The Trial of Magneto #1-2: Dial M for Wanda

[superboyprime]

"When has Magneto ever allowed bureaucracy to get between himself and what’s just? In the island paradise of Krakoa, safe haven and home for mutants — Magneto’s hard-fought, greatest desire of seeing his people at peace and thriving has finally been achieved. But Magneto’s loyalty extends only as far as it is first earned, so after the Hellfire Gala, when he learns that even a paradise could still be filled with lies… the ‘Trial of Magneto’ will begin." - Leah Williams

Comments

[onsokumaru]

Still mad that X-Factor's end and Prodigy's story arc were botched for another Magneto family drama.

[tinygaylaura]

Mystique's expression here as she enjoys all this drama is hilarious

[gnarll]

I would have expected her to call for a recess and make a trade with Magneto -Wanda for Destiny. He suddenly needed votes very, very badly.

[tinygaylaura]

I don't think she'd trust any promise she was given at this point

[scelestus]

With good reason, I'd say.

[deepspaceartist]

... What's the chances Mystique is behind Wanda's murder somehow? Like this is a plot to destabilize Magneto as the opening act of her following through on Destiny's 'burn it all down' instructions?

[remial]

about the same as the odds of the sun rising tomorrow

[tinygaylaura]

I mean I would not be shocked and neither would anyone else who knows Mystique well

"This is gonna be you isn't it

I'm

I'm gonna find out who the killer is and it's gonna be you"

"Strong possibility"

[arilou_skiff]

Ah, the eight-pointed Star of Chaos.

[donnblake]

Are... are we about to find out that the infographics are actually manifestations of a predatory dimension that's been preying on Krakoan society?

[lordy_co]

....damn, now I'm kinda wishing Kiero Gillen was writing this.

[thornsilver]

Wow, that red window prose is so purple...

[donnblake]

So I think the general description of Krakoa as a cult has largely been in error (which is a different question than whether there are aspects of Krakoa's emergent culture that deserve criticism).

And Magneto's grieving, and reasonably pissed off about the decision to leave his sometime daughter dead.

All of which being said: what he's doing right there, that "Any criticism of my actions is necessarily based in a mode of thinking that membership in our in-group requires you to publicly distance yourself from," rhetoric? That "You wouldn't be made at me for assaulting people who disagree with me if you were only more enlightened?" That is textbook cult leader.

[tinygaylaura]

Well, you spend that much time around Charles Xavier, you pick up some bad habits

[donnblake]

And to be clear, I still don't think this qualifies Krakoa as a cult. If Magneto's talking like a cult leader, he's manifestly failing to lead Krakoa anywhere in the scans shown.

But that is exactly the sort of response that actual cult survivors report getting when they say things like "Maybe given that I'm working full time selling your seminars, and also paying thousands of dollars to take seminars with you, we could talk about me getting some sort of payment?"

(I mean, not usually "human," although I'm sure there's someone out there.)

[tinygaylaura]

Magneto is used to being in a position where when he's in charge he's in charge and that's it or being on his own and not having to care about other peoples opinions and I think that's why he doesn't deal well in a situation where his decisions are under a microscope like this

[phantomfo]

Dude used to run a group that called themselves the Acolytes. He seemed to have a handle on things already.

[tinygaylaura]

To be fair it was more like other characters ran the Acolytes in Magneto's name. First it was Fabian Cortez and then it was Exodous

[scorntx]

-"And yet I know that I am not dead."-

Oh, good. She's not dead after all.
So can we go now?

(laughing at Pietro yelling at Magneto for not showing concern for Wanda when he was the one who pushed her into creating the House of M world, then spent half the next decade refusing to take any responsibility for that.
Well, laughing might not be the right word. Unless it's a very angry sort of laughing, where someone's also holding something sharp in one hand...)

[chalicother]

Meh....

I liked Magneto and Xavier being on the same side.
Also seeing that other characters had their stories stopped for this..

Maybe it will be good if Scarlet Witch and Pietro get thier mutant status back..

So is Prodigy telling Speed about this...since they are dating...right ?

Who's telling Billy ?

Hope they show Vision at least attending to them...

[lordy_co]

I liked Magneto and Xavier being on the same side.
Agreed, it was one of the most interesting aspects of this era. I also share your feelings that dragging lots of characters to more "are the Maximoffs mutants this week?" drama is unnecessary.

[shakalooloo]

Does Magneto's helmet still block telepathy? If it does, is it preventing Cerebro from making back-ups of his brain?

[deepspaceartist]

Knowing Magneto, I can imagine he takes it off to let a backup be made once a month and/or right before he goes into danger, and accepts any memories that may be lost if he unexpectedly dies as an acceptable price to pay to protect himself from telepathic interference.

[tinygaylaura]

I don't care how straight Janet Van Dyne thinks she is she looked long enough to question it when Emma "Greeted" them here

Christ if Emma Frost sashayed at me like that my reaction would be "Murder? What murder?" and I'd just want to spend more time with this fucktacular X-MILF

Moving on from my desire to live the plot of a Kink.com porn shoot with Emma and her clones

I like that Hope thinks Xavier is full of shit here. I hope Inferno leads to Xavier being removed from power on Krakoa and the Quiet Council replaces him with someone better. Hope seems a good choice. She is literally Hope for the future that's the kind of on the nose shit that comic book writers adore and if I'm not being a cynical cow I can admit I love it too

And we know she can do what Xavier does but better because she's not Xavier after this months issue of New Mutants

[dcbanacek]

Yeah Northstar would have honest and sincere sympathy for Quicksilver in this moment.

He too knows the pain of having an "unwell" sister.

Speaking of, where's Aurora been?

[scorntx]

She showed up in X-Factor, where she died a bit, then started dating Daken for... some reason.

[mastermahan]

To be fair, making bad romantic decisions is probably Aurora's most consistent character trait.

[alliterator]

She's actually a member of X-Factor and is dating Daken. You can see her in some of the scenes in issue 2.

[tinygaylaura]

She's doing much bettter these days at coping with her mental health and she also has a better control over her powers as well

It's good to see things going well for her

[gnarll]

It is possible the five decided to resurrect Wanda and overrule the council In which case Hopes wanting to keep them from seeing the body makes sense.

This does not seem like Magneto though. Getting punched by an ex, despite his shields? Shileds thats taken on Proteus, Galactus, entire teams of Avengers, etc

This feels like Joseph.`Or someone else who hasn't had the powers long enough to figure out shields.

Sala Dane may well be resurrected by now. And if the five have decided that resurrection authority rests with them, given their concerns in New Mutants, they could easily have brought Joseph back.

[mastermahan]

It is possible the five decided to resurrect Wanda and overrule the council In which case Hopes wanting to keep them from seeing the body makes sense.

I think that's how we're meant to read it. The comic ends with Wanda pulling a very surprised Vision into a kiss. Seeing how A) they haven't been together in years, and B) We were told how old her backup is...

[tinygaylaura]

Dying and coming back as an older version of yourself did wonders for Tony Stark in the whole "Suddenly he's not responsible for all the messed up stuff he did" so maybe it'll improve Wanda's reputation as well

If it means we can at last move past House of M I'll take it

[tinygaylaura]

Now that's a thought I had not considered what if Joseph isn't as dead as we thought and he's the one who framed Magneto?

He's physically and genetically identical to him and has the same powers. It would be very easy for him to frame Magneto for a crime and he's done it before

[gnarll]

It is true. But I think only the "separation of books" thing is what keeps Onslaught from being suspect number one.

On motive, he has been known to try to leech of powerful reality warpers, and Wanda might have been able to percieve him. We've seen before that this leads to extreme murder reactions from him.

On means, he has the powers of both Xavier and Magneto. We know from HoM that Xavier can suppress Wandas powers for a while. It could have played out exactly as shown, with a powerless Wanda running away.

And he always has opportunity.

[mastermahan]

Look, Emma, be glad Steve said "Ma'am" and not "Mom".

It was established back in the Civil War era that Emma and Tony used to hook up. Then again, Tony's gotten some mindwipes since then - he might not recall.

Meanwhile, the Vision is paying more attention to the hostile-looking crowd of mutants standing in front of a tree with stairs.

[tinygaylaura]

Thankfully Emma has realised she can do better

Especially now she's got the all you can eat sexual buffet that is Krakoa to enjoy

The Cuckoos are the only ones allowed to refer to Emma as mom

She is however okay with being called "Daddy" in certain situations. Especially by Jean or Kate

[donnblake]

"This guided tour is about to walk our guests into our most important, deeply guarded secrets!" Feels like a problem that probably could have been avoided with very little advance planning being necessary...

[bruinsfan]

"Oh noes! Why did we lay out our infrastructure so that all the Krakoan gates exit through our secret mutant-resurrecting chamber?"

[tinygaylaura]

I'm not sure why its a secret to be honest

Everyone comes back to life in superhero comics

I can name twenty characters off the top of my head who didn't even stay dead for a decade

And that's a decade in REAL time

So in the Marvel universes comic book time they must have been dead for, at most, maybe a year or two?

[donnblake]

Yeah, the significance of Krakoan resurrection, in-universe, would seem less to be the fact that it allows coming back from death, and more the fact that they've stopped pretending (at least amongst themselves) it's unusual.

[tinygaylaura]

It's not unusual to bring back someone who died

(da-da-da-da-da-daaaaa)

It's not ususual

To come back from the other side

[lordy_co]

Just a thought my boyfriend shared when we were reading this together: why would Hope, who was raised to be a soldier by Cable of all people, object to some mental probing? The comic is trying too hard to make us dislike both Magneto and Xavier.