Following the Paris trial of the mutant known throughout the world as Magneto, the villain set aside his villainy for a time and became Headmaster of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters while Charles Xavier was off-world recovering from wounds he received during a brutal street mugging. It was a period of time when stories explored the character of Magneto as a less driven, less ruthless man whose tunnel vision had only allowed him to pursue an agenda that would force the human race to either recognize and submit to the race of homo superior, or suffer the consequences. With his new responsibilities as Headmaster, Magneto was forced to temper his hostility toward humans and instead work with both the X-Men and the school's young charges, the New Mutants, redirecting his energies towards their welfare while attempting to prove to heroes like the Avengers that he was a changed man.
Yet once Magneto had settled into his new role, there were no doubt a few of us who were surprised to see how quickly "changed" eventually came to mean "tamed," a word that was once considered unthinkable in association with the Master of Magnetism.
Ms. Hunter refers to a storyline where the New Mutants were missing and presumed dead by some; yet you've never seem a calmer Headmaster, nor a calmer former archcriminal whose reprisals had at one time been both immediate and terrifying.
Eventually, however, the honeymoon was over--thanks in part to the actions of the brutal Marauders, whose killing spree prompted Magneto to take a more proactive posture in safeguarding mutants, even to the point of forging an alliance with the Hellfire Club (on Storm's advice) and being elected as its new White King. Yet both Magneto and the Club's Black King, Sebastian Shaw, are ambitious, willful men who are accustomed to asserting their authority--and when the Marauders destroy Xavier's school, and the New Mutants refuse to have anything more to do with either Magneto or the Hellfire Club, Shaw seizes the opportunity to rid himself of Magneto, whom he feels has nothing left to bring to the Club's table.
But the rise of the Magneto of old is what truly begins to unfold here.
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