History: Long before he learned of his mutant powers, the charismatic subversive now known as Magneto felt the bitter sting of discrimination. He spent his youth interred at the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, Poland, and was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. To Magnus, this experience bluntly and irrevocably demonstrated the potential for inhumanity of an intolerant majority. After World War II, Magnus married Magda, a gypsy girl he had rescued from Auschwitz. Their first child, Anya, was born several years later. When a mob prevented the couple from rescuing their young daughter from a fire, Magnus lashed out with his fledgling mutant abilities. In a white-hot moment of rage and pain, he killed his attackers and several onlookers. A terrified Magda fled, never having revealed that she was pregnant.
Arriving in Israel, Magnus worked as a volunteer orderly at a psychiatric hospital near Haifa that treated Holocaust survivors. There, he befriended Charles Xavier, a young mutant telepath. Xavier held fast to his optimistic belief that homo sapiens and homo superior could coexist, while Magnus foresaw mutants as the new minority to be persecuted for their differences. He desperately tried to share his friend's hope, however, even as his sanity slowly began to ebb. Eventually losing his grip, Magnus began planning his campaign against what he perceived to be the inferior species of man. He swore history would not repeat itself. Determined to conquer the human race and prevent the oppression of his kind, Magnus became known to the world as the genetic terrorist Magneto and enlisted the aid of those with like minds, dubbing them as the Brotherhood. But his first public move in his war with humanity was thwarted by Xavier's team of X-Men at Liberty Island.
Magneto was subsequently imprisoned for awhile until Mystique freed him using her unique talents. Posing as his lawyer, she quickly broke Magnus from his plastic cell. Once free, he accepted an invitation to stay with his protegee Sinister for awhile in the Savage Land. Mangneto currently resides on Asteroid M where he's planning his next devious plot for mutant dominace. |
