| Magneto (Joint Venture) | |
 | |
| Real Name | Erik Magnus Lensherr |
| Current Alias | Magneto |
| Alias(es) | Max Eisenhardt, Michael Xavier |
| Relatives | Magda Lensherr (wife, deceased), Anya Lensherr (daughter, deceased), Pietro Maximoff (son), Wanda Maximoff (daughter), Lorna Dane (daughter) |
| Affiliation | X-Men, co-founder |
| Base Of Operations | 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center, New York |
| Alignment | Good |
| Universe | Joint Venture Universe |
| Gender | Male |
| Eyes | Gray |
| Hair | Silver-white |
| Unusual Features | Possesses the physical appearance of a man in his mid-30s despite being roughly 80 years old. |
Magneto is a mutant sometimes-member, sometimes-antagonist of the X-Men. This is the Joint Venture Universe version of the character.
History[]
Early life[]
Erik Magnus Lensherr was born in Poland in World War II. As he puts it, "his was a large family," but they were considered "undesirable" by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, and incarcerated in concentration camps. Erik himself would be relocated to Auschwitz, where he grew up a Sonderkommando, someone who disposed of the camp's victims. Thus he was forced to bear witness to the worst torments, deprivations, and indignities mankind had to offer.
Escape with Magda[]
Eventually, as the war between the Nazis, their Axis power allies, and the Allied Powers came to a head, Erik seized an opportunity and killed one of the SS guards who was about to rape one of the prisoners. Erik and the prisoner girl -- a young woman named Magda -- fled Auschwitz, surviving their initial escape thanks to a chance encounter with an American witch, but having to continue to do so with only their resourcefulness and tenacity to support them.
Not only did they survive, they thrived. Living off the land in the aftermath of the war, Erik and Magda found peace and respite, putting the horrible memories behind them as their bodies and minds healed from the horrors of the Holocaust. Eventually, they fell in love with each other, married, and had a child, whom they named Anya.
But Erik was not content to simply hide from the world; he wanted to experience it, to live life to the fullest, to experience all that was denied him by his horrific childhood. So they moved east, into Russia, where they settled in the small village of Vinnitsa. Magda opened up a small inn, while Erik set up shop as a blacksmith; he had always had a love for working with metal. Indeed, it almost seemed to do his bidding, shaping itself to his whims with only the barest touch of his tools.
Paradise Lost[]
Eventually, a group of corrupt soldiers came to Vinnitsa and began to extort "protection money" from its citizens, threatening horrible harm to those who did not comply. Magda capitulated out of fear, but Erik refused. While he argued with one of the soldiers, a crowbar he had made suddenly levitated, flung itself at the thug. and buried itself in the stone of a wall next to him. The soldier ran off in fear, and Erik believed himself victorious, his livelihood saved by some miracle.
That night, returning to his and Magda's inn, Erik was dismayed to find the place ablaze, Magda struggling to get upstairs to their daughter. Erik saved Magda -- unconsciously protecting himself and his wife with a bubble of pure magnetic force -- and saw her safely outside, but when he tried to go back for Anya, the soldiers stopped him, beating him mercilessly. He begged them to help his daughter, or at least to let him help her, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Erik heard a terrible scream from the inn's second floor, and saw a small, flaming form plummet from the upstairs window to the ground, too far below. There was no way Anya could have survived both the fire and the fall.
Grief at his daughter's death and rage at the evil men who had allowed it welled up inside him, and something snapped inside Erik. Lightning exploded from his eyes, hitting everyone in the square, everyone in the village, save Magda. In seconds, the entire village of Vinnitsa had shared his daughter's fate.
Magda, the only survivor, could not recognize her husband. Perhaps her reasoning, too, was clouded by the death of her daughter, but she called Erik a 'monster' and ran from him, never to be seen again. Now alone in a village of corpses, unable to even find his daughter's body among the pile of dead, Erik wept for what he had lost, and for what he had done.
Max Eisenhardt, Nazi Hunter[]
"Max Eisenhardt", Agent of SHIELD
Despondent and broken, Erik wandered the countryside, becoming something of an urban legend throughout Europe. No longer able to think of himself as the man who had been a husband and father, he began referring to himself by his middle name: Magnus.
It was then that he was contacted by the international organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D, then in its infancy. Even though the war had ended ten years ago, remnants of the Axis still remained at large, radical elements who would see the Third Reich restored by any means necessary. With nothing to lose, Magnus agreed to help hunt them, taking on a codename for the first time: "Magneto." During this time, he practiced the use of his abilities with the help of some of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top scientists, received a top-of-the-line education, and began, a second time, to put the past behind him. The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time, Peggy Carter, jokingly gave him the alias "Max Eisenhardt", which translates to "Strong Heart of Iron", and Magnus couldn't help but appreciate the joke.
Magneto continued working as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for some time, first against remnants of the Nazis, and then against HYDRA when they began their reign of terror over the Western world. However, on a mission in Israel to defeat top HYDRA agent Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, he vanished, never to be heard from again...or so everyone thought.
Charles Xavier[]
Magneto eventually resurfaced in the late 1980s, a catatonic mental patient in an Israeli clinic, still looking the same age he had been when he vanished nearly forty years earlier. The clinic's owner, Dr. Daniel Shomron, contacted his American friend and academic consultant, Professor Charles Xavier, who used his telepathic powers to bring Magnus out of his catatonic state. Although he remembered who he was and what he had been before, Magneto could not remember the circumstances that had led to his catatonia, or where he had been for the past four decades. As S.H.I.E.L.D. had declared "Max Eisenhardt" legally dead, Magneto found himself going back to referring to himself as Erik Lensherr, as enough time had passed since the destruction of Vinnitsa that he was sure no one but him remembered the name associated with it.
Xavier was not the only person to learn of Magneto's reappearance, however. Agents of HYDRA, including Fenris, Baron Strucker's grandson and granddaughter, came to kill the resurrected post-war hero. Xavier and Magneto worked together to stop them, revealing their powers to each other. That was the first time Magneto ever heard the word "Mutant".
In America[]
Following Fenris' defeat, Magneto decided he had had enough of the Eastern Hemisphere and wanted to see the New World. He and Charles worked together to create a modern identity for him -- that of Michael Xavier, an adopted brother to Charles -- and they moved from Israel to New York.
Arriving in Salem Center, Magneto was particularly in awe of Charles' home. Having grown up in the camps, and then living in modest houses for most of his adult life, the opulence and grandeur of the building struck him, as did the sheer size. So much space, he decided, was wasted on only a handful of people. He discussed the notion, and Charles agreed, that Xavier's would make an admirable safe haven for mutantkind. Together, Erik and Charles built Cerebro, a device capable of tracking the psychic signatures of fledgling mutants, and Charles went to Annandale-on-Hudson to meet its first positive result: a mutant girl named Jean Grey.
Though Magneto would have little contact with Jean himself -- the unique nature of her problem was something Charles excelled at dealing with, as he knew from personal experience -- the notion of a school for mutants, rather than simply a safe haven, appealed greatly to him. He reached out to another old acquaintance of Xavier's, renowned geneticist Moira Kinross, and broached the subject with her.
Three years passed as Xavier, Magneto, and Moira converted the mansion into a school. Erik's powers were invaluable in this endeavor, as his mastery over magnetism could erect in minutes what it would take contracted architects and construction workers years to build. All the while, he kept learning, updating himself on the scientific and technological advancements of the forty years he'd been gone, and using it to build state-of-the-art electronic equipment and machinery to help with the training of potential young mutants. Xavier wanted to teach them to safely interact with the world; Magneto wanted to teach them how to protect themselves from it. While this fundamental difference in philosophy caused friction, Moira (and later, her fiance Banshee) would often be able to help the two find a happy medium, where Xavier's school -- and its students, the X-Men -- would be able to serve as both outreach program and aegis against anyone who threatened Xavier's goals of peaceful coexistence between mutants and baseline humanity.
Finally, the mansion -- now the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning -- was ready for its first class.
First Class[]
to be disclosed
Powers[]
Magnetokinesis: Magneto has comprehensive control over magnetic fields, and therefore all forms of magnetism, and utilizes that control to manipulate ferrous metals and achieve a variety of effects. He can manipulate an entire planet's electromagnetic field, though this requires great effort on his part. Magneto has harnessed magnetism to stop armies, raise islands from ocean floors, move mountains, and change the course of rivers. He can completely assemble or disassemble a complicated machine within seconds through his powers alone. It is unclear whether Magneto's power is psionic or purely physiological in nature; however, it is known that he can use his magnetic powers in more than one way simultaneously.
- Magnetic Force-Fields: Magneto usually protects himself with a personal force field that he can quickly expand to protect large areas. His force field has withstood the effects of multiple incendiary weapons, volcanic eruptions, the depths of space, and attacks from multiple superpowered beings at once. Magneto can also use his force fields to strike or entrap an enemy, and levitate objects and beings in the air, even non-ferrous ones.
- Magnetic Armor: In addition to the obvious external force fields, Magneto can reinforce the metallic fibers of his uniform with magnetic fields, making his clothing like armor with a durability approaching adamantium. With this enhancement, he can take punches from superhumanly strong foes such as Juggernaut or Colossus, and remain conscious.
- Magnetic Rays: Magneto has the ability to shoot powerful rays and electromagnetic pulses, and has shown this ability to destroy both metallic and nonmetallic objects. Magneto can also use this ability to seriously injure his enemies by affecting the delicate electromagnetic balance of the central nervous system.
- Magnetic Flight: Magneto is capable of sustaining flight for very long distances and at varying speeds. He achieves this by warping the magnetic field lines in his immediate surroundings, rather than simply traveling along them, though he can do that as well if necessary, and in fact prefers to on longer flights. However, in order to travel through space, Magneto requires his personal force field, and is limited by the amount of oxygen in its interior capacity.
- Geomagnetic Link: Magneto possesses a powerful psionic perception of Earth's electromagnetic field. This trait remained even when his active powers are hindered or removed. As Earth's EM field is affected, so is he. He is aware of anything that happens to Earth's EM field thanks to this link.
- Gravity Reduction: Magneto's control over magnetic and electromagnetic force is so refined that he can control gravity within a limited radius of himself, either increasing gravimetric pressure, decreasing it, or even negating it altogether, though this has an effect similar to squeezing a wet bar of soap, as anything for which gravity is fully negated will be shot out of Earth's atmosphere by the planet's centrifugal force.
- Metal/Matter Manipulation: Magneto can manipulate metal at the atomic level and make it take different forms. Anything with even a trace amount of metal within it, such as the human body, can be affected by his magnetism. Magneto is also capable of creating solid fields of magnetic force that move and manipulate non-metallic objects, though this requires a different sort of focus.
- Electromagnetic Sight: By concentrating, Magneto can perceive the world around himself as patterns of magnetic and electrical energy. He can perceive the natural electromagnetic auras given off by living beings.
Electrokinesis: Magneto is capable of generating and projecting powerful bolts of electricity, due to the close relationship electricity and magnetism possess with each other. He is capable of both firing bolts of electricity and absorbing electrical energies directed at him, such as Storm's lightning, to increase his power. In addition, he can project an electrical aura around himself, and power nearly anything that requires electricity to run by sheer force of will alone.
Telepathic Resistance: Magneto has an indomitable will, likely due to his years of hardship, and has trained alongside Charles Xavier to develop a resistance to most forms of telepathic attack. This training is similar to that given to all X-Men by Professor X, although the effects are further augmented with the aid of his helmet, his strong will, and his own electromagnetic powers.
Retarded Aging: For reasons as yet unknown to himself or those around him, Magneto has stopped aging. Despite having been born prior to World War II, and therefore roughly being eighty years of age, Erik possesses the physical body of a man in his mid-thirties, with no signs of physically aging past that point. This is not related to his magnetic or electrical powers; indeed it does not seem to be a mutant power at all, but something done to him between his time serving with SHIELD and his awakening by Xavier in the 1980s.
Magneto's helmet
Helmet: After awakening from his four-decades-long catatonia, Magneto vowed that he would never let his mind come under assault again. While building Cerebro, he worked with Charles Xavier to construct an additional layer of protection: a helmet, designed specifically to protect his mind from telepaths. Although neither the helmet nor any of his training grants Magneto complete immunity to telepathy, his resistance while wearing it is second only to the mystical helmet worn by the Juggernaut.
Weaknesses[]
Physical Condition: Magneto's ability to wield his superhuman powers effectively is dependent upon his physical condition. When severely injured, his body is unable to withstand the strain of manipulating magnetic energy. When his body is not at its peak, he also appears to have greater difficulty utilizing his magnetism for great feats. Physical and mental fatigue can ultimately affect his ability to adequately use his powers, especially if he overuses or overextends them in a short amount of time.
Techbane: Although Magneto possesses great skill with modern technology and machinery, the use of his powers around complex machines, especially technology that relies on data transfer or electrical impulses, can corrupt the data, or scramble electronic circuitry, shorting it out or worse, making it permanently unusable. Magnetic shielding and surge-protection are common staples of technology in the Xavier Institute as a result of this.
Mental Stability: Magneto has a propensity for mental illness, PTSD, and depression. He has suffered repeated episodes of mental illness, mental breakdowns, and mania. These literal "bi-polar" tendencies were once diagnosed by Moira Kinross as possibly being a natural side effect of using his powers; the magnetic energies he controls warping the electromagnetic fields of his body and brain. He is typically able to cope with these thanks to the assistance of Charles Xavier's telepathy, Moira's medical training, and the Xavier Institute's advanced technology.