As of the moment, I'm circling the drain of the downhill ride that is The Astonishing X-Men. Since Whedon and Ellis stopped writing for this series, other writers have taken over and the last two did a fine enough job to keep things afloat with forgivably acceptable stories like Children of the Brood. This time, we have Greg Pak and I've read and reviewed two of his stories before (Batman-Superman and Magneto Testament) and I liked them, especially the latter, so I was hoping that he could deliver me something riveting. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen for AXM anymore because I'm ready to believe that the creative powers-that-be handling this series have checked out at some point and focused on other titles running alongside it. Whatever. I'm not even sure what I want to talk about for this volume, but I have an obligation to uphold so I'm soldiering on nevertheless. Besides, I think I only have three more volumes to go before I mercifully end my reviews for this title and I comfort myself with the fact that perhaps those last three may be at least entertaining again.
Volume 9: Exalted is composed of four measly issues (#44-47). Issue #43 was a standalone and written by a different writer, focusing primarily on Emma Frost and Danger. It was a nice break and was probably written in between while somebody is trying to get someone to write a story arc for the next issues of AXM. And that man is Greg Pak, and his work on Exalted could have been better if the premise wasn't so silly and ultimately uninteresting. For one, it's a Cyclops-centered narrative which would have made me very happy if it wasn't so boring. It offered little insight to the change and struggle that Scott Summers had gone through after the events in Schism. See, that's the problem with X-Men canon in general. So many stuff happen that titles like The Astonishing X-Men get affected, considering it's part of the continuity (and I maintain that it should have been a standalone title to afford more flexibility and expanded mythos independent from the overall Marvel continuity). The consequence is that if a reader only reads this title without any other X-title as reference then the story arcs seem to jump and skip ahead without explaining how and why members drop and leave such as the case with Beast retiring from the group at some point, and now Wolverine and Kitty Pryde separating from Scott and Emma to form their own school back in Westchester. But before that, they were in San Francisco, then Utopia...I can't honestly follow anymore.
And the only reason I can't is because I refuse to. And I refuse to because I CAN'T CARE.
Anyway, Exalted is supposedly about Scott recovering from all the transformation and pain and loss he had experienced since M-Day occurred. Heck, since Jean Grey died. I would have been concerned about him undergoing through such difficulties but Pak's writing was so detached from any kind of meaningful character reflection that Scott was portrayed like a flat character lacking any dynamic role from start to finish of Exalted. First, we see him grieving the losses of his comrades who abandoned him because they could no longer work with him and agree on the way he runs things. The fact that they question his leadership like that once again echoes back to his deeply-rooted insecurity of not being good enough as a hero. Next, Ororo Munroe arrives to smooth things over and ends up making out with him. That was weird and Scott readily accuses her of being a fake. Technically, she wasn't. As it turns out, she's another version of Storm from a world a part of the multiverse. She abducts Scott and imprisons him with other versions of his friends like Emma (who is Emmeline Frost-Summers), Logan (General James Howlett) and young Kurt and Kitty (Shadow). Other-Storm is working for a mutant who calls himself the Savior. Said Savior has been using mutants from the multiverse to power up his chosen city. This Savior is no other than Charles Xavier who can walk and has luscious blond hair. He also killed the Magneto of his world and so I already hate him because I could not for the life of me believe that Charles Xavier could ever kill his BFF, regardless of whatever version of reality he came from which meant that this Savior is not Charles at all and I don't care what the writing says, he's just not,
OKAY?!
True to form, Scott rallies the Other-X-Men to fight their way through an escape plan and ensure that Savior doesn't use Ghost Boxes anymore to travel through different worlds to abduct more X-Men. They accomplish this by traveling to another world and getting other Emmas and Logans to help them defeat the inexcusable piece of shit that IS NOT A VERSION OF CHARLES XAVIER, DO YOU HEAR ME?! Scott, for some inexplicable sense of misplaced duty, felt the need to actually STAY BEHIND and fix the wrongs that the now thankfully dead Savior committed in his own world, but Other-Logan was smart enough to push him into the portal so he can go back to his own world where he is still actually needed in spite of how he feels the opposite of that. Well, at least he was able to work with his comrades again even if they are not the versions he grew up with and lost along the way. I would have felt bad and sad for Scott but the story just ends there without any more need for contemplation and insight. The story arc is just done. It only took me less than an hour to finish the entire thing and I felt nothing afterwards but contempt towards Savior because he killed a Magneto, and lukewarm sympathy for Scott even though Pak has written him so blandly that I wondered what was the point of making him the main focus of the arc in the first place. God, whatever. I'm going to read the tenth volume next with another writer again and hope I can have something more polished than this trite.
NOT RECOMMENDED: 5/10
"My name is Max Eisenhardt. To whoever finds this, I'm sorry because I'm dead and it's now up to you. Tell everyone who will listen. Tell everyone who won't. Please don't let this happen ever again."
This was a letter written by a Jewish teenage boy inside the Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, Germany where he was one of the designated Sonderkommando who were laborers in the crematoria which is possibly the most degrading and sickening occupation ever created during the second World War. They were the ones who had to burn the bodies of fellow Jewish prisoners after various executions (usually in gas chambers), and the most upsetting of which has to be when they had to cremate mass graves. This young man had lost his family during a firing squad which he was the only survivor of, and while at camps he spent his entire time there trying to save Magda, a gypsy girl he went to school and fell in love with. Her survival has given him more hope to live for than his own.
Max Eisenhardt ultimately endures the horrors of the Nazi regime, thanks to his timing, resourcefulness and patience, but he was no longer a whole person after those wretched and traumatic experiences either, and this fearful and abused teenage boy eventually hardens into a man who now calls himself Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as the mutant revolutionist, Magneto, leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants.
Written by Greg Pak (whose only work I have ever encountered was DC New 52's Batman-Superman) and illustrated by Carmine DiGiandomenico, MAGNETO TESTAMENT is a rather harrowing examination of the dark forces that shaped the boy called Max Eisenhardt into something deliberately extraordinary years after. Composed of five chapters and tons of research about the accounts written on the events within Nazi prison camps, Magneto Testament included some of the most depressing and at times intensely moving moments of what it must have been like for someone of young Magneto's lineage to grow up during one of the darkest periods in human history.
I think this was the first time in X-Men canon that a writer has attempted to expound in narrative detail the terrible things a young Magneto had to undergo during such a criminally racist time when hatred and violence against the Jewish people were so disgustingly rampant that anyone who belonged to such a troubled time couldn't possibly stay sane, especially someone like Max Eisenhardt who watched his loved ones perish and had to take care of the remains of total strangers whose only connection he had with was the fact that they were condemned as an unclean race lower than the average human.
It's fucking gross, and reading Magneto Testament is uniquely painful because of the small brutalities explored in every issue. I would like to applaud Pak in successfully delivering a rather humane piece in this twisted coming-of-age story truly deserving of one of comics' most multifaceted and compelling villains. I think Pak captured the essence of what must have given Magento during the later years his righteous rage and motivation which in turn gave him the solid platform to stand on and justify his war against the human race. I don't exactly consider myself a Magneto apologist or full-pledged sympathizer because some of his revolutionary activities done in the name of mutant superiority can be extreme and misguided, if not tragically ironic.
But I think anyone who claims to either enjoy or despise his character has to at least understand his personal history, and it pleases me that Greg Pak has accomplished just that for his writing in Magneto Testament.
What I consider most commendable is the fact that Pak did not even focus on Max's mutation as a metal telekinetic. There are hints and manifestations of his powers across the issues, such as the ability to throw steel lances in a far distance and the fact that he unconsciously avoided bullets during that awful firing squad scene with his family. But Pak did not give any indication that young Max even knew how special and different he is which I thought was a great choice for the story because Pak opted to highlight his permeating helplessness as an innocent Jewish boy who had to witness the inhumane acts committed around him whose cycle of systematic violence he reluctantly learned to become a part of as well. His journey as a lowly laborer to eventual Sonderkommado has enabled him to get a closer look at the surrounding abyss whenever he had to drag and burn the bodies of countless gassed victims. Young Max had no other choice but to unflinchingly stare back at the hideous darkness and welcome it into his personal space if he ever hopes to overcome it.
As rich as the stomach-lurching scenes were for this comic book, it has to be the tiniest things that made me tear up. One of them was this full-paged panel where Max glimpsed through a room filled entirely with eyeglasses. It literally made me put down what I was reading as I closed my eyes and willed myself to breathe normally again. There was just something about it that struck me in the most visceral sense. It was so damn visually painful and inexplicably so. Even now I'm not sure why it emotionally wounded me when there are many scenes in the comic book which are more brutal and disheartening to look at. I suppose it truly is this small kind of horrific imagery that is seemingly inconsequential and mundane that left a rather huge impact on me.
As depressing as everything is about Magneto Testament, there were impressive moments of light and sweetness concerning Max's feelings for the girl Magda and his determination to save her and get her out alive. From what I know in the canon, they eventually get married and have a daughter named Anya but Pak did not add this piece of canon information for his story which was okay because reading about a hopeful Max whose devotion and concern for a girl he barely knew was so heartbreakingly simple yet moving to watch unfold. It was enough for me to cling onto. I think my emotional investment for them was particularly high because I know what was going to happen to them after the Nazis were defeated. For this key event, Chris Claremont (who was the one who gave Magneto the Holocaust survivor background thirty years ago) touched upon it in the third volume of Excalibur, issue #6 but in case you're interested to know more about it, let me briefly talk about it here if you don't mind more spoilers.
Both Erik (this is Magneto's latest name in the comics these days) and Magda escaped the camps and are more than eager to start a new life together with their daughter but a commotion happens when a bunch of Nazi sympathizers tracked them down along with other Jewish people. These assholes burned down the apartment complex where Anya was sleeping and she was trapped as Erik couldn't get her out in time. Angered beyond reprieve, his child's death was the catalyst that brought out Erik's mutant powers to the surface and he proceeds to kill them using magnetism and metal telekinesis. Magda witnessed this and called him a monster, fearing he will endanger the unborn twins in her womb she never got to tell him about. These twins eventually grow up as mutants themselves named Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, and they were reunited with their father somewhere along the way though it took some time for either parties to realize that they were family.
But for now, here in Magneto Testament, we have young Max and Magda clinging onto their young, blossoming love at a time a happily-ever-after doesn't seem to be possible, blissfully unaware that their cavalry has just began.
In a nutshell, Magneto Testament is a searing and sublime tale about the ugly crudeness that human beings are capable of committing on one another, particularly against a minority they perceive as inferior; and how one boy's quest for survival turns him into an avenging force of nature once he becomes a man fully capable of bending worlds to his will in the name of justice he was long denied of.
In a final act of redemption, the letter he wrote at the camps as a boy eventually finds a way back to him, symbolizing and affirming the truth that it is ultimately up to him after all to ensure that another Holocaust does not come to pass ever again.
This is duly recommended to both X-Men fans and comic book aficionados, especially if you're generally interested in works of fiction based on the horrors of Holocaust. I think this comic book really dealt with the events as sensitively as it could and truly delivered a magnificent Magneto-centered parable at its core.
RECOMMENDED: 9/10
