“Yesterday’s” Comic> Magneto And The Magnetic Men

Amalgam Magneto’s hero is Dr. Light.

Magneto And The Magnetic Men

Amalgam (Marvel; April, 1996)

When the Brotherhood of Mutants were killed battling his brother’s Sentinels (you might remember Will Magnus from the JLX review…in fact Mister X makes a cameo), Erik Magnus recreates them as the robotic Magnetic Men–Cobalt, Nickel, Iron, Bismuth, and Antimony. And they face their greatest challenge yet when Sinestron starts kidnapping mutants rather than following Will’s command to destroy them. He plans to turn them into slaves under his control. He’s even powerful enough to freeze Magneto by matching his electromagnetic polarity, which also freezes the Magnetic Men until they channel the mutants they’re based on, break free of Magneto, and fight Sinestron on their own, freeing the captured mutants and swearing to take on Sinestron another day.

What they got right: This was a good action story. The designs on the Magnetic Men and Sinestron were pretty good.

What they got wrong: On the other hand we don’t see a lot of the Magnetic Men’s personalities. The amalgamation reviews are going to be really short because of it. Also, the amalgam term “metamutant” hasn’t really shown up in the two mutant titles (this one and the aforementioned JLX. You’d think that if they came up with an amalgam term for metahumans and mutants you’d see it used in titles focusing on metamutants.

• Magneto (Magneto): The Marvel fan wiki has a great section on the Amalgam characters (the DC one is rather lacking on the topic) and it tries to claim that Magneto is a fusion of…obvious answer…and Will Magnus. Except that in this reality there IS a Will Magnus, amalgamated with Boliver Trask, the guy who created the Sentinels in the Marvel Universe. Outside of a new last name and creating the Amalgam version of the Metal Men (amalgamated with the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants), it’s still Magneto, just one that isn’t on a “mutants only” campaign.
• Antimony (Scarlet Witch/Platinum): I like the reversal here. In the DCU Platinum has a weird fetish for her daddy/creator that is frankly a bit creepy. Here Magneto based her on his daughter and has an attachment to her in a fatherly way, looking for emotions that the male robots seem to have but she’s rather emotionless. It’s less squicky at least.
• Nickel (Quicksilver/Mercury): I’m no geologist so maybe I don’t get the immediate connection between nickel and superspeed. Why not just call him Silver, or would that be too obvious? Anyway, he’s a fight-chasing hothead and that’s his whole character in a nutshell.
• Bismuth (Tin/Toad): Like Antimony, Bismuth is “diamagnetic”. The short version I found online is “(d)escriptive term which indicates that a substance contains no unpaired electrons and thus is not attracted to a magnetic field”. Basically, magnets do nothing to them but somehow Bismuth and Antimony are still controlled by Magneto’s power. He’s closer to Tin with his stuttering but seems more confident, like Toad, but not Toad’s overconfidence and groveling to impress his master. I like him.
• Iron (Iron/Unus The Untouchable): Until just now I’ve never heard of Unus, so I can’t judge the amalgamation. Iron appears to be the leader of the group and has a lighthearted feel to him. Otherwise, I really don’t know enough about him.
• Cobalt (Gold/Mastermind): The Marvel wiki says he’s the leader, and gold was the leader of the Metal Men, but I don’t see it. He thinks Antimony and Bismuth are beneath the others for being diamagnetic and really hates Bismuth, but no reason is really given. He’s just a jerk.
• Sinistron (Mister Sinister/???): The Marvel wiki oddly has no entry on this guy. Is there a counterpart among the Metal Men’s foes, who has Ultron’s hatred of humans but would use superpowered people as slave soldiers? I don’t know, but he’s a good villain for the Magnetic Men.
• There’s also “Kokoro”, a fusion of Katana and Psyloche but we may see more of her later. Here’s she’s attacked by Sinistron and the Magnetic Men can’t stop him from kidnapping her. Pretty much it.

Would I buy a series?: Maybe. As much as I usually avoid the X-titles I kind of liked this. I wouldn’t have thought of amalgamating the Brotherhood of Mutants and the Metal Men, but it actually works and they’re pretty good characters.

Recommendation: The Magnetic Men were one of the series 1s to get a series 2 with only Magneto as a well-known character. If you want action and don’t care about decent character development this is a good read. It could have been better but what we have isn’t bad.