It is interesting to contrast Marvel’s best-known Anti-Fascists, one nearly the Platonic Ideal of a modern comic book hero, Captain America, the other a genocidal villain driven by trauma and terror, Magnet. Both gained their anti-fascism during fascism’s original run, World War II but reacted in diametrically different manners. In discussing these two characters I will be referring to their cinematic presentations, Caps’ from the very successful Marvel Cinematic Universe and Magento from Fox’s more erratic X-Men franchise and associated films.
Steve Rogers was an underweight, under-sized, unhealthy man when American entered the war but driven by his intense sense of justice he desperately wanted to serve in the US Armed Forces despite being categorized as ‘4-F.’ After coming to the attention of Dr. Erskine Rogers was recruited into an experimental program to enhance human ability and attempt to create a ‘Super Solider.’ It’s important to note that in his interview with Erskine when asked if he ‘wanted to kill Nazis’ Rogers replied that he didn’t want to kill anyone but that he doesn’t like bullies. With an ideology that was already solidly anti-fascist Rogers also already possessed his most heroic qualities. The Super Soldier Serum may have granted him transhuman capabilities, but it was his moral code that defines his anti-fascism and also governed it limits.
Erik Lehnsherr a Polish Jew who would eventually take up the alias Magento was subjected to the horrors the Holocaust by Germany’s genocidal Nazi regime and while his mutant ability to manipulate all forms of metal was already present its development and his control were insufficient to protect either himself or his parents. Surviving the mass murder of Jews only because the attention of Dr. Klaus Schmidt aka Sabastian Shaw, Erik comes to his anti-fascism as a reaction to the brutal treatment of himself, his family, and his fellow Jews rather than from an innate moral code, despite as a younger man being a man of faith. Following World War II Erik adapts a personal mission as a NAZI hunter particularly interested in finding and taking revenge on Dr Schmidt. After successfully preventing nuclear war in an alternate history version of the Cuban Missile Crisis and targeting for destruction by the government that fear his and other mutant’s powers Erik adapts the name Magneto and identifies more as a mutant than with his Jewish ancestry. Taking the lesson he learned at the hands of Nazi brutality that humanity’s prejudice will lead it to always destroy those who are different he makes mutant survival and dominance his objective. Eventually Magneto attempts a massive attack to transform many of the world’s leaders into mutant regardless of the danger and death his machine will unleash because his objectives have transformed in obsessions.
Here we can compared critical moments between the two characters and how character plays into the importance of these moments.
Rogers, still a scrawny specimen without the benefits of Erskine’s serum, is suddenly confronted with a grenade during training, unaware that is a practice dummy round and while the rest of the trainees run for safety, he throws himself on the device attempting to shield everyone from the blast. He understands on an intuitive level self-sacrifice.
Magento’s mutant creation machine requires his unique abilities as a power source and the power levels needed are likely to kill him. Rather than subject himself to that risk and danger he kidnaps a teenage girl with the ability to steal his power and forces her to bear that risk. Erik’s terror and trauma has transformed him into his own version of fascism sacrificing others for his own goals.
And therein is the critical difference between the character and the moral difference in ways to combat fascism. You cannot adopt fascist ways without becoming a fascist yourself. It is noble to offer yourself up for the cause it is evil to offer up others.
