5. Magneto #1 - Cullen Bunn And Gabriel Hernandez Walta (Marvel)
The very broad - yet accurate - premise of this comic is, what if Punisher were Magneto and, instead of mafioso, he went after mutant-haters? Because, like Punisher, Magneto is a dark character. He's an anti-hero these days (after years of being an X-Men villain, much like Frank Castle who started out as a Spidey villain) hunting down anyone whose toxic views and actions hurt the burgeoning mutant race. The series starts as it means to go on with a brutal, visual death scene as we discover Magneto's on the run, having left Cyclops' Uncanny X-Men team, and picking out targets while keeping a low profile. While he looks more and more like Xavier having gone bald, the familiar Magneto helmet and floating terror pose he always had emerges in a brilliant scene towards the end. Very much like Magneto's character, he brashly walks right into a police station, where his target is incarcerated, and takes on the entire police force, using pieces of metal to mould into his trademark helmet and put everyone on their backs in the process. I wouldn't say this title warrants the MAX label but there's a very gory death scene that closes out this book - but if you weren't bothered by the opening killing then you're unlikely to be fazed by the closing death scene. Cullen Bunn is staying true to the black roots of the character which makes him difficult to like as a hero. But, like in that scene in X-Men: First Class where Michael Fassbender's Magneto hunts down and kills the two Nazis in the South American bar, you do want him to succeed even if it's bittersweet. A lot of Marvel books have dashes of humour in them but this series looks like it's going to be played completely down the line serious. I don't mind that - I think Marvel should have some titles like this which adds variety to their range. Magneto #1 is a very intense but compelling comic that I would recommend to adult audiences rather than kids.