Magik #6 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #6
“The Road Back Home”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Jesús Hervás
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
And let’s welcome new cover artist Pablo Villalobos, who actually thinks Illyana’s most noteworthy features are from the neck up.
MAGIK.
She still feels guilty about letting down Cal last issue, and is upset that Dani hasn’t contacted her since they last met. X-Men work has been keeping her mind off it.
We get a brief recap of her giving up the rulership of Limbo to Madelyne, in order to give them both a chance at a fresh start, in New Mutants #25-28. Magik also reminds us of the parallels between Belasco using her as a weapon, and Mr Sinister using Madelyne – she claims to see Madelyne as a kindred spirit.
Despite having surrendered the throne, Magik remains linked to Limbo, and the bombing of the Limbo Embassy by demon rebels causes her pain. Even the demons who are loyal to Madelyne still regard Magik as having an equal claim to the throne. Faced with both Magik and Madelyne together, the demons try to look to Magik for instructions.
Her behaviour towards Madelyne in this story is conflicted. She certainly doesn’t want the throne back, and claims to be offering Madelyne practical support. Later, she claims to be worried about whether Limbo will damage Madelyne, so that her own healing is at Maddie’s expense. At other times, she seems simply frustrated by the inadequacies of the woman she entrusted Limbo too, as if she’s going to be dragged back into the place because Madelyne isn’t up to the job of relieving her. She firmly tells the demons that Madelyne is in charge when they try to look to her for direction, but still comes across as more authoritative than Madelyne, and sits through Madelyne’s war council meeting with her feet on the table. Despite that, she protests that she isn’t trying to undermine Madelyne.
Ultimately, once Madelyne realises that Magik genuinely doesn’t want the job back, they seem to form a decent working relationship with Magik offering support in keeping Limbo in line.
SUPPORTING CAST.
The Goblin Queen. For some reason, Madelyne believes that the UN can do something about her control of Limbo; maybe she really means the presence of the Limbo Embassy. She claims that she wants to “ensure those rejected by the world will continue to find refuge here”, which is consistent with her agenda in the Dark X-Men miniseries.
For most of the story, she’s clearly reluctant to have Magik around – and for good reason. She (correctly) feels Magik is judging her and (correctly) feels that her authority is undermined by Magik’s very presence, let alone her behaviour. Her telepathy is strong enough for her to hear Magik’s narration, which is full of private doubts about Madelyne’s competence, and makes her reaction in the early part of the issue even more understandable.
Understandably, Madelyne feels that she’s failed and has had to be bailed out by Magik. But when she realises that Magik genuinely doesn’t want the job back, she seems much more willing to be friends and allies. Magik brushes off Madelyne’s failures on the grounds that they can’t be any worse than that time she invaded New York in “Inferno”. When Madelyne reminds her about “Dark Web”, Magik simply amends the point to claim that Maddie is no worse than her.
When Magik criticises her for letting the rebel plans get this far, Madelyne responds that she’s a far more active ruler of Limbo than Magik ever was – which is broadly true. But her war council still object that the the main reason for the rebels’ success is that she simply hasn’t been around in Limbo to give them any authority to act. It sounds like she has been neglecting the affairs of Limbo itself in favour of her pet project in the Limbo Embassy.
Belasco’s old castle is resistant to any attempts by Madelyne to reshape it. Magik thinks it has “even more cobwebs” than before.
K’yrb. The Goblin Queen’s functionary previously appeared in X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #7-9, where he helped Havok to escape. Apparently she hasn’t held that against him. His advice to her, warning her of the need to deal with rebel factions within Limbo, is completely sound.
Psylocke and Juggernaut help Magik to deal with some of Liminal’s stray demons. Juggernaut has a cold, which I only mention because in stories, it’s Never Just A Cold.
Mirage. She shows up in the epilogue to call the Society of the Eternal Dawn. She tells them how Cal became a living seal to re-imprison Liminal (last issue), reporting in to someone called “Embodiment”. But… Mirage said at the end of last issue that she was taking Cal to the Society to recover. This conversation seems to be the first time that she’s reported in to him, and some time evidently passes between issues. So… what’s Mirage been doing with Cal in the meantime…?
VILLAINS.
Gar’hn the Alchemist. The demon leader of a Limbo rebel faction. He says there are other rebels out there, which presumably include the very similar group we saw in Storm #9.
According to Madelyne, many demons resent the amount of time that she spends in New York, but Gar’hn seems aggrieved at the very fact that the demon population of Limbo is subjugated by mortal rulers. Actually, that would be quite a reasonable objection. But he and his followers regard humans as playthings who are beneath them, so he’s not just a demon anti-colonialist. He sees himself as Belasco’s successor, apparently unaware that Belasco was human too.
Gar’hn wants to create a weapon to parallel Magik’s Soulsword and Madelyne’s Scythe of Sorrows (the name that it was given in “Dark Web”). Madelyne is aware of this scheme, and the US authorities were trying to sell a similar weapon to the rebels in Storm #9. So clearly word has got around.
Gar’hn has actually succeeded in creating a sword. According to Magik, it’s “forged from the negative emotions of Limbo’s residents” – perhaps significantly, it represents the people of Limbo as a whole, rather than just an individual ruler. Unfortunately, the people of Limbo as a whole still includes Magik herself, and she’s able to get control of the thing by symbolically naming it as the Wrathsword. She describes it as an opposite of the Soulsword (which represented the untainted parts of her soul).
“For some reason, Madelyne believes that the UN can do something about her control of Limbo;”
If this takes place during One World Under Doom, then the UN might be able to do something about her control of Limbo.
“the US authorities were trying to sell a similar weapon to the rebels in Storm #9”
This looks like a miscommunication between the creative teams of Storm and Magik. In Storm 9, the US government is trying to arm the rebels with the magic blades. But in this issue, Gah’rn claims that he got the idea for the magic blades when he first saw Maddie’s Scythe.
“the Soulsword (which represented the untainted parts of her soul).”
This has been portrayed inconsistently over the years. In New Mutants 73, the Soulsword is described as “fashioned from the darkest, most powerful piece of her soul”.
Note that Maddie tells Illyana that Scott would tell her she’s not alone. This is significant because Maddie is actually recommending Scott as a source of help for the first time since Inferno.
“And let’s welcome new cover artist Pablo Villalobos, who actually thinks Illyana’s most noteworthy features are from the neck up.”
You might want to Google Mr. VillaLobos before saying that…
Eyes up here, tovarish.
Personally , I believe that only if Jean and Scott were allowed by editorial to end their on-off open marriage and if USA Gen-Z wasnt too squeamish about age-gap romances , they would have already paired Scott & Yana together , after all the chemistry is already there LOL
@Michael. Inferno isn’t an authoritative source for anything given that Louise Simonson completely forgot everything that happened in the Magik miniseries and so pretty much everything in Inferno is contradicted by the miniseries. She forgot that Illyana spared Belasco and thought she killed him, which kind of ruined the entire story and undid all of Illyana’s character development. She also forgot that Belasco started corrupting Illyana’s soul the second he brought her to Limbo at 6 and that Illyana was with Storm for a year and then Cat for 2 years before she became Belasco’s apprentice, so the entire scene of S’ym beating 6-year-old Illyana could never have happened. In the original story, the soul sword was crafted from what little of her soul remained pure, though it was made from the totality of her emotions, including rage and hate in addition to hope and love.
The sword has also been retconned so many times since Inferno, like when they claimed Illyana never created it and that it never had any part of her in it. Let’s be thankful they’re no longer trying to pull that kind of crap.
It’s been a while since I’ve read “Inferno”, but I don’t think that Simonson forgot the events of the Magik mini-series. Aren’t those discrepancies the clues Simonson laid down as her out to bring back Illyana and avoid a temporal paradox?
Simonson’s intention was always to bring back the adult Illyana eventually, but she left Marvel before she got the chance. The differences between Illyana’s story in “Inferno” and the Magik mini-series were meant to show that there were alternate versions of Illyana in Limbo, based on different choices that could have been made (due to the nature of Limbo existing outside of time).
The baby Illyana that showed up at the end of “Inferno” was an alternate version of Illyana than the one we had been reading about in New Mutants. The adult Illyana from New Mutants was left trapped in Limbo at the end of “Inferno”.
Simonson didn’t want to kill the Illyana she had been writing (for one reason), but also she realized it created a paradox, as if they had rescued THE baby Illyana before the events of the Magik mini-series, then how did all the events leading up to “Inferno”, which allowed baby Illyana to be saved, happen? There had to still be an adult Illyana to set up all the events leading to “Inferno”, so there must have been two versions of Illyana who went to Limbo, and they made different choices which shaped different outcomes for Illyana.
@Chris V. She literally has Illyana state that she killed the evil sorcerer who raised her, which is the equivelent of having Luke Skywalker say that he cut off Darth Vader’s head in Return of the Jedi. The only way that line could possibly be written is if the writer forgot what really happened. That is the entire reason Illyana starts killing people and trying to kill Forge and has to learn not to kill people for the first time all over again after Simonson took over for Claremont when not killing Belasco was the climax of her original character arc. That’s also likely the reason N’Astirh exists.
The one saving grace of her writing is that she didn’t mean for Illyana to sacrifice herself for real, so the true culmination of Illyana’s arc with the long-promised final fight with Belasco was still technically possible if she had been allowed to go through with that, and it would have explained some of the giant plot holes with Inferno if eveything that is seen with the younger Illyana who appears was confirmed to have been an alternate timeline where things were very different. But nothing can excuse the fact that she wrote Illyana as someone who killed her kidnapper and had no problems with killing in the then-present. The single biggest problem with modern writing of Magik is that writers continue Simonson’s original mistake and write her as if her sparing Belasco never happened because she’s the ‘dark one.’ They at least know she spared Belasco, but Simonson created the precedent that her decision to spare him does not matter at all, so it has never mattered since she forgot it happened.
Right, but that was the point Simonson was making. The adult Illyana from New Mutants made the wrong choice, she killed Belasco, setting herself up to become the Darkchylde and leading to the events of “Inferno”. We were reading the story of the corrupted version of Illyana, who had to be made to pay penance for her actions by being left behind in Limbo, until Simonson decided to bring her back.
Baby Illyana was the uncorrupted Illyana from the Magik mini-series who made the correct choices. She was supposed to have the happy ending. She was rescued before she had to go through the horrible events involving Belasco and S’ym. It was her reward for not killing Belasco.
Then, Marvel messed that up by just having baby Illyana die of the Legacy Virus.
The adult Illyana who made the wrong choices, who allowed her soul to be corrupted by her past, was making the sacrifice to save her alternate self. Simonson found an option to have it both ways (by saying there were two Illyanas in Limbo).
It wasn’t the direction Claremont would have taken Illyana, no.
The ‘adult’ (she was 15) NEVER KILLED BELASCO. She was the exact same person who had lived through the Magik miniseries and decided to spare him. The entire story is how despite Belasco’s corruption she kept her humanity and proved to be better than him by sparing him.
She never had a choice in her soul getting corrupted. That was done by Belasco creating a bloodstone from her soul the second he kidnapped her to Limbo.
You’re basically arguing that the character depicted in the Magik miniseries never appeared at all in the entirety of New Mutants. A powerless baby can’t make the choice not to kill Belasco because she doens’t have the ability to kill him in the first place. It was only after creating the soul sword – after being corrupted and tortured for years- that the real Illyana could have the choice about whether or not to kill him. The choice is meaningless without everything that led up to it, which included the growing up, corruption, and torture.
Juggernaut doesn’t have a cold. I think it’s just pollen.
If I said that The Last Jedi depicts a version of Luke Skywalker who chopped off Darth Vader’s head in Return of the Jedi, and that he sacrificed himself to save the version who made the right choice not to Vader, that would be exactly the same as saying that the ‘adult’ Magik killed Belasco and the child didn’t and therefore Inferno is how the adult who killed Belasco rescued the child who didn’t. Both are creating an entirely new character and story that never happened out of thin air and have no basis whatsoever in the actual stories of Return of the Jedi and the Magik miniseries.
Gary, I’m not arguing anything. I’m explaining what Louise Simonson’s intentions were, which is why she wrote discrepancies in the Illyana back-story from Limbo,
Yes. Simonson’s intentions with Illyana was that the adult Illyana we were reading in New Mutants was never the Illyana from the Magik mini-series. Those were Simonson’s intentions, not mine.
Simonson wanted to write a story where an innocent little girl is saved before she is (for all intents and purposes) raped. She is saved by the sacrifice of an alternate version of herself who went through the same experiences, but did not make the correct choice. It’s based on the nature of Limbo, which exists outside of time. The Illyana from the Magik mini-series still went through all the events of the mini-series, but when the X-Men pulled an Illyana out of Limbo in Uncanny X-Men #160, it wasn’t the same Illyana as we saw enter Limbo in that comic. This was the corrupted Illyana who killed Belasco. This version of Illyana had the chance to go back in time and save herself before she went through the torture of Belasco and S’ym. That version of Illyana deserves to be saved because she made the correct choice (she did not kill Belasco).
That was the story Louise Simonson was trying to tell. Not me. I don’t write for comics.
Does it say something about Madelyne that she’s a good enough psychic to get through Illyana’s psychic shields? If I recall, Xavier and Emma weren’t able to do that back in the original New Mutants. Karma was able to possess her (back in New Mutants 51), but she might have been boosted by Xavier, and Karma has always been a wrecking ball of psychic power unless the plot demands that she can’t possess someone.
Does Madelyne qualify as a (groan) Omega Telepath, given her connection to Jean?
@Sam- in Dark X-Men, an alternate Maddie was described as an Omega Telepath, so presumably the same is true of our Maddie.
@Sam Writers have completely ignored Magik’s psychic shields since her return. Every telepath can read her mind no problem nowadays. The simplest answer is that Illyana learned to turn her psychic shields off and keeps them off because of the trust issues createdby her actions when she was missing her soul.
Which may or may not be the same thing as Illyana having simply learned to be a bit more trusting. Or, alternatively, her connection to limbo powers her mind shields at least partially, and giving the throne to Madelynne depowered them enough for mind reading to be possible – particularly when the telepath involved is herself powered by limbo now.
I want to believe that there is a planned explanation that has more to do with Illyana than with Maddie, simply because this is Illyana’s book.
But I also think that it would amount to nitpicking; I have long felt that Illyanna is a very inconsistent, make-it-up-as-you-go-forward character going back at least to her first fight with Sym back in New Mutants #14 (1983). For better or worse, accepting her as a functional character requires accepting the need to play fast and loose with what she can or can not do at any given moment. You don’t go to Wolverine for consistent ethics, and you don’t go to Magik for consistent powers. That is just how it is.
Her powers would have been more consistent if they’d done literally anything with her other than put her on the New Mutants. Since the team was a bunch of fresh trainees, hacing someone who already had years of training as a sorceress and knew hundreds or thousands of spells was a complete mismatch, so Claremont had to depower her in order to allow the rest of the team to do anything, which in turn led to the absurdity of Magik never being allowed to do magic. If she’d been used as a solo character or simply joined the X-Men instead of the New Mutants she’d have been allowed to use her spells a lot more and that whole inconsistent and stupid plot point of her magic not working on Earth wouldn’t have existed.
@Chris V: I’ve never seen anything about Simonson creating discrepancies in Illyana’s story or not writing her as the Illyana from the Magik miniseries. Claremont had her preparing to be rescued by the X-Men as she was in the issue she was kidnapped. Claremont had her act the same, like when she spared S’ym.
Xuân possessed Illyana as far back as New Mutants Special Edition in 1985, so the “can’t access her mind” thing was inconsistent from very early on.
Two caveats: she possessed only a “Darkchilde” construct separated from Illyana’s body by the Enchantress. Also, Xuân’s schtick isn’t quite the same as “reading thoughts,” so maybe there’s some wiggle room there.
On a different note, it sounds like Illyana was a victim of the first round of “too many X-cooks” when Claremont lost control of his characters in favor of more X-books and more X-crossovers. I’m sure Claremont and Simonson weren’t on the same page as writers many times despite being otherwise friendly.
@Chris V: I’d love to see an interview where Simonson talks about her plans for Illyana and/or any other aborted plotlines, if that’s where you’re pulling your info.
@Tom H. Here is the interview where Simonson talks about her intentions with Inferno. https://www.cbr.com/louise-simonson-where-has-the-magik-gone/
What she says. “”Supposedly, at the conclusion of the Inferno crossover, she died heroically and her younger, innocent self was retrieved from her armor,” Simonson said. “And I know most folks thought the real Illyana was dead. But I was sure somebody would figure out very soon that she had to be still alive and in Limbo! That she had thrust an earlier version of her self into her armor, saving her own innocent self and exiling the evil self she had become to Limbo eternally. Heck, the existence of multiple Illyanas from different times (part of Limbo’s magic) had already been clearly established in ‘New Mutants’ continuity. I’m amazed the character was left in Limbo (literally and figuratively) all these years.”
Simonson has Illyana bizarrely claim that she killed Belasco in issue 4 of a 1988 series called Spellbound, and later in the same issue explain to another character how she killed “her sorcerer.” Simonson is the only writer credited for that issue, though she shared the writing credit for other issues. It’s a truly baffling mistake, especially since Bob Harras leaves an editorial note that it happened in the Magik miniseries when the exact opposite is what happened. Harras deserves a lot of the blame because his job as editor was to catch giant mistakes like that, but his vendetta against Magik is pretty well-known so it’s not surprising he wouldn’t do his job when it came to her. I’d post the images, but that doesn’t seem to be possible on this forum.
@Gary- there were two reasons why Illyana couldn’t be used as a solo hero. First, Claremont didn’t want any solo titles because he felt it would dilute the franchise. He only belatedly agreed to write Wolverine in 1988 under pressure.
Second, the consensus in the early to mid-80s was that female superhero books didn’t sell. Ms. Marvel was cancelled at issue 23, She-Hulk was cancelled at issue 25, Dazzler was cancelled at issue 42 and Spider-Woman was cancelled at issue 50. Wonder Woman avoided that fate but her book sold horribly and she only avoided being cancelled because DC had a contract with the Marston estate that stated that Wonder Woman had to be published at least 4 times a year or the rights would revert to the Marston estate.
As for putting her on the X-Men, the problem is that the X-Men really weren’t written that powerful between Jean dying and Rachel joining. In the space of a year, they lost to Cylcops, Spdier-Man and Wasp. Treating Magik as a powerful sorceress would have made them too powerful. It’s extremely difficult to write a sorcerer or sorceress on a superhero team without overshadowing the lesser powered members. Zatanna was partially depowered after she joined the Justice League. As for Strange, when he joined the Avengers, we got scenes like “My Cloak of Levitation doesn’t work under these conditions”. (Which conditions? Falling?)
@Gary- It wasn’t just Illyana. Harras had an annoying habit of forgetting continuity when we was editor. Famously, one of the reasons why the Kwannon-Psylocke mess happened was because he forgot how Psylocke was turned Asian by the Hand (which was a story that he edited himself).
@Michael: The biggest nerf for Illyana was that her magic didn’t work on earth except for her soulsword.