Will Magnus
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This article is about the mainstream DCU character. For the Amalgam Comics version, please see Will Magnus (Amalgam Comics).
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Doctor Will Magnus is a fictional human scientist in the DC Comics universe. He first appeared in Showcase #37 alongside his creations, the Metal Men, he was created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru.
[edit] Character history
One of the most impressive geniuses of the DCU, Magnus often offers scientific advice to other characters. His greatest achievement is the one for which he first received renown: the creation of the Metal Men. The method through which Doc Magnus created the Metal Man has varied over years with various writers. At first they were just blank slate robots with responsometers, devices which generated their intelligence and personalities which just happened to be evocative of the metals from which they were formed.
In an attempt to boost sales of their comic book, the characters underwent vast changes. The Metal Men all assumed human alter egos, while Doc Magnus became a fugitive scientist dedicated towards global conquest. His personality change was credited to having been kidnapped, reawakened and brainwashed by a mad dictator. Instead sales plunged and the comic wasn't printed for a few years. Eventually Metal Men was picked back up again with Doc's sanity restored and he returned to assist his Metal Men.
At one point he saved Doom Patrol's Robotman, whose original body had been destroyed by Madame Rouge. Doc Magnus recovered Robotman's brain and built him a new cybernetic body.
In 1993, a four part Metal Men mini-series retconned much of their backstory. It was revealed that the responsometers were not responsible for the Metal Men's sentience and that the Metal Men actually were imprinted with the intellects and personalities of real people: Magnus's own brother, his fiancee, two lab workers, a janitor, and a pizza-delivery man. These unfortunates' personalities were accidentally transferred to blank robots in a lab accident. At the climax of the miniseries, Gold was permanently killed and Doc Magnus mortally wounded. Doc permanently transferred his personality into a blank robot known as Veridium, made of a green alien metal, becoming the new robotic leader of the Metal Men.
With the advent of Identity Crisis, Gold is back and Doc Magnus is once again human. The whereabouts of the other Metal Men are still partially unknown, albeit the inert body of Lead was shown in Magnus' lab with the partially disassembled body of Tina.
Doc Magnus is currently an active character in the "52" series. As revealed during Infinite Crisis, when Superboy-Prime pounded on the walls of reality, he caused the very fabric of reality to shift, changing and merging histories. The "blank robots with responsometers" origin is said to be the defintive origin while the "human personalities" origin and the 1993 mini-series has been described as the byproduct of a mental breakdown suffered by Magnus. When Booster Gold visited, asking for help with Skeets, Magnus commented that the Metal Men "don't quite work anymore."
The responsometers now contain an "artificial soul", invented by Doc Magnus on insipiration of T. O. Morrow, when the latter was a college teacher for the young Magnus. After the unexplained dismantling of the Metal Man, Doc Magnus was unable to restore their personalities. He now takes Prozac for clinical depression, which is implied to be the result of this loss, and the reason of his unability to restore his creation to life.
Meanwhile, government agents hover around hoping to use the Metal Men as soulless smart weapons. Through all of this, Magnus has been visiting Morrow in his cell in Haven. Morrow has warned Magnus that abductions of "mad" scientists have been occurring, including Doctor Sivana, whose lair Magnus investigates.
Eventually Morrow himself disappears, leaving a note for his former student with a string in machine code. Using the code, Magnus was able to revive Mercury, albeit his robotic friend and creation was apparently destroyed again trying to save him from a conspiracy trying to kidnap all the mad scientists in the DCU. Mindless replicas of the Metal Men forced Magnus to escape from his burned house before he was in fact captured.
He is now on a tropical island where all the captured scientists have been given unlimited budgets to invent freely by Intergang. Magnus played along, claiming to be working on a Plutonium Man robot, but endeavored to be as slow as possible. When Magnus was confronted by his lack of progress, another scientist revealed to the island's management about his need for his medication. With that information, Magnus' medication was forcibly confiscated in order for his mental health to deteriorate and be more cooperative.
Using metals scavenged by common items (a gold watch, lead shielding, mercury-filled thermometers, and tin cans), however, Will is able to rebuild again Mercury (albeit only a few inches tall, but sporting an updated appearance) and plans to restore the others, cooperating with Intergang the needed to avoid suspicions and have access to funds and laboratory appliances.
The story is ongoing.
[edit] Powers and abilities
- While human, Doc Magnus has had no special abilities aside from his great intellect. His vast intelligence was responsible for the creation of the Metal Men, along with various other robots.
- While he was Veridium, Magnus was the most powerful of the Metal Men. He could store and channel heat and energy. [1]
