University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Publications 2004 Holocaust Avengers: From "The aM ster Race" to Magneto Kathrin M. Bower University of Richmond,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/mlc-faculty-publications Part of the European History Commons, Illustration Commons, and the Place and Environment Commons Recommended Citation Bower, Kathrin M. "Holocaust Avengers: From "The asM ter Race" to Magneto." International Journal of Comic Art 6, no. 2 (2004): 182-94. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 182 Holocaust Avengers: From "The Master Race" to Magneto I Kathrin Bower I In the classic genealogy of the superhero, trauma is often the explanation ' or motivation for the hero's pursuit of justice or revenge. Origin stories for superheroes and supervillains frequently appear in the plots of comic books long after the characters were created and with the shift in the stable of artists involved, different and sometimes competing events in the characters' biographies are revealed. This is particularly true of series that have enjoyed long periods of popularity or those that were phased out and then later revived. The stimulus for this m1icle was the origin story conceived for the X-Men supervillain Magneto under Chris Claremont's plotting, after the series was resurrected in 197 5 and by the foregrounding of Magneto's Holocaust past in the opening sequence to Bryan Singer's 2000 filmX-Men.