A musing about Magneto and timelines in comics.

Before you read any further you should know that his blog was made under the impression that Magneto's age had never been reversed. If you continue reading you'll probably just be wasting your time.

I'm not a big blogging person but I decided to go ahead and share my thoughts on this.

So we all know that some characters in comics seem to age very slowly - and most, not at all. For the majority of characters it's pretty easy to just update their origin. There are also a few others - like Wolverine, for instance - that explain this problem away with retarded aging.

But what about those characters like Magneto who's back stories are tied into significant historical events? Those who have no healing factors and can't exactly survive being frozen in the Atlantic for 70 years.

I've probably guessed by now, but the event I'm referring to is the Holocaust. Now, I may be giving it too much credit, but the Holocaust is - in my opinion - the most important part of Mag's history. Granted, there are quite a few Holocaust survivors still alive today, but what about 30 or 40 years from now? How do you work around this when the character(s) in question can't exactly be "updated" without loosing a major part of their history?

One of the most obvious answers would be the ever-reliable X-Men fallback, time travel. Maybe the X-men go back in time and bring a younger, more impulsive Magneto to the present, but in the process the original Max dies.

Or maybe Mags dies after some Earth shattering X-Men event and Marvel, hopefully, gives him a long hiatus. Making his return that much greater. Perhaps when a mutant with the ability to enter different dimensions brings him back from whichever afterlife he goes to.

But I'm starting to get a bit long-winded here, so I'll get to my point: Magneto is one of the most iconic X-men characters ever; having a great power-set, rich history, interesting origin, and just being an awesome great character overall. Marvel is probably going to have to cross this bridge before too much longer, and I can only hope that the House of Ideas - who's ideas will, most likely, be better than the ones above - can do justice to such an enduring, influential mutant as Magneto.

What are your thoughts on this? Is this even a problem? If you think it is, what are some of your ideas for getting around it? Be sure to share them!

Magneto was de-aged at least twice in the past, and in future they're either going to do so again, make up some time travel BS, or arrange some nonsense with a clone (again).

You do realise that he's not even in his original body, right?

See, this is why I love Comic Vine. You learn something new almost everyday. I'll admit I haven't been reading about Magneto for long, but I wasn't aware of any de-aging.

What age is he currently?

@battle_forum_junkie: Oh god, I have nooooo idea. Somewhere in his 60s, maybe?

They can also do the "artificial healing factor/age suppression" thing, just about everybody within a 100km radius of the weapon X program got one of those...

The real problem is for guys like Colossus who are linked to things like the Soviet Union, but are still supposed to be relatively young. As time goes by it becomes harder and harder.

Well, this has been humbling. Thanks for the info, guys. I'll be sure to actually know what I'm talking about before I post something like this in the future. :P

Didn't his clone die, though? Or am I mistaken about that too.