Magnus Lehnsherr
| Magnus | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Exiles #1 |
| Created by |
Judd Winick Mike McKone |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Magnus Lehnsherr |
| Species | Human Mutant |
| Team affiliations | Exiles |
| Abilities |
Electromagnetic manipulation, Force field generation, Energy blasts, Flight, Ability to turn living beings to metal |
Magnus (Magnus Lehnsherr) is a fictional character who appears in the comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is the son of an alternate-universe version of Magneto and Rogue. Created by Judd Winick and Mike McKone, this version first appeared in Exiles #1.
Fictional character biography
Magnus is the son of Magneto and Rogue from an alternate universe, this Magneto having given up his war on mankind. Magnus was born with powers similar to his father's, except with a twist: like his mother, Magnus' touch was lethal, turning anyone who touched his skin into metal.
One day, Magnus found himself in the middle of a barren desert alongside five other X-Men from five different realities. They were greeted by the Timebroker, a construct of their collective consciousness, who explained to them that they had all become unhinged from time as a chain of events had caused their realities as they knew them to change. New events in his past caused him to accidentally kill his mother a week after his thirteenth birthday by turning her into steel. His father never recovered from the loss and resumed his battle on humanity. In order to return to their correct timelines, they would have to repair other realities that caused the ripple effect that disrupted their reality or they would return to their alternate existences.
On the Exiles' first mission the Tallus instructs Blink to, "find your greatest teacher." The rest of the team decided that the Tallus could only mean their mentor, Professor Charles Xavier. Magnus constructed a makeshift Cerebro and utilized his powers in conjunction with Nocturne's latent and Mimic's residual psychic powers to locate Charles Xavier in a holding facility somewhere in Nevada.
While the other Exiles distracted the guards, Blink teleported Magnus inside the prison where he used his powers to seemingly melt away Xavier's metal shackles. In a wicked turn of events, this Xavier has been marred by his imprisonment at the hands of the humans and would sooner die than help create a society where mutants and humans lived together in harmony. He knocks the Exiles out with a Psi-Blast and leaves them for dead. The Exiles later learned that the great "teacher" that they should have sought was actually Magneto. This causes Magnus to feel ashamed for not considering his father as a viable option. At this point, the Exiles split with half of the team off to find Magneto and the other half left to put a halt to Xavier's mayhem.
Magnus carried Blink and Nocturne to the prison where Magneto is being held. There he intercepted a radio relay that the place is rigged with an atomic bomb. Seeing no other timely resolve, he forced all the captives away to a nearby beach and, using the utmost of his powers to encase the explosion, sacrificed himself so that others may live.
Months later, when Blink and the other Exiles took over Panoptichron and emptied the stasis' gallery where Magnus' body was held, they sent him home to his parents, now both alive and together again, with a note saying that he died a hero.
Powers and abilities
Magnus could control electromagnetic energies (i.e. electrons, photons, etc.), allowing a wide variety of different effects (including flight, energy blasts, and force fields). His powers are similar to Magneto with the potential of being even stronger. His forcefield must be stronger than Magneto's because he held back an atomic explosion in his dying moments. Using a scientific genius that may also have been inherited from his father, Magnus has cobbled complex Cerebro machines from ambient iron from memory and in a matter of seconds.
Flesh-to-flesh contact with Magnus is lethal, transforming other beings into solid steel.
Other versions
Age of Apocalypse
Magneto and Rogue also have a child in the alternate timeline of X-Men, The Age of Apocalypse. Unlike Magnus, who was named after his father, the child in this reality was Charles Lehnsherr, named after Magneto's deceased friend Charles Xavier. In this reality, Charles was cared for by Nanny. This Nanny was equipped with retractable offensive weaponry and a defensive capability that let her envelop Charles in a protective cocoon formed from her own body mass; her primary function was to protect the child above all else. She was destroyed while performing this function, and failed to prevent Charles' abduction by agents of Apocalypse. He is rescued by X-Men who raid Apocalypse's citadel in a desperate final attempt to save all of reality from M'Kraan crystallization.