3 out of 5

With Gabriel Hernandex Walta’s moody art style and Bunn’s vicious script, Magento #1 hits with painful intensity.  Unfortunately, when issue #2 repeats almost the exact same tricks, you begin to wonder if there’s less to this title than initially suspected… and as the remainder of these first couple mini-arcs continue to bleakly blunder around the same territory, that wonder becomes confirmed.  Bunn introduces a potentially intriguing factor late in the game, but by this point we’re struggling with the logic of the title in general, so that intrigue is easily dismissed.  But there’s plenty of worse crossover pap out there, and Bunn does appreciably keep Mags a solo affair, so while the grim and dour proceedings might recall a certain 90s Image vibe, the light character introspection and overall lack of spandex marks it as evolved from that crowd, as well as taking an X book and shifting it over into the dark alleyway universe of, say, Punisher.

If we’ve been following events prior to this, we probably already know that Magneto is depowered from his classic days.  But if we don’t know, Bunn explains it to us soon enough.  This hasn’t changed his agenda, really – to fuck up mutie haters – but he’s had to adapt his approach to a more stealthy variety, even though he’s still plenty willing to go all collateral damage in a police station if need be.  The opening issue seems to establish this as an almost superpowered noir, with Mags slinking about in the background to find out the skinny on some unsolved mutie murders, his violent interrogations being reported after-the-fact by traumatized eye witnesses, but Bunn almost immediately throttles that premise and switches back to a more general manhunt.  The Punisher comparison is thus apt, but Bunn just can’t dig deep enough into Magneto’s psyche to make it hit home, and the variations at which Mags applies his powers never really makes it seem like he still can’t mostly do whatever he wants; it’s a forced limitation, on other words: he can only control a paperclip and nothing more when it would be cooler for a scene for it to be that way.  Cullen’s also doing his Helheim thing, which means that the narrator (Magneto) lets us know his all sad by breaking up single sentences into mini phrases with ellipses across multiple panels.  Every page… every book…

I’d also like to highlight my favorite dumb sentences: “The best way to stick it to your enemies… …and I mean stick it in and break it off… …is NOT to simply take their favorite toys from them.  It’s to take them and KEEP them for yourself.”  Caps are the bolds.  Ellipses are Cullen’s.  I get what Bunn was going for here, but it’s missing something between taking the toys and taking the toys and keeping them for yourself.  Probably breaking the toys, I guess?  Because if you take them in the first place, it’s sort of assumed that by the action of taking them, they’re becoming yours.  Ya dig?  So sprinkle some of that sloppiness into the script as well.

The somewhat offkilter stance of the title is enough to get you interested for a couple books at least, but it’s Walta’s art that keeps you there.  His humble representation of Magneto just sells the antihero thing, and when his scenes open up for some glorious violence – with striking, generally duo-toned colors from Jordie Bellaire – it’s the kind of work that just make you stop on the page for a moment.  Javier Fernandez, who works on a couple of issues, is kept grounded, maybe, by his colorist Dan Brown on one issue or Bellaire on another, but the figures otherwise bring back that Image reference – all square-jawed and muscled-up.  There are some scenes that I thought were flashbacks because Mags was all big and brash looking, but, no, they were present day, just rendered in a grit-teeth style by Fernandez ’cause that’s, I guess, what he likes.  His framing also leaves a lot to be desired: motion and action are often confusing, versus Walta’s instantly readable panels.  It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound, but the contrast between the two artists is definitely noticeable.

Lastly, some great covers provided by Declan Shalvey with Bellaire and whoever’s white-on-black lettering idea it was (VC’s Cory Petit?), it’s a simple trick, but it’s a simple trick that works to make them narration boxes look mean.