Here's what Byrne said about Magneto, "Hidden Years", and retcons last year in the X-Men folder on AOL:

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Subject: A LONG one!

Date: Sun, Mar 1, 1998 12:57 EST

From: JohnLByrne

Message-id: <19980301175701.MAA11329@ladder03.news.aol.com>

Now, THINK about this! This is not being cast as a reboot -- not even a partial reboot, a la TWICE TOLD TALES. It's literal "untold tales", not even having to fit between two issues or between panels, as other such ventures have. The X-Men have an actual HOLE in their history. This series is designed to fill at least some of that gap.

Look at it this way: Suppose the current X-office (present day) decides to reveal that Jean Grey is really a Skrull and always has been. This would not affect what I'm doing, since at the time we did not know Jean was a Skrull. On the other hand, I CANNOT reveal that Jean is a Skrull and always has been because -- she isn't! No matter what I do, no matter where I go, no matter what sort of agonies I inflict on the characters in HIDDEN YEARS, everyone has to end up exactly as we saw them in GIANT SIZED X-MEN #1 (only not dressed so. . . funky!)

This is, in fact, the major appeal of the series, to me. I cannot do any damage, and neither can I BE damaged.

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So far so good. Then later he says:

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Exactly as he was handled at the time -- including the first (roughly) third of Chris's run on the title: Magneto will be the merciless, manaical, world-conquoring S.O.B. he was always shown to be at that time. After all, I don't want to be accused of "changing things", do I?

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Okay, this is fine. This is in continuity, this makes sense.

It gets weird later:

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Subject: Re: To your corners...please?

Date: Tue, Mar 3, 1998 16:07 EST

From: JohnLByrne

Message-id: <19980303210700.QAA24574@ladder03.news.aol.com>

Missed this one before I hit "send".

I DON'T have that much leeway in the portrayal of Magneto, actually. I invite anyone to read THE ESSENTIAL X-MEN appearances and compare -- never mind even TRY to reconcile!! -- Chris's portrayal of Magneto in the first third of his tenure on the book with the "transformed" Magneto. He's a summabeech, thru and thru!

I still say Charlie messed with Magneto's head when he was a baby.

JB

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So, now he's talking about Xavier having messed with Magneto's head to produce the personality change between the "first third" of Claremont's run (which, let us not forget, features Magneto in exactly three issues) and the "transformed" Magneto, despite the fact that Claremont explained this quite adequately in XM #2-3 as Magneto being driven nuts by his powers. And this, after he's said he can't make Jean Grey into a Skrull. Well, no, but apparently he can make Magneto into a Skrull, or anything he wants to.

And it goes on:

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Define "bad light". In terms of Magneto's life (as opposed to his publishing history), the S.O.B. version actually represents a much "larger slice". Portraying him as he was in those days would be a) in continuity and b) a more accurate portrayal of his personality for most of his adult life!

Guessing you missed what was almost my first post here. It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to mess up current continuity. The status quo established in GIANT SIZED X-MEN #1 is the point at which my series MUST end. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first part of his statement is, of course, untrue. UXM #150, the turning point for Magneto in terms of how long he's been around in comic books, was in 1980, or 18 years ago. UXM #1 came out when, 1962? So, 18 years, 18 years-- Magneto has been what he is exactly as long as he was what he was. And in terms of his life, he was a good guy up until 25 years ago, according to Legionquest, and he's a lot older than 50.

Or is he? Byrne doesn't think so:

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I've yet to see any "evidence" to convince me that any of that "Auschwitz" stuff really happened. See below.

Boy, you just don't get this one at all, do you? All I can say is "Stay tuned!"

You're tripping over one of the "snags" in"Marvel Time". Not surprising! Writers at Marvel -- especially Chris -- do it all the time!

The FF went up in their rocket about ten years ago -- closer to seven, really -- and that means that the whole Marvel Universe as we know it, dating from that point, is about seven to ten years old. X-MEN #1 came out a couple of years after FF #1, and since the first year or so of most books are seen as being "real time" this means we were introduced to Xavier's students about two years after the FF's flight.

Now, since Magneto has to be Wanda and Pietro's father, and they appear to be in their twenties when they first appear, we could suggest he was about 40 in that first issue -- not a bad guess, really, since that would fit with Stan's habit of pitting his younger heroes against middle-aged badguys. This means he was old enough to have been in Auschwitz when X-MEN #1 came out -- as Reed and Ben were old enough to have been in WW2 -- but he isn't any more. X-MEN #1 is now about six or eight years ago, which means Magneto, in Marvel Time, is not yet fifty.

In fact -- and this is a mind twister -- his is potentially younger than I am!! EEP! No possible way for him to have been in WW2 unless he is about twice as old as he appeared to be in #1.

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Byrne doesn't think there is any "evidence" that the Auschwitz stuff really happened.

So UXM #150, UXM #161, UXM #199, UXM #274, XM #25, and Legionquest "didn't happen." Either Charles Xavier has extensively altered Magneto's mind and memories, making him essentially an evil bastard (and this would not explain UXM #199, where two people recognize Magneto from Auschwitz, nor would it explain Xavier meeting Magneto in UXM #161 and Legionquest, where the Auschwitz background exists from the first three sentences Magneto and Xavier say to each other), or Magneto is so schizoid that he has invented these memories himself (and, presumably, got himself tattooed, and believes in these invented memories so deeply that powerful telepaths can't get at the truth.) And this is not a continuity change.

Needless to say, I am shocked, horrified and disgusted that a comic book professional would even want to remove the complexity from such a three-dimensional character. And the whole thing is absurd, for the following reasons:

Well, it's not necessary to say Charles Xavier messed with his head to do this, because Claremont already established a reason-- Magneto goes insane from long-term cumulative damage caused by his powers. He went insane between (chronologically) Classic X-Men #19 (the backup story, "I, Magneto", where his friend Isabella is murdered) and XM -1 (the flashback issue where Xavier meets him at Auschwitz.) After Mutant Alpha de-aged him and Davan Shakari re-aged him, he was restored to his "prime", with presumably all the physical damage undone. However, it took some time for him to reality check his beliefs (when people believe things because they acquired the knowledge in a non-rational state-- they were drunk, they were children, they were on drugs, they were insane-- it takes them some time to recognize that these beliefs are false, because we don't reality check our beliefs constantly.) When he did, sparked by a cavalcade of returning memories (as established in Classic X-Men #12 backup story, "A Fire In the Night"), he began to change into a better person, a process that was seen most clearly in UXM #150. There is absolutely no reason to establish that Charles Xavier altered Magneto in any way, much less memory implants.

It is also, quite frankly, a character assassination of Xavier. Let's suppose Xavier did mess with Magneto's head when he was an infant. We know that Xavier did such things in those days. But in XM #2, Magento kidnaps MacTaggert and Xavier and accuses them both of doing just that. He tortures Xavier, who refuses to admit to having had anything to do with it and insists on his innocence, and then when Moira confesses to having altered his genetic structure, he tortures her instead. At no point does he believe in Xavier's innocence, but Xavier insists on his innocence anyway. Then, at the end of the story, when Magneto is no longer around, Xavier chastises Moira for having done this, saying that it was wrong to try to alter Magneto when he was a helpless child.

This is consistent and reasonable "heroic" behavior if Xavier is innocent. He is horrified that his old friend could accuse him of such a crime, he's horrified that his other old friend could actually have committed it, and he won't admit to the crime because he didn't do it. However, if Xavier is guilty? An entirely different picture emerges. Now we see a coward who lets a helpless human friend be tortured for a crime he committed, instead of stepping forward to tell Magneto, "No, I did it, torture me if you must but leave her alone." Then, in an act of complete hypocrisy, he tells Moira that what she did was wrong when Magneto isn't around to listen any more. Charles Xavier is not a man who hides his crimes. If he did something he regrets, he tells us. He doesn't let innocent people be tortured for crimes he committed.

And if what he did was to implant Magneto with memories of being a Holocaust victim? Well, when did he do that? In the first three sentences he and Magnus spoke together in UXM #161, where Xavier met Magnus and Magnus said he was an Auschwitz survivor? Did he also plant Ruth and David Shulman, the Auschwitz survivors who recognized Magneto as their old friend in UXM #199? Why would Xavier have been so evil as to implant a man he just met with a horrifying false past?

Besides, consider Gabrielle Haller. Her role in the recovery of HYDRA's gold, which Magneto then took, proves that she was a Holocaust victim. But she was clearly younger than or a contemporary of Magnus. So, did Xavier invent in his head seeing Magnus in his memories in UXM #161? But Legionquest contradicts that-- that wasn't a flashback, that was time travel. Magnus was really there and really Xavier's friend in Israel when Xavier was treating Gabrielle Haller. If Haller was a Holocaust victim-- and she was, and we know she was, because HYDRA knew she was-- then there is no reason Marvel time means Magneto cannot be.

In the issue of X-Men where Davan Shakari restores Magneto to adulthood (UXM #104, penciled by Dave Cockrum) it's stated that Magneto was restored to the peak of his powers. Magneto, in the past, had required assorted devices to boost his powers; he was clearly operating under a power-up, explained in UXM #200 (and other places) as Magneto having been restored to the body of a thirty-something. Well, if Magneto was 40 to begin with, why would being turned to a 30-something give him such an extreme power-up? Magneto was intended to have been 60-ish when he first started fighting the X-Men, which explains his relative weakness in comparison to his power when he's physiologically in his 30's. Also, if Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are in their 20's when UXM #1 occurs, logically, Magneto is in his 40's or older, depending on how old he was when he fathered them. And come on-- he's trying to make a time-based argument in a universe where Kitty Pryde has gone from age 13 to age 18 (at least) in a span of 16 or fewer real-time years, yet Franklin Richards has aged about two years over the same time period?

Also, what sort of idiot would implant Holocaust memories in a man who's too young for them? Has Magneto never checked a calendar in his life? When he was 40, couldn't he tell he was 40 and not 60? Wouldn't this have been a trifle obvious?

Finally, Byrne says:

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It's always fun to see fans enjoying themselves, tracking all the various bits of "continuity", building in their minds -- and sometimes on paper -- vast and complex "histories" of their favorite characters. But it's not fun -- in fact it is downright depressing -- to see some of those fans forget the single most simple and yet most important element in all of this: comics are fiction. And SERIAL fiction, to boot. The characters are not real, and the moments of their lives are only what the current writer decides to invest them with. Magento is a classic example of how this works. When the character was introduced he was a megalomaniac with world-conquoring pretentions and not the least hesitation about slaughtering thousands -- even hundreds of thousands -- to gain his ends. (This is a guy who would routinely leave a live A-Bomb to cover his escapes, remember!) Xavier -- who presumably knew all there was to know about Magneto, being the worlds most powerful telepath -- never once offered the least "excise" for Magneto's behavior. He was to be STOPPED. Period. Even Chris, when he first wrote the character (and for several years after) portrayed Magneto in exactly this way. (I've mentioned elsewhere the cackling voice Chris would use when he gave one of his "dramatic readings" of his X-MEN dialog. After the "reformation" I used to ask Chris if Magneto still spoke the same way.) Later, Chris CHANGED HIS MIND. That's all. That simple. The writer CHANGED HIS MIND. The editor approved the change. And Magneto underwent a (sudden) and dramatic transformation. Up to, and including picking up some of the elements that Chris had not been able to use in NightCrawler's history (see above). Chris contradicted Stan, Roy, and everyone else (including himself) who had written Magneto in the past. Later writers are bound to contradict Chris -- especially with the weight of "evidence" being very much AGAINST Chris's version. Heck, knowing Chris as well as I do, I would bet money that, had he remained as Cheif Scribe of the X-Men, he would have eventually gotten around to contradicting himself. Chris's style is to write what he feels at the moment. That's how Magneto changed. That's how, I can almost guarantee, he would most certainly have changed again.

Once more, HIDDEN YEARS cannot affect current continuity.

And, once more, Chris's "history" of Magneto was itself a retcon. Should someone decide to "delete" it, that would not, itself, be a retcon. That would be a restoration.

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Magneto's Auschwitz history, of course, does not contradict any facts that had been previously established about the character. It makes the timeline a little wonky, but so does Xavier having served in Korea. Up until UXM #150, we did not know Magneto's ethnicity, age, real name, history, or anything else except " he was a megalomaniac with world-conquoring pretentions and not the least hesitation about slaughtering thousands -- even hundreds of thousands -- to gain his ends." Which certainly does not say he was not an Auschwitz survivor-- it's a fallacy to say that a person who suffered terribly is therefore not capable of inflicting suffering.

After Claremont implemented his retcon, the only thing that was changed was that Xavier knew who and what Magneto was (in UXM #149, he said he did not know Magneto's ethnicity or history.) Nothing was contradicted. This was not a retcon, it was an establishment. A character who had not had a history got one. It was not a history that contradicted anything that had come before.

Magneto's personality change did contradict what had come before. So did Jean suddenly becoming a passionate and strong-willed person when she became Phoenix. So did Wolverine when he went from being a one-dimensional killing machine to a man with honor, trying to overcome the beast. When people undergo dramatic life changes, such as being turned into an infant and then into an adult again, it can change them. This is character evolution, not retconning. If Claremont, or anyone, had tried to say Magneto wasn't a psycho megalomaniac in UXM #1-UXM #113, that would have been a retcon. But no one said that. No one ever tried to imply that Magneto did not do amazingly awful things for mostly rather bad reasons. What was said was that the character had evolved past that, that he had changed and he wasn't going to do those things anymore.

So no, Byrne is completely wrong. "Deleting" Magneto's Auschwitz background, which has appeared in a central role in UXM #150, 161, 199, 200, 274, XM -1, 1-3, 25, NM #49, and Legionquest (and that's just a very brief list!), is a retcon. It is not a restoration of the status quo. It is a destruction of history. If he wishes to do it, only the Powers that Be at Marvel can stop him, but he should not fool himself for a moment that it is anything other than a gross alteration of continuity.

Now, all this was last year. We don't know what Byrne's current plans are. But I find it a little bit disturbing that a man with a track record of destroying continuity he doesn't like has been given the go-ahead to do a historical book on the X-Men, and his editor and the editor-in-chief are simply rubberstamping him, after he's declared a desire to specifically destroy a certain character's history. So me personally, I'm going to write and ask that Marvel does not allow Byrne to enact this specific retcon.