Retroactive Continuity, Holocaust Testimony, and X-Men’s Magneto

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines retroactive continuity (or retcon), a fundamental feature of serialized comics, in which a character’s backstory can be effectively rewritten, in order to shed light on the complex question of testimonial production and reception. Specifically, I analyze how the Jewish identity of X- Men villain Magneto has been overwritten. While Magneto first appeared in Uncanny X-Men 1 (1963), his origins as a survivor of Auschwitz were only written into the story much later, in Uncanny X-Men 150 (1981). More recently, Greg Pak’s X-Men: Magneto Testament (2008), a five-issue origin story, confirmed Magneto’s Jewish background. Retconning reveals how comics are constantly reinvented to meet new market demands, but it is also a feature that challenges the internal logic of a text while being an extension of it. Magneto is repeatedly retconned (i.e. the number on his arm tattoo, his given name), as is Holocaust discourse at large. How, then, are we to read (into) his pasts? In the case of Magneto, retroactive continuity calls attention to the relations between the character, the story world, and cultural and political contexts by generating multiple, parallel stories. Rather than undermining or deforming the ‘truth,’ to read retroactive continuity back into testimony is to allow for the relations that necessarily condition the ‘truth’ in the first place to come to the fore.