The villain known as Holocaust rampaged through Avalon in an attempt to kill Magneto and his followers. Avalon was destroyed. Magneto, in a comatose state, was saved by then-Acolyte and former X-Man Colossus, who used an escape pod to crash to Earth. Ultimately, however, Magneto's body was lost. He was later recovered and restored to health by his first recruit for his Brotherhood many years ago, Astra. Astra also created a clone of Magneto in order to have it kill him, but Magneto escaped and the clone was lost and amnesiac.
The clone was found, sick with fever, by small children who belonged to the Holy Sepulcher Orphanage in Guatemala. Sister Maria de la Joya of the orphanage nursed him back to health, but he proved to have no memory of his past. One of the orphans who had found him, Migdalia, gave him the name Joseph. Over the following months Joseph displayed the superhuman ability to manipulate magnetic forces. Sister Maria suspected he might be the mutant terrorist Magneto, who had recently vanished, despite the fact that Joseph seemed to be in his twenties, making him younger than Magneto had been. However, she was willing to give him a second chance in life.
At one point criminals captured Sister Maria and the children in order to force Joseph to aid them in fighting law enforcement agencies. In rescuing the hostages Joseph slaughtered their captors. The children who had grown to love Joseph were horrified at what he did and he knew he had to leave. Sister Maria told him about the team of mutant adventurers called the X-Men, and Joseph left for the United States of America to seek help from them.
The X-Men believed Joseph to be an amnesiac Magneto but nonetheless allowed him to join their team. Like Magneto, Joseph grew quite close to team member Rogue. His subsequent encounter with Magneto's former minions, the Acolytes, convinced him that he had indeed been Magneto.
However, Magneto reappeared and made another bid for political power by creating another Earth-wide electromagnetic pulse and then merging with the part of the atmosphere called the magnetosphere to gain ultimate power. The X-Men, Joseph, and Astra confronted Magneto, and Joseph sacrificed himself to stop Magneto's schemes, an action which left Magneto temporarily without his powers.
Joseph was resurrected by Astra and reappeared at a mutant hate rally, murdering all the participants, causing the Avengers to question Magneto on the events. Cyclops defended Magneto claiming that Magneto had been with him on a mission miles away during the attack. To prove his innocence Magneto asked for the help of Emma Frost.
With her help they revealed it was Joseph and his new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, consisting of deformed clones of the original members. Joseph tried to get Magneto to return to his former ways of terrorism, but Magneto refused, leading to a fight between them. Magneto forced Astra to betray Joseph and took her back to Utopia.
Astra was forced to reveal that Joseph had been working with Christopher Bach in order to bring back fear to Magneto's name. In a final battle Magneto killed the rest of Joseph's brotherhood and Joseph and Astra were imprisoned in the X-Brig on Utopia.
After the destruction of Utopia in the war between the Avengers and X-Men, Danger released all prisoners on the X-Brig, including Joseph.
After the loss of Magneto, Joseph disguised himself as the Master of Magnetism and formed a new Brotherhood in the wake of the death of the X-Men. He brought them to a Air Force base in East Transia to stoke fear in humankind because of the spike in anti-mutant violence. But they were confronted by a new group of X-Men led by a resurrected Cyclops. After the battle, Joseph's ruse was revealed making Juggernaut mad because he thought the group was made to protect mutants. He attacked Joseph and held him down while Scott and him talked about ideologies. But before anyone could see what was going on, Joseph was killed by Kwannon who considered Joseph a threat to mutantkind.
