Ryan O’Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided’s CubbiesCrib. Whether it’s taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what’s going on. Outside of entertainment, he’s a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor’s in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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The X-Men’s Master of Magnetism is in a bit of a strange spot right now. As the MCU assembles its X-Men for Jake Schreier’s much-anticipated first mutant movie in 2028, Magneto was surprisingly left out of the picture. Instead, the focus of casting has been on the younger heroes, like Jean Gray (Sadie Sink) and Cyclops (Kit Connor), who’ll join Christopher Abbott’s Charles Xavier and likely tangle with Adam Driver, who was instead tapped to play Nathaniel Millbury, another name for Mister Sinister. In live-action, at least, that leaves one of the series’ most iconic characters up in the air after Ian McKellen reprises the role in Avengers: Doomsday, with an eye towards future installments as the point to introduce a new iteration.
Marvel Comics similarly has Magneto taking a bit of a back seat at the moment during the new DNX crossover. The special event sees the X-Men teaming up with the Fantastic Four to help save the veteran mutant from a mysterious condition that has left him in a dire state, all while confronting a major threat from 3K, led by an older version of Beast, who seeks to unleash the X-virus upon the world. As both groups act upon what they learned from the dark future of the Age of Revelation, the latest issue of the X-Men comics breaks off for a telekinetic showdown for the ages with one of 3K’s members and one of the most powerful telepaths around, Cassandra Nova. The spiritual opposite of Xavier, given form by the professor’s overwhelming potential, she’s a threat that few telepaths, let alone other mutants, could stand against, but **Jed McKay **and Netho Diaz’s run has a strong candidate to step in and succeed Magneto at such a crucial time.
Based on your answers, the Marvel hero who matches your spirit, values, and instincts has been revealed.
You carry the weight of the world on shoulders that are younger than they should have to be — funny, loyal, and endlessly self-sacrificing.
You fight in the shadows between law and chaos, guided by a fierce moral compass that refuses to let the guilty walk free.
Brilliant, driven, and occasionally insufferable — but always the person who solves the unsolvable problem.
You’ve been through fire that would break most people — and it did change you, completely. What’s left is unyielding, relentless, and operating by a code forged in grief.
Powerful, proud, and on a lifelong journey to become worthy of the legend you carry.
You believe in something bigger than yourself — and you fight for it even when the world has moved on and nobody else will.
Issue #37 finds Quentin Quire going “brain-to-brain” with Cassandra, and while he talks a big game, he quickly backs it up with a showcase of skills in the mindscape. While his opponent vomits bugs and summons Sentinels, the young mutant plays the classics by calling in the X-Men in a physical manifestation of their powers clashing together. In a particularly poignant moment, as they pit their ideals against one another, Quentin invokes Magneto and how the mutant grew to understand what it meant to truly protect his kind without affecting another. Like Magneto, he learned from past mistakes, now believing that “There is only the oppressed and the oppressor” and that genes do not decide who is greater.
Their battle feels like a collision between the old mutant supremacist Magneto and the reformed leader now fighting for a better future for everyone. Quentin counters Cassandra’s assertion that human extinction is the only way to save mutantkind, actively summoning the visage of his northern star as a reminder of how he was inspired to see the world and the people in it differently. His arc as a hero directly mimics his mentor, and it’s that determination to create a better tomorrow for mutants without any more oppression that allows him to overpower Cassandra and deliver a very fitting, vital blow. The fight doesn’t end in that moment, but it’s a symbolic victory and a passing of the torch to the next generation of heroes empowered by the efforts and ideals of those who came before.
X-Men #37 is now available for purchase. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the latest Marvel Comics issues as they release each week.
