One of the X-Men’s Most Mysterious Villains Is Back at Last

X-Men has been a wild ride since writer Jed MacKay and artist Ryan Stegman relaunched the book for the “From the Ashes” publishing initiative. So far, the book has revolved around the battle against 3K, a group led by Cassandra Nova, one of the X-Men’s greatest foes. 3K is basically the U-Men from Morrison’s New X-Men, except instead of vivisecting mutants and taking their powers, they’ve learned to transform adults into mutants, creating their own team of X-Men. 3K is led by a committee of villains, and one of them is a character who many X-Men fans know nothing about, despite her having a connection to Magneto back when he was a villain. Her name is Astra, and she played a rather large role in the X-Men mythos back in the ’90s. Astra hasn’t bee seen in ages, and unfortunately, creators dropped the ball with her over the years since her debut.

Astra showed up in 1999, during writer/artist Alan Davis’s Uncanny X-Men/X-Men run that closed out the X-Men stories of the ’90s. Astra had a very interesting premise, and made her presence felt immediately. However, no one picked up on the character after her debut story (“Magneto War”, a better story than it gets credit for), and she’s languished since then. It’s interesting to see her again in “From the Ashes”, a publishing initiative that owes a lot to the X-Men stories of the ’90s.

Astra Wanted Magneto’s Head

“Magneto War” was the first story of Davis’s run. It brought back Magneto for the first time in years, and at the time this was a huge surprise because of Joseph. Joseph was a younger version of Magneto who had showed up on Earth after Holocaust destroyed Avalon, Magneto’s base at time. Xavier had mindwiped Magneto at the time, and so a version without memories showing up seemed about right. However, “Magneto War” revealed what some fans expected, that Joseph was a clone, and revealed who had created Joseph, a mutant known as Astra. Astra hated Magneto, and created Joseph to kill the mutant master of magnetism. Joseph almost succeeded, but got a gnarly concussion that took away his memory. He eventually met Rogue, and everyone thought he was Magneto. Astra found him, and told him the truth about who he was, then revealed her own origin.

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Astra was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the team’s early days, but she left the team before it went public. Magneto was something of a monster with the Brotherhood, emotionally manipulating and abusing them. Astra hated this treatment and left the team, eventually getting her hands on Magneto’s DNA and creating Joseph. In “Magneto War”, she led Joseph in battle against Magneto, who had threatened the world with a magnetic pole reversal unless he was given what he wanted. The fight would kill Joseph, but Astra was able to escape using her teleportation powers. It was thought that she was killed by Apocalypse, but that wasn’t the case. She returned with a new Joseph clone and attacked the X-Men again when they lived on Utopia after Scarlet Witch’s de-powering of mutants, trying to form a new Brotherhood. She was defeated and put in the X-Brig, but got out at some unrevealed point. She eventually joined the mutant nation of Krakoa, and disappeared after its dissolution.

Astra Could Hold the Keys to Some Big Changes in the Future

Astra showing up alongside 3K makes a lot of sense. First of all, there’s her grudge against Magneto; he’s a member of the X-Men team that they’re fighting. 3K is all about making mutants powerful again, trying to make them the dominant genetic paradigm on Earth, and Astra has always been a mutant supremacist, so that makes sense. Finally, she does have experience working with mutant genetics; it was revealed that she also experimented with Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Toad’s DNA before settling on Joseph as her cat’s paw. Astra is also a character that hasn’t had any spotlight in a while, so it was nice to see her again.

However, Astra doesn’t seem exactly happy with 3K. 3K’s mysterious Director tells her that her Joseph related schemes were foolish at best, and not what 3K wants to do. The look she gives him really says it all, and it could lead to a very interesting place that could change Astra forever. Magneto’s powers are broken, and Astra is being belittled by her new allies. Perhaps she’s the catalyst for Magneto to get his powers back to normal, helping him and the X-Men because of the disdain 3K is throwing her way. It would be very interesting to see Astra helping Magneto, and is the kind of twist that MacKay could use down the line.

X-Men #17 is on sale now.