Since I’ve reviewed Spider-Boy, I might as well review the other Amalgam comic that has a slight bit of relevance to one of my retrospectives… and it’s a WEIRD one.
Magneto and the Magnetic Men #1 (1996)
by Gerard Jones & Jeff Matsuda
Completely out of left field, Amalgam Comics decided to have a fusion of the Metal Men.
I’m not going to give attention to the writer, considering what he’s been arrested for I don’t want to give him any credit.
We begin with a mutant heroine being hunted down. She’s a fusion between DC’s Katana and Marvel’s Psylocke, who is getting a lot of work considering she was also fused with Saturn Girl.
She’s saved by the dramatic entrance of the Magnetic Men, who are of course a fusion between the Metal Men and various mutants.
Left to right, we have:
-Nickel, a fusion between Mercury and Quicksilver. A good match considering that “quicksilver” is another word for mercury.
-Cobalt, a fusion between… uhm… that’s a good question, actually! The only ones without am explicit counterpart are Gold and Lead, but going by attitude I’m assuming Gold. The mutant counterpart is a complete mystery to me.
-Bismuth, a fusion between Tin and Toad.
-Antimony, a fusion between Platinum and Scarlet Witch (of all people!)
-Iron, a fusion between Iron (really creative there!) and… uhm, that’s also unclear.
Kind of randomly, their adversary is a fusion between Ultron and Mister Sinister.
The Magnetic Men are WAY more effective than the Silver Age Metal Men!!!
I also like how some lesser-known elements were chosen, although that makes Iron stand out like a sore thumb.
Mark Waid is credited for “brainstorming assist”; I’m pretty sure the entire idea for this comic came about because he realized Doc Magnus and Magneto share a name.
But it’s a bit more complicated the Amalgam version of Doc Magnus STILL EXISTS and he created this universe’s Sentinels… Magneto is his brother.
Which means that, technically speaking, this is not a fusion between Magneto and Doc Magnus.
It’s a fusion between Magneto and this guy, who you might remember from Metal Men #33 if you haven’t been successful at blocking the memory of that awful story.
In this reality, murder robots killed his team of mutants so he created his OWN set of robots to fight back and avenge them.
Honestly this would not be a bad plot for the real Magneto.
The Magnetic Men may be slightly more effective than the Metal Men in combat, but their characterization really suffers.
Cobalt in particular is a jackass, discriminating against the members of the team that are diamagnetic (metals that are repelled by magnets instead of being attracted) and by staring at Antimony’s butt.
This story follows the atrocious 90s relaunch of the Metal Men, which revealed that they were not entirely artificial but had the personalities of previous friends of Doc Magnus.
It’s also reversing the classic Doc-Tina dynamic, because in THIS version Magneto is the one still attracted to Antimony and she doesn’t care for him.
The less we think about the fact that he’s having the hots from a recreation of his own daughter, the better.
You can really tell this entire thing was based on the joke of Magneto’s first name being Magnus, because there’s really nothing of Doc Magnus in here.
Which kind of makes sense, considering how different those characters are.
One is a psychopath who has proven time and time again to be a menace for the entire planet, and the other is Magneto.
Magneto then leads the team to Sinistron’s base, where he has enslaved countless mutants.
Magneto gets blasted as soon as the enter, and we get the only other decent shot of the team.
Turns out Sinistron has been brainwashing mutants, and he sends them after the Magnetic Men.
Not entirely sure who these people represent… I’m guessing one is based on Juggernaut and another on Mimic (he looks like Cyclops but he has wings), but I’m at a loss for the others. The one on the right could maybe be Killer Croc?
Ah yes, the classic way to have a robot defeating magnetism: reversing it.
Sinistron then delivers a whole page of infodump to reveal that he was created by Magneto with the mind of his deceased brother.
This makes Antimony extremely angry…
…but despite being Tina’s equivalent she’s not the one to save the day.
The rest of the Magnetic Men are immobilized, until Nickel decides to have the slightest hint of a personality and breaks free.
Not that it’s really necessary, because Magneto takes down Sinistron with ease.
Oh come on, Bismuth wasn’t destroyed? You’re a Metal Men spoof, YOU HAD ONE JOB!!!
Even Antimony is fine!
And that’s the end!
Several Amalgam books even included fake letters! That’s a neat idea.
Magnetic Men Featuring Magneto #1 (1997)
by Tom Peyer & Barry Kitson
Out of absolutely nowhere, the story receives a sequel the following year!!!
We’ll eventually see these creators on the Legion retrospective as well: Tom Peyer is a very important writer for the Reboot, and Kitson will be the star penciler of the so-called Theeboot.
One of the gimmicks of Amalgam was pretending to be part of an ongoing universe, so we kick this off as the continuation of a story that doesn’t exist.
Specifically, by having Magneto rebuild the Magnetic Men.
Also, now he has a sidekick in the form of “Mister Mastermind”, a fusion between the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants Mastermind and Captain Marvel’s Mister Mind.
It’s interesting to see that, much like Doc Magnus, Magneto also didn’t really want to give these guys full personalities.
Which is a bit weird considering they’re based on his friends.
Kitson keeps most of Matsuda’s design for the Magnetic Men, but they still don’t look enough like the Metal Men to me.
They at least get SOME personality this time around; their bickering DOES match the Metal Men’s.
Having JUST resurrected the Magnetic Men, Magneto decides they shouldn’t be a superhero team anymore.
So thanks to the illusion powers of Mister Mastermind, the Magnetic Men are given human secret identities.
This is given WAY more thought than the first time the Metal Men got human identities.
Not that it’s hard.
The human identities are an additional level of easter egg.
Nickel is “Lance Vale”; since he’s a photographer, I’m assuming this is a fusion between Lance Bannon (a Peter Parker rival) and Vicky Vale from Batman.
Bismuth’s “Snapper Jones” is obviously a fusion between Snapper Carr and Rick Jones.
Antimony gets the best joke out of all the secret identities, but I’m not sure what “Debbi Walker” is based on. Obviously Marvel’s Patsy Walker, sure, but who is “Debbi” referencing?
Iron is most definitely the most boring. That’s just Steel, not even fused with anyone!
Given the wealth theme, Cobalt is confirmed to be the equivalent of Gold.
“Lucius Richmond” is a reference to Batman’s Lucius Fox and Marvel’s Nighthawk, the billionaire superhero Kyle Richmond.
Magneto pushes the Magnetic Men away, and we continue with Antimony’s disdain for him.
Mister Mastermind might be Mastermind’s equivalent, but Magneto treats him like Toad.
Then the Magnetic Men travel to London for basically no reason.
They get to play the hero when a bus explodes…
…but the civilians accuse them of being the ones to provoke the incident.
Naturally there are supervillains behind this attack, and they’re a rather random bunch.
But these are ALSO elemental robots!
Specifically, made-up elements and metals from both Marvel and DC.
Notice “Vance Cosmic” shares the same name of one of the characters from Spider-Boy, but this is explicitly a robot.
Also, Inertron is misspelled as Inerton.
Meanwhile, Magneto has located his brother in the most awesome place imaginable: the Living Dinosaur Island.
Speaking of his brother, this is our first true glimpse at Doc Magnus.
And while his robots are simply called Sentinels, they’re clearly fused with Manhunters.
Doc Magnus is also working with some Magnetic Men villains: Quasimodox (a fusion between Brainiac and Quasimodo) and the kind of awesome-looking Chemodam, the fusion between Chemo and M.O.D.A.M. (the female version of M.O.D.O.K; yes, there is one).
Naturally, when you have Magneto in your team, the others are kind of redundant.
I don’t know what it’s worse when Antimony calls him “Master”, whether she was based on his daughter or on his love interest.
The Magnetic Men even get a power boost whenever they fight alongside Magneto.
But like I said, Magneto makes them redundant.
But after discovering the Sinister Society hates his brother…
…he recruits everyone into the Magnetic Men.
Why is there no “Detective Dinosaur” comic as part of Amalgam? I can only assume it’s a fusion between Detective Chimp and Devil Dinosaur!
As part of the fake letters page, we learn Magneto has a very rich history.
Kind of a shame this series is not real.
Does any of this show up in any regular continuity?
The part where the Magnetic Men have human identities lasts a couple of pages and it’s STILL miles better that what the Metal Men did.
SHOULD any of this have happened in regular continuity?
Doc Magnus could’ve used some of Magneto’s humility and humanity. Think about THAT.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
The Living Dinosaur Island is the only thing that qualifies.
Does it stand the test of time?
Magneto and the Magnetic Men: 4/10
Magnetic Men Featuring Magneto: 6/10
The first story is not very good. It barely uses any Metal Men concepts and the artwork is all over the place.
The second story is a bit better, in part because Kitson is a better storyteller so you can tell what’s going on. And at least the Magnetic Men get SOME personality there.
As a homage, it absolutes pales in comparison to what Spider-Boy did with the Legion: both writers seem to have the most superficial knowledge of the Metal Men… this is like 95% X-Men stuff and 5% Metal Men stuff.
Of course the Legion has WAY more lore to play with, but… what a wasted opportunity.
Elemental robots: 10
-Nickel
-Cobalt
-Bismuth
-Antimony
-Iron
-Vibranium (Soniklaw)
-Adamantium (Kultron)
-Inertron (Vance Cosmic)
-Promethium (Deathborg)
-Ninth Metal (Black Vulture)
Times Nickel has died: 1
Times Cobalt has died: 1
Times Bismuth has died: 1
Times Antimony has died: 1
Times Iron has died: 1
The name “Debbi Walker” probably takes the first name from “Debbi Anderson”. DC published a couple of books with her back in 1969-1971 (“Date with Debbi” and “Debbi’s Dates”) and she fills a role comparable to that of Patsy Walker at Marvel. Their romantic interests even have similar names (“Buddy Baxter” and “Buzz Baxter”), which is probably a coincidence or a reference to some third party.
Assuming that all of the “Magnetic Men” are amalgams of members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, I’d guess that Iron’s Marvel part is Blob and maybe Cobalt’s is Pyro (granted he wasn’t one of Magneto’s Brotherhood). I suppose he could be Unus the Untouchable, who was from Magneto’s, but the resemblance is more Pyro.
Wait, we could have had Detective Dinosaur if there’d been another issue? Dammit…