lioness]

And Magda has been shown to have needed counseling even worse than he did. She's barely holding it together for Anya's sake. When Anya dies she falls to pieces.

[tsunamiwombat]

PS: When I look at the Nazi Kommandant, all I can think is, "Gentlemen- it has been said that I like war..."

[chocochuy]

It is never just you.

[blunderbuss]

Oh dear mother of god that double-page spread of the eyeglasses.

Out of all the images I've seen of the Holocaust, nothing chills me more than the collections of glasses, coats, or shoes. It's so much more horrifying, somehow, to see that each of these objects all represented PEOPLE, and all that's left of them is being pawned away to fuel the Nazi death machine. Brilliant, brilliant artwork.