As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

MAGIK vol 3 #2
“Descent”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan

MAGIK:

She insists that stopping Liminal’s demons from attacking mutants (to fuel his escape) is her mission, and that Cal is only tagging along – even though he seems to be making a useful contribution in deciphering his grandmother’s notes. Most likely, she just wants to keep him out of trouble; as in the previous issue, she clearly sees parallels with the way she was thrust into adulthood too early.

She teleports herself, Cal and Haruhi to the concert, for no very clear reason. Nobody seems to react to them appearing in the middle of the room, which might indicate that the crowd are under magical influence… but then again, she doesn’t seem to expect a reaction either. Haruhi feels sick after the teleport, but that could be because of the glimpse of Limbo she received (according to last issue’s explanation of how Illyana’s powers work).

Under Ren’s influence, she becomes Darkchild. The Darkchild persona continues to fight Ren, though she seems motivated more by anger at Ren’s disrespect. She seems to regain her senses on hearing Haruhi fear for her life (Darkchild clearly thinks Haruhi is afraid of her, but the dialogue is actually ambiguous about whether Haruhi meant her or Ren). After that, she remains physically in Darkchild form but speaks normally, and claims that ‘Darkchild clouds my judgment”.

Even though it was Haruhi that she reacted to, she thinks that she would have lost control of her anger if Cal hadn’t been there. Maybe she means that Haruhi reminded her of her objective of protecting Cal, rather than that Cal himself actually did anything. But there’s a definite mismatch between what she reacts to, and what she says in her narration. This could well be deliberate.

She tells Cal that “when I was a few years younger than you, I was forced into a hellish world I was not ready for”, and “just because a child can persevere does not make it right.” This seems to be the first time she’s mentioned any of this to Cal, and if so, she isn’t really conveying to him the full horror of what happened to her – whether that’s for his protection, or her own sense of privacy, or both, is hard to say.

She’s surprised to find that Cal sees the manifestation of Darkchild as a good (if terrifying) thing on balance, since it gave her the power to defeat Ren. Clearly the message she’s taking from this is that her trauma had a silver lining. Cal has only known Illyana during a period when she was prone to Darkchild manifestations, though – as she mentioned last issue, Darkchild has only recently started manifesting in this way. The argument would be harder to make coming from someone who was more familiar with her history as an X-Man.

SUPPORTING CAST:

Cal Isaacs. The notes which he collected from his dead grandmother at the end of last issue are written in a cypher. (He described the notes in that story as “[h]er last wish for me to decipher”, but I didn’t realise he meant it literally.) He insists on deciphering them himself, and won’t let Magik help. Apparently he’s quite good at it, because he correctly tracks one of Liminal’s other seals to Tokyo.

Despite refusing to let Illyana help with this task, he complains that they’re “wasting time” when Liminal could be on the verge of breaking out. This isn’t very consistent but hey, he’s under a lot of stress.

His parents died in circumstances that he doesn’t explain. He mentions that his grandmother sent him to “a boarding school out east, just because I was interested in tech” – he mentioned the boarding school in passing last issue as well, so presumably it’s significant. He now thinks his interest in science was naive, though Magik tells him that there’s an intersection.

Cal comes up with a hazily defined quasi-scientific way of defeating Ren (“spatial frequencies… an inverse frequency will cancel out the wavelength”). Magik sees this as a sign of his aptitude for magic, apparently because it’s also basically about maths and applied principles.

Haruhi. A waitress at the cat café who invites Illyana and Cal to a concert that night – “super hush-hush but open to everyone”. Since the concert is part of Liminal’s scheme to lure in mutants for sacrificing, we might assume that Haruki is under outside influence of some sort to go around inviting total strangers to a concert – it seems a very odd thing to do otherwise, especially with a band that “just popped up out of nowhere a few days ago”.

VILLAINS.

Ren. Having been killed by Liminal’s agent last issue, she shows up here fronting “The Shroud”, apparently undead and amplifying her mutant sound powers with a demonic electric guitar. There’s no sign of Ren’s original personality. Ren claims to have been “enlightened” by Liminal and “returned … to my natural state”.

Somehow, Ren’s powers disrupt Magik’s and prevent her from calling her stepping discs – this might be because it’s a mutant power and Ren is doing something to make mutants vulnerable in general.

The rest of her band are demons whose job is to kill the crowd, or at least the mutants in it. Magik claims that these are also transformed dead mutants.

Liminal. He shows up at the end of the issue to arbitrarily teleport Magik to his throne room, so apparently we’re not getting a “let’s go round all the seals one issue at a time” story, as genre convention might have led you to expect.

FOOTNOTES:

Page 8: “ПРИВЕТ, МЪІ ТУТ” is “Hello, we’re here!”