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'X-Men: The Trial of Magneto' is a fascinating, if flawed, Scarlet Witch story
Marvel Comics

Comic Books

‘X-Men: The Trial of Magneto’ is a fascinating, if flawed, Scarlet Witch story

A terrific creative team gives this book considerable heft, but it’s plagued by pacing issues.

For X-Men fans, few concepts seem as unimpeachable as a murder mystery pitting Magneto against the Avengers. The fact that fan-favorite writer Leah Williams and rising star artist Lucas Werneck were behind the wheel only added to the hype. But when the five-issue X-Men: The Trial of Magneto actually came out, the reaction was much less effusive and, in some corners of the Internet, even hostile.

Collected together at last, these five issues are far from perfect despite being more enjoyable than fans may remember. Williams has the unenviable task of balancing an overly large cast of X-Men, Avengers, and mutants from her run on X-Factor, which was canceled prior to the release of Trial of Magneto. The result is an uneven story that often swerves away from its primary goal of showing Scarlet Witch’s redemption.

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More than most comics stories, which can at least be evaluated as standalone storylines or ideas, Trial of Magneto is difficult to extricate from the context in which it was promoted and the purpose it serves within the broader X-line. I would normally consider those issues irrelevant to reviewing a story, but with Trial of Magneto, I think it affects the presentation of the material in a more pronounced way.

First, some background: in May 2021, Marvel announced that X-Factor, Williams’ much-beloved series about a team investigating mysterious mutant deaths, would be canceled following its tenth issue. The cast—and Williams—would move on to Trial of Magneto, which was billed as a follow-up to the summer Hellfire Gala event.

'X-Men: The Trial of Magneto' is a fascinating, if flawed, Scarlet Witch story

Marvel Comics

The setup would become clear in the X-Factor finale when Wanda Maximoff was found dead and Magneto quickly became the prime suspect. What unfolds from there is not really a trial, and not particularly about Magneto. Characters with close ties to Wanda (Quicksilver, Speed, and Vision) reckon with her apparent death when suddenly she reappears, but without much of her memories. Is this really Wanda…a clone…or something else?

The answer Williams provides is compelling and completes a subplot about Wanda’s relationship to mutantkind that had lingered throughout the Krakoa era, most recently in the Empyre: X-Men tie-in series. Wanda’s new status quo at the end of Trial of Magneto is fascinating and bodes well for a deeper exploration in a different series (hopefully written by Williams). But the bulk of that resolution takes place in the dense fifth issue. Before then, Wanda is mostly sidelined as the Avengers and X-Men fight a bunch of kaiju that are eventually connected to her.

The problem to me seems mostly structural. If designing a Scarlet Witch redemption arc from scratch, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to involve X-Factor, a team mostly disconnected from her—with the exception of Polaris, another sometime-daughter of Magneto. But Trial of Magneto also serves as a de facto sequel to X-Factor, meaning Williams devotes ample page time to characters like Prodigy and Eye Boy, who are somewhat tangential to a story that should be about Magneto and Wanda.

In interviews, Williams has said the original idea for Trial of Magneto was as an arc of X-Factor, but Marvel decided to make it a standalone series. That decision certainly boosted the marketability of the series, but it probably did a disservice to the story, which seemed torn between a Big Event comic and an X-Factor arc without quite deciding what to be. I would love to see a continuation of X-Factor or more space to resolve some of the messier aspects of its rushed conclusion—particularly the controversial Prodigy storyline—but it is hard to do that in a series ostensibly about Wanda and Magneto.

It probably did not help that Trial of Magneto was being released at the same time as Inferno, Jonathan Hickman’s swan song to the X-Men, which further muddled the event’s importance. How significant could this really be if the year’s most important X-story was being published at the same time?

So where does that leave us with Trial of Magneto? None of these ancillary decisions can be blamed on Williams or Werneck and, in many places, their work shines. Williams’ dialogue is as crisp as ever and few writers can match her knowledge of continuity and deep empathy for even the prickliest characters. Quicksilver and Northstar are two people who belong in a scene together and Williams predictably nails it. She even—finally!—makes it canon that Polaris finished her Ph.D. (Those graduate school bills must have been insane.)

'X-Men: The Trial of Magneto' is a fascinating, if flawed, Scarlet Witch story

Marvel Comics

What is strange about the series is how tedious and frequent the action scenes are, which is a criticism I almost never have for Williams’ books. Her action scenes almost always feel purposeful. Werneck’s vibrant, expressive characters give the scenes some heft and, in one of the book’s coolest details, Williams uses the data pages to diagram and explore Wanda’s magic.

The wrap-up of the mystery strains credulity in a few ways—for one, why was magic ignored as a cause of death when the character we’re dealing with is a notorious magic user?—but I was most frustrated by the pacing. A series that resolved the mystery sooner or foregrounded the central characters to a greater degree would have made the final issue feel less rushed.

Though I found the series flawed at times, I did appreciate Williams’ comfort with leaving the reader in an ambiguous position at the end of the series, thrilled to see Wanda’s redemption but deeply uncomfortable with its cost (the imprisonment of an innocent person). That moral compromise is central to the Krakoa era and, even as I found the path to it somewhat wobbly, I cannot wait to see how this ending is built upon.

'X-Men: The Trial of Magneto' is a fascinating, if flawed, Scarlet Witch story
‘X-Men: The Trial of Magneto’ is a fascinating, if flawed, Scarlet Witch story
X-Men: The Trial of Magneto
While an admirable look at Wanda Maximoff's push for redemption, this series is oddly paced and concludes with more questions than answers.
Reader Rating0 Votes
0
Williams develops Wanda Maximoff well and leaves her in a promising place narratively.
The data pages are stylistically brilliant.
Polaris finally gets her Ph.D!
There is no trial and it is not really about Magneto!
The kaiju fights are extremely repetitive and bog down the middle of the story.
Too much crucial explanation is left to the end.
7
Good

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