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The guards, flummoxed or terrified or both, knock the kid out, but hes not dead yet.
But, oddly enough, this was not always the case in the comics from which the X-Men emerged.
When Magneto was first introduced in Jack Kirby and Stan Lees 1963 Marvel comic bookThe X-MenNo.
1, Judaism was nowhere to be found.
Thats right, geeks of the world: Chris Claremont is Jewish.
Hes world-famous among comic-book nerds for revolutionizing and defining the X-Men while writing them nonstop from 1975 to 1991.
It was there that the depth of the agony of the Holocaust for its survivors first struck him.
In that kibbutz were more than a few survivors of the Holocaust.
He trails off for a moment.
I mean, I cant describe the silence in the room.
It was like the air, the noise had just been inhaled.
There was no sound at all.
It was in that moment that he learned a well-worn but potent truth.
Those who do not learn from the lessons of the past are destined to repeat it, he says.
Its something Ive never forgot, and I hope I never will.
Legion (whose father is X-Men leader Charles Xavier).
And, of course, theres Magneto.
He believed in mutant supremacy.
There was no reason given for it.
The X-Men were, meta-textually, left up a creek.
Every significant book at Marvel had its key antagonist, Claremont says.
Without Magneto, the X-Men had nobody.
So began Claremonts attempt to bring the Master of Magnetism back.
His origins, however, remained obscure.
And he certainly looked European.
And what would have given him such an extreme attitude toward mutant-human relations?
As Claremont puts it, The next corollary was,Oh.
Next came a fateful snippet of dialogue in August 1981sUncanny X-MenNo.
I know something of grief, Magneto barks.
Search throughout my homeland, you will findnonewho bear my name.
Mine was a large family, and it was slaughtered without mercy, without remorse.
That vague allusion is followed by a more specific one later in the issue.
As the X-Men battle Magneto, he strikes down Kitty.
He immediately regrets his action when he sees how young she is.
As our lives were nothing to them, sohumanlives became nothing to me.
Suddenly, he has a change of heart.
You may notice something absent from that revelation: the wordJew.
Not so, says Claremont.
He was a preestablished character, a Stan character, a Stan/Jack character.
He opted to keep things a little ambiguous in part because he aimed to honorallvictims of Nazi horror.
The Holocaust was specific to Judaism, but it also embraced a significant number of other minorities.
And so, throughout Claremonts run, it was never made explicit that Magneto was Jewish.
Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1985sUncannyNo.
That ambiguity proved to be a handicap after Claremont left the X-Men in a huff in 1991.
Its like,Well, screw it.
Even I have limits.
That reveal was later rescinded; it was a mere cover story that Magneto had adopted.
Bizarrely, it wasnt until 2009s miniseriesMagneto: Testamentthat Marvel made it canonically explicit that the character is Jewish.
But by then, mass audiences had long accepted Magnetos Jewishness thanks to the X-Men movies.
Claremont thinks that decision was a superb choice on the part of the filmmakers.
The essence of the story, of the concept, should be on the kids, he says.
And kids arent that certain.
Kids arent that defined.
Kids are always questioning.
We need to see that.
We need to understand that.
If you ask the questions, you get the answers that will lead you to the truth.
