I don’t know why but this is one of my most rec’d books. It’s not like I wasn’t aware of it before people started telling me to read it as I did try reading it three, maybe four years ago, but I stopped after a couple issues and never rated it. Anyhoo, to stop the recs for this ‘un I finally read the bugger and here be me thoughts on X-Men: Magneto Testament:
‘s ok… YA HAPPY NOW!?!1 Alright, I’ll do it proper.
Didja ever see the first X-Men movie? That opening scene at Auschwitz, the Jewish kid gets separated from his parents by ze Germans, the trauma activates his mutant powers revealing the boy to be the legendary Marvel villain, Magneto – that’s essentially this book. I suspected as much on my first reading attempt and that’s why I didn’t bother finishing. And really that succinct scene is all the origin Magneto needs, making this overlong book, that tells the same story, completely redundant.
Then again, given the teacher’s lesson plans included at the back, I’m guessing this isn’t intended to be just an origin story but more of an accessible entry point to teach youngsters about the Holocaust. And in that regard, the book provides a decent overview of that horrific event and I imagine for readers unfamiliar with the subject that this would be gripping and informative to learn about.
Except I’ve studied the Third Reich, Hitler’s rise to power and the persecution of the Jews at university-level, and have read several books and seen numerous films, TV shows and documentaries on the subject so there’s nothing new here for me; I was just being reminded, in a very cursory and basic way, of what I’ve already long known.
The book doesn’t offer much more than a timeline leading to Auschwitz. As you might expect for a book intended to highlight the Holocaust, Magneto is underwritten as a character and is mostly a passive bystander. In fact, if this weren’t published by Marvel or have X-Men and Magneto in the title, this could easily be read as a non-superhero history comic – his powers are so subtly hinted at that readers who don’t know the character at all are unlikely to notice when they’re used.
He has a weak romance subplot with a gypsy girl and his Jewish family are badly treated – it’s all so predictable and unimaginative. Still, I couldn’t help but be moved at seeing the extent of the suffering the Nazis victims endured, regardless of how many times I’ve heard the stories of the death camps.
It’s skilful but I wasn’t that taken with Carmine Di Giandomenico’s art, whose characters all looked a bit too similar and the sad, overly cartoonish eyes seemed gratuitously maudlin. The subject matter alone is powerful enough, you don’t need to try to manipulate the reader into feeling even more sympathy for the persecuted.
Also included is a short comic with art by industry legends Neal Adams and Joe Kubert about Dina Babbitt, the artist who painted portraits of Josef Mengele’s victims at Auschwitz under duress, and her attempts to procure her paintings back from the Auschwitz Museum in the decades after the war. I can’t say I feel that strongly about the matter, particularly as I can see why the Museum would want to keep them – to use them as teaching tools to continue to educate and bring the memories of that time to life – and I’m not sure what better things Babbitt would’ve done with them herself anyway. I really don’t have a dog in this fight and she’s been dead for a few years now anyway so…
Don’t pick this one up expecting your usual Marvel comic or even that captivating an origin story for Magneto – Greg Pak really doesn’t do anything that wasn’t done better in that scene from Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie – but X-Men: Magneto Testament is good as a kind of primer to those who don’t already know about the Holocaust or the nightmare that was Auschwitz. Still, Maus remains the definitive comic on the Holocaust and I would recommend both that and Reinhard Kleist’s The Boxer over Magneto Testament, especially as The Boxer tells the same story but far better.