Magik #10 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #10
“Above All”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colourist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
COVER: Magik and Mirage pose dramatically.
This is the final issue of the current run. Magik doesn’t have an equivalent title during “Age of Revelation”, but some sort of sequel with the same creative team has been announced to start in January.
PAGES 1-2. Magik, Mirage and Liminal hold the Society of the Eternal Dawn at bay.
The previous issue ended with the trio confronting the Embodiment and retrieving Cal’s heart (which Embodiment magically removed in issue #7), ultimately with a view to exorcising Liminal from Cal’s body. Magik also removed the limits on Liminal’s powers so that he could help them, presumably relying on the fact that he hadn’t fully adjusted to Cal’s body to keep him under some sort of control.
Liminal claims here to be able to call in a “demonic army” to help, and brushes off Magik’s claims that the Tower’s magic blocks teleportation… but never actually does it. Maybe he’s not as powerful as he thinks, or maybe Cal is holding him back. Then again, when Magik tries doing magic in tandem with Liminal, he seems to have more control over the resulting spell than she does.
The two remaining Exemplars, Yanisa Suwan and Kian Mir, were looking sceptical of the Embodiment last issue, but are still fighting for the Society here. But they’re trying to stop Liminal from escaping and he’s threatening to kill their colleagues, so that’s fair enough.
PAGES 3-4. The Exemplars reject the Embodiment
Embodiment still claims to be acting for the greater good, and insists that “My track record is clean.” This is very likely true, since her origin story last issue set her up as an “ends justify the means” type character who had created the Society to defend the world in place of the magical sect that she had destroyed as a child for exploiting her precognitive powers.
Ultimately the Exemplars seem to be firmly convinced that Embodiment has indeed betrayed Mirage and Magik, and turn against her. This issue has some of the signs of an accelerated wrap up of a story that was hoped to extend another arc, but the dialogue does at least acknowledge that the Exemplars’ change of heart only makes sense if they’ve had their doubts for a while, and this is simply the last straw for them.
PAGES 5-7. Magik and Embodiment fight through the Tower.
“Did you forget that I can see three seconds into the future?” Embodiment can clearly see much further than that, since she was used to scan the future as a child. That was with outside machinery, though, and she’s also got access to the Library of the Fates for prophecies, so it’s possible that her baseline level of foresight is quite limited.
Despite that, she seemed completely blindsided by the Exemplars turning on her. Most likely, the explanation for that is that it simply wasn’t on her radar as a possibility and she wasn’t paranoid enough to be looking. More generally, she doesn’t seem to have predicted the general course of events in this issue, but perhaps that’s obscured to some degree by Magik and Liminal’s own magical abilities.
Somewhere during this scene, Magik produces her second sword – the Wraithsword that she picked up in Limbo in issue #6.
Magik picks up on the parallels between her own back story and Embodiment’s in the previous issue, but Embodiment seems committed to the role that she’s taken on, and insists that she’s at peace with herself. There are some obvious hints that she’s protesting too much.
PAGES 8-13. Magik defeats Embodiment in the Library of the Fates.
We saw this doorway in issue #7, also described as leading to the Library of the Fates, “a nexus for prophetic information”. This is the first time we’ve seen inside, and Embodiment presents it as her own realm, analogous to Magik’s link with Limbo and Liminal’s connection with his own realm. The realm appears as a load of books and bookcases floating in space, which is presumably one of those cases of people interpreting the realm in a way that makes sense to them.
This finale rather hinges on Embodiment’s powers working in ways that hadn’t actually been set up; apparently there has to be some “physical stimulus” to trigger her premonitions, which makes her vulnerable to ambush. She can also be overwhelmed by surrounding her with spellbooks which give her too many stimuli to process at once – basically, the idea seems to be that you can’t prevent her from seeing the immediate future but you can make it so chaotic that a few seconds notice still isn’t enough time to usefully react.
Anyway, since Embodiment isn’t an outright villain, Magik leaves her in the Library to have a time out – although she destroys the door on the next page, so presumably she’s confident that Embodiment won’t just starve to death there.
PAGES 14-20. Magik and Mirage free Cal from Liminal.
Magik correctly figures out that Cal has been speaking through Liminal, the most obvious example being him suddenly drawing attention to the Tower’s captive star in the previous issue. But this probably also explains Liminal’s inconsistent behaviour in issue #8, such as offering intermittently useful advice, and drawing symbols before denying that he had done it.
A bit of pseudoscience explains that thanks to the Society’s captive star, Cal can indeed be used properly to imprison Liminal, with Cal as the dominant personality. It’s not clear whether the Embodiment knew this was an option all along – it’s possible that she genuinely didn’t, since it plays into the idea of Cal as a character with a foot in both magic and science. It’s also possible that she did, but wasn’t willing to use the star in this way; certainly, what happens here seems to lead to the collapse of the tower.
Despite us being told about massive numbers of Society members at the start of the issue, the art only shows a handful of soldiers standing around with the remaining Exemplars at the end. Nobody seems to think there’s just been a mass slaughter, though, so apparently everyone else got out and hanging around off panel.
Cal essentially writes himself out by declaring that he wants to go back to school.
Magik seems to have learned from all this that she’s ready to move on and “rediscover who I am outside of everything that’s happened”. That’s no doubt a set-up for whatever book we’re doing in January, but it does make reasonable sense coming out of this series: she came to terms with her Darkchilde persona in the first arc, and now that she’s sorted out the mess with Liminal and Cal, she can turn her attention back to the consequences of that.
Stories about sorcerer or other magic users are similar to the cosmic power level comics in that it is easy for everything to come across as just deus ex machina gibberish. I was impressed that this felt like a coherent fight. Especially some of the early Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer stories there was a tendency to just write enough to string the wild psychedelic art images together. While the art here was very good, this was not that.
Wishing there was more like this.
At one point, Dani uses her illusion powers to hide Yanisa and Kian behind an illusion of a column. How is that possible? Aren’t her powers limited to creating illusions of things people fear or desire? Did someone present have a massive fear of columns or a great desire for columns?
“presumably she’s confident that Embodiment won’t just starve to death there.”
Dani says she’ll be back once she’s taken care of Liminal.
So do we think that Illyana will be the new Sorcerer Supreme? The evidence does seem to support that. We’re told that the current creative team will be returning for a new book but we’re not told the title of that book. Meanwhile, the solicits for the Sorcerer Supreme 1 book have the names of the writer and the artist are hidden. I can’t think of another candidate who would need the names of the writer and the artist hidden, except for Wanda- if the writer was Steve Orlando, it would be a clue that it was Wanda. Meanwhile, the letters page tells us that Ashley has some ideas for stories with Maddie and Limbo and Maddie is one of the other candidates on the promotional cover. The story in Doctor Strange 450 feaatured Strange teaching Illyana and this issue’s ending suggested that Magik was looking to “take the next step”.
(The other theory I’ve heard is that the sequel book will be a “Magik and the New Mutants” book but I doubt Marvel will go in that direction.)
The counterargument is that Sorcerer Supreme 1 is listed as coming out on December 31st and the letters page claims that Illyana’s new series is coming out “early next year”. There are a couple of possibilities. The first is that the Sorcerer Supreme series isn’t the new ongoing but a miniseries where the Sorcerer Supreme is chosen. The second is that Marvel seems to have trouble keeping its dates straight lately. The Cyclops and Wade Wilson: Deadpool series are listed in the solicits as coming out on January 7th but the “Shadows of Tomorrow” promos have them coming out in February.
“Magik doesn’t have an equivalent title during “Age of Revelation””
Yes, but the Foreshadow Logo Variant for this issue features the X-Vengers logo replacing Magik’s.
In X-Vengers, the protagonist is actually Dani Moonstar.
Michael-Bleeding Cool reports Sorcerer Supreme #1 listed as being released in January 2026 now.
Whatever the next direction is, I’m glad we’ll be getting a continuation of this series. It’s been one of FoA’s biggest highlights.
I wonder what that means for Magik’s role in MacKay’s book – having the Sorceress Supreme on the Alaska team seems a bit much
@Diana- Strange has been a member of both the Defenders and Avengers. Of course, in both case, the writers contrived to have plots involving mystical threats.
@Diana, it helps to think of the Alaska Team as the mutants’ equivalent to the Avengers.
It is only too much if you expect it to be.
Despite a bit of a trouncing that he received in the 1990s, Doctor Strange is a much more challenging character than Magick.
But all that means is that he is not a good fit to the more usual sorts of plots, and requires some that are a bit more fringe, unusual and/or innovative. Those plots come with their own demands and can create all sorts of reasons why the situation at hand can’t be solved with a purposeful snapping of fingers. It can be a bit difficult to balance those demands with those of a team book, but I would say that for the X-Books that roughly means “tuesdays”.
This is an contingent of characters that visits the stars every couple of years or so and other dimensions about every month; that has overgrown any interest in national or international laws a long time ago, that subs for the Avengers every now and then, and has recently developed a taste for calling themselves gods and directly challenging entities with far better claims to that ephemerous category.
It has even literally appropriated the right to establish the names of holders of “supreme and insupperable” powers of various kinds.
If anything, the Sorcerer Supreme is a much more limited and rigidly defined role.
“The other theory I’ve heard is that the sequel book will be a “Magik and the New Mutants” book but I doubt Marvel will go in that direction.”
I’d be down for that, especially if Allen continues breathing new life into the characters who need it (e.g., Rahne, Amara, Xuan). It would make sense for the team to pull together if Doug continues to be a threat after AoR.
Well, as I mentioned in the weekly thread, now we know that WANDA is the Sorcerer Supreme, not Illyana. And it seems like Marvel was trying to trick readers into thinking that Illyana would be the Sorcerer Supreme so her fans would buy Wanda’s book.
“At one point, Dani uses her illusion powers to hide Yanisa and Kian behind an illusion of a column. How is that possible? Aren’t her powers limited to creating illusions of things people fear or desire? Did someone present have a massive fear of columns or a great desire for columns?”
There’s definitely a long precedent for Dani’s “greatest desire” power being used as a magical plot device for whatever it needs to be. Basically, you just clarify that someone’s greatest desire AT THAT TIME is for X. So even if, say, your greatest desire in general is for Sydney Sweeney’s car to break down in front of your house while she’s on her way to a costume party, your greatest desire RIGHT NOW might be for a cold beer, or whatever.
That got used a lot after the High Evolutionary’s machine amplified her power so that one illusion at a time would become solid. I remember the New Mutants got dumped in the middle of nowhere after an adventure and Dani’s greatest desire became a sports car to drive them home in style.
@Luis- It’s worth nothing that it’s difficult to write for sorcerers at the Big Two in a way that attracts sales. Dr Strange and Constantine had long runs but their series were often VERY low selling. Zatanna’s longest series was 16 issues. The Scarlet Witch’s current series has only lasted because Marvel restarts it every 10 issues. And let’s not even mention Dr. Fate.
What Illyana has going for her is (a) fanservice as a result of the Bachalo costume and (b) her character is a representation of the shame that comes with child abuse.
Hellblazer lasted 300 issues, but was also “mature readers” and had been under the Vertigo imprint since issue #40. Those two aspects would cut into the character’s sales. On the other hand, the Hellblazer comic couldn’t exist under other circumstances. John wasn’t the typical magician like Dr. Strange either. Despite times when Constantine was given lip-service as almost an equivalent to Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme, truly most of his stories revolved around him being the universe’s greatest conman and his stunning amorality. He’s not a character who fits well in a superhero milieu.
The JMDM Dr Fate lasted 4 years or so (42 issues) and told a complete story with a B list character. I’d prob call that a small victory.
@Mark Coale- I wouldn’t considering that Marvel and DC gave everyone and his brother a series in the late 80s and early 90s. Darkhawk’s series lasted 50 issues. Quasar’s series lasted 60 issues.
Coming to this a couple of weeks late, but with the benefit of reading the last 2 issues together…
“This finale rather hinges on Embodiment’s powers working in ways that hadn’t actually been set up; apparently there has to be some “physical stimulus” to trigger her premonitions, which makes her vulnerable to ambush.”
The penultimate issue does have Embodiment say “I have a gift for premonition. Any body movement of yours triggers it. I know what your next move is before you even do.”.