deejayway wrote:
It's a non debate; when was Professor X not convincingly portrayed as a hero and when was Magneto ever convincinglydepicted as such? I find it amazing that fanboys can wail and gnash about any kind of minor continuity inconsistency and yet they swallow hook line and sinker the alleged reformation of one of mankind's greatest mass murderers.

There's nothing "alleged" about it. We know Magneto's attempt at reformation was genuine from his thought balloons of the period. It's actually the return to evil in the '90s that's unconvincing - presumably the result of an editorial edict that Magneto is "bad," previous 120 issues be damned. Bear in mind a lot of this happened in The New Mutants as well as UXM, especially the sequences with Lee Forrester. And a lot of it has to do with children; it's one thing for Magneto to be on war footing, but it's quite another to have Kitty's body remind him of his own daughter's corpse, or to have the New Mutants in his charge.

But you're correct that there's no debate to be had. Magneto's thought balloons from the '80s prove his reform was genuine.