What a minute. I haven't read much of Excaliber (Chris Claramont is going down the toilet) but wasn't the "Magneto" who attacked Manhattan just a imposter? And didn't Magneto somehow survive the Genosha attack and showed up later?
Personally I think the Magneto that attacked Manhattan really should have been the bona fide. Making the Magneto to be an imposter just takes away from the meat of the story.
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You and 8 others, it seems. *sigh*
Yes. It was, as it stands currently at least, Xorn's twin brother Xorn (!!!) who was impersonating Magneto who was impersonating Xorn.
Don't ask.
Ahh...the mystery is in "somehow". The man gets cripped by Wolverine, is stuck in a wheelchair, his whole island nation of 14 million gets obliterated, and he turns up, not only not dead, but in PERFECT condition. Almost as though he has a new body. In Excalibur 8, when Xavier was explaining his theory on Magneto, in the background was the scene where a Sentinel was hurling himself right at a wheelchaired Magneto, which means something is up.
It would have been out of character for Magneto to attack Manhattan. He's a mutant with absolute control over electromagnetic energy. Manhattan is filled with big metal skyscrapers. If it were in his character to do so, he could have laid waste to the entire east coast in an afternoon years before. Why didn't he? Because what's that earn for the people he champions? Morrison wanted to make Magneto bin Laden. I see Magneto more as Malcolm X. And Malcolm X wouldn't blow up Manhattan to earn rights for blacks.
It seems that Grant Morrison and Chris Claramont are at odds with each other then. Old vs. the New. I think that Chris Claramont completely twisted Grant Morrison's story because he didn't like where Grant Morrison was heading. So he revamped the history to meet his own desires. That's my theory anyway. A lot of Morrison's stories are very complex so it is possible that Morrison intended it to be this way.
Personally I think the twin brother of Xorn thing is completely ridiculous.
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It wasn't Claremont's idea to bring Magneto back. It was editorial. According to rumour, editorial didn't like the idea of their marquie character basically committing his own 9/11, even though they were ok with it at the time it was written. Also, Xorn had become a pretty popular character with the fans who wrote in (I never had an opinion of him, personally). So they figured they'd kill two birds with one stone and they told Claremont to bring Magneto back and Austin to bring Xorn back. But because ti was two writers trying to reconcile one character (Xorneto), the resolution became even MORE confusing, which led to there ultimately being three Xorns and two Magnetos involved in the retcon. Senseless. They shoulda had the balls to either put their foot down when they read Morrison's script, or to stick with their decision after they published the issue.
I agree. It's very confusing now. One of the most shocking moments in comic history was when Xorn was revealed to be Magneto ( I really had absolutely no idea; I had my suspicions but not THOSE kind of suspicions). But now its just a limp balloon. The editorial REALLY screwed up. But not as much as Bendis's Disassembled Event. Do you have a theory for why and how Magneto appeared ( in his Manhattan destroying costume no less) in the end? Beast was still in his leather costume. The X-Men have no idea that Magneto is still alive or for that matter it was an imposter. And why the hell did Nick Fury and Captain America let the most wanted terrorist in the world take a very unstable young woman with godlike reality-warping powers. It made no sense whatsoever.
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Yeah, I was really shocked when "Xorn" turned out to be "Magneto" too. It was brilliant, even though I didn't like the rest of the storyline from there. Call me a traditionalist, but a drug-addicted Magneto who destroys and kills for fun just doesn't sit well with me.
As for why and how Magneto appeared - in Excalibur 8, Magneto was watching TV with some kids when they made an announcement that Avengers Mansion was destroyed and there were fatalities. That made Magneto go crazy and he created a time and space-warping WORMHOLE (another example of Magneto's upgrade to Phoenix-level Supergod) and stepped through it to go and get his daughter.
I think the X-men may have known by then that "Magneto" wasn't really Magneto because around that same timeframe, the second Xorn II (god, it's confusing even typing this) told the X-men after his rescue that it wasn't really Magneto's doing.
As for why Cap and Fury let Magneto take them...well, given their condition, I'm not sure they would have been in much position to stop him.
"As for why and how Magneto appeared - in Excalibur 8, Magneto was watching TV with some kids when they made an announcement that Avengers Mansion was destroyed and there were fatalities. That made Magneto go crazy and he created a time and space-warping WORMHOLE (another example of Magneto's upgrade to Phoenix-level Supergod) and stepped through it to go and get his daughter."
I really hate this Excaliber comic. Why would they put a rather important piece of information into a comic nobody is likely to read?! When did the Excaliber comic become the "official "tie up the loose ends comic for Marvel"?