X-Men #38 // Review
Back in 1985, Chris Claremont wrote a landmark issue of The Uncanny X-Men in which the arch-villain Magneto had turned himself in to the world court. It was a compelling look at the psyche of someone who had been essentially started as a generic supervillain and gradually grew into something more. “the Trial of Magneto” might have been one of the most captivating single-issues of a mainstream superhero comic in the 1980s. Decades later, writer Jed MacKay’s X-Men #38 takes a similarly deep dive on Magneto with penciler Tony S. Daniel, inker Mark Morales and colorist Fer Sefuentes-Sujo.
Magneto is lost in his mind. He’s literally seeing the latest atrocity committed against him echoing through his mind. To make matters worse, Charles Xavier has shown-up to talk to him a bit about...well...everything. It’s not a comfortable conversation. Magneto’s not entirely certain that this particular iterations of Charles might be something of a phantom...some kind of hallucination that he’s experience on the edge of his next death or his next life or whatever. Nevertheless...he doesn’t have much choice but to carry out the conversation with some semblance of an old friend and enemy...
There was a point in the mid to late 1980s when magneto was simply just going to turn into a hero. Claremont and company her setting him up for a very coherent transition. He's got a little complicated from there. The characters never really seemed quite as coherent since. To his credit, MacKay assembles the various fragments of Magneto’s psyche and makes him seem like a single, resolute individual with a strikingly complicated. In spire of this, MacKay manages to deliver a very clearly-rendered story that feels satisfying in its own way. Above all, Magneto seems like a fascinating person again by the end of the issue. That’s quite an accomplishment given all that he’s been through.
Daniel has a tendency to render the drama of the issue with a bit more intensity and a bit less nuance than MacKay is putting into the script, which is really too bad. Granted: the customer on Magneto feels way too over the top to really deliver a whole lot of subtlety in New Orleans. However, all the close-ups on Magneto’s face seemed to be amplifying, the anger and frustration and pain in a way that feels out of sync with the deeper aspects of the script.
And then there's a fact that on the surface, it sounds kind of silly. Professsor X is showing Magneto scenes of what certain points in history would have been like without him there. In the context of the script, it’s perfectly fine, but the whole It’s a Wonderful Life feeling of it all is more than a little bit strange. Nevertheess, MacKay’s unwavering close-up on Magneto manage to remain a very haunting picture of a person who has been through a hell of a lot over the decades.
