New Mutants #28 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #28
“The Labors of Magik, Book Four: The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen”
Writer: Vita Ayala
Main story art & colours: Rod Reis
Flashback art: Jan Duursema
Flashback colours: Ruth Redmon
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Magik in chains before Madelyne Pryor as the new Queen of Limbo. Not especially connected to anything that happens in the issue, though if you squint a bit I suppose you could see it as representing their respective attitudes to reigning Limbo.
PAGE 2. Magik tries making her Soulsword.
That’s Magik’s castle, as last seen in issue #25.
Since rescuing her own younger self last issue, Magik and co have apparently been hiding out in a cave while she tries to recreate the Soulsword. Of course, symbols blurring with reality is a standard trope of magical stories, but Magik seems to literally believe that the key to regaining control of Limbo is to summon up the Soulsword again. Since the sword represents her soul, Magik seems to recognise that restoring the Soulsword is just the outward manifestation of restoring her soul – but it’s not clear what she’s actually been doing over the last week or so restore her soul.
Thanks to @Barrowwight on Twitter, I’m able to inform you that that weird thing Magik summons up as her last effort is completely real. It’s a Vespa 150 TAP, a French anti-tank scooter from the late 1950s. The basic idea was that it was light enough to be dropped by parachute, and paratroopers could use it to carry a bigger gun around. You were supposed to mount the gun on a proper tripod before actually firing it, but if you really wanted to just charge at a tank while shooting blindly, then apparently that was an option.
PAGE 3. Madelyne argues for action.
And Magik agrees with her. This is one of those pages where we gloss over the boring plot bits, as the cast assure us that since the last issue they’ve been carrying out recon missions and have learned that there’s “some force behind S’ym’s sudden increase in power”. Quite why Magik decides that tonight is the night, after weeks of waiting, is a bit obscure. Perhaps she’s decided that finishing the ritual is the only way to restore her soul (and in a sense it is), but she doesn’t really explain why.
PAGE 4. Madelyne justifies herself as ruler of Limbo.
“Maybe your contract will keep Krakoa safe in terms of attack…” We saw Madelyne and Illyana discuss the contract in issue #25, at which point Magik insisted that “I thought through my terms. No one is in danger.” In issue #26, Illyana also told us that it was “in the contract” that Madelyne can’t use Magik to take revenge on “everyone who ever slighted [her]”. In this issue, however, the contract is rather more specific and only prevents Madelyne from attacking Krakoa. Of course, Madelyne is the villain in the upcoming “Dark Web” storyline, which makes all the stuff here about why we should trust in her ability to reform read a bit oddly.
“Until I woke up in that disgusting egg…” Madelyne is referring to her resurrection, off panel in Hellions #18.
“My mind had never been without my maker’s infernal fingerprints stamped across it.” Mister Sinister, who gave Madelyne a fake back story and sent her out into the world as part of his obsession at the time with the Summers family bloodline.
“And the plans of all the men who thought they had rights to me…” This is less obvious, since nobody else has tried to exploit her in the way that Sinister did. Madelyne seems to be referring to Scott and Alex, and the way she was treated as a supporting character in their lives.
“Illyana said that it takes being touched by darkness to be able to survive here…” In issue #25.
PAGE 5. Illyana and Madelyne complete their ritual.
Colossus gets to endorse Madelyne’s potential for resurrection, apparently as the straightforward long-time hero, though that’s an odd role for him to play given his current mind control arc. Of course, presumably Chronicler can’t influence him here.
PAGE 6. Storybook page. We’ll see later that the villain behind S’ym is more or less literally Illyana’s shadow.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits.
PAGES 8-11. The quartet fight their way to the real villain.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself…” is the first of a series of Sun Tzu quotes in this issue. Quite why alt-Illyana is so keen to quote Sun Tzu, I’m not so sure, but the particular quotes in this scene are all obviously plays on the idea that our Illyana hasn’t come to terms with herself, and the alternate versoin has.
Queen Illyana Rasputina is explained further on the next data page. She’s carrying the magic club that she extracted from S’ym at the start of issue #25. In that scene, she was making a deal with S’ym for him to become ruler of Limbo, in which seems like a direct parallel of Magik’s ritual with Madelyne in this issue.
PAGE 12. Data page (with nice use of red). This is Magik’s history up to a point, but then it diverges. The basic idea is that Queen Illyana is the Magik of a timeline (or at least a notional timeline) in which Illyana embraced ruling Limbo instead of running from it back to Earth. Taking the entries in turn:
- Illyana’s two older brothers are Piotr (Colossus) and Mikhail, a major villain over in X-Force.
- Piotr was recruited into the X-Men in Giant-Size X-Men #1.
- Illyana was kidnapped and brought to the United States by Arcade in Uncanny X-Men #145-146. She wasn’t so much “allowed” to stay in the country afterwards, as Colossus just decided not to take her back.
- Illyana was abducted to Limbo by Belasco in Uncanny X-Men #160.
- The next three entries are the plot of the Magik miniseries.
- Queen Illyana deviates from Magik’s history by not returning to Earth as a teenager at the end of Uncanny X-Men #160, but instead staying in Limbo as a heroic ruler and ally.
- She then purges herself of her demonic Darkchylde persona by enlisting the aid of the Enchantress, a Thor villain who never played a significant part in Magik’s history (though they did meet during the “Asgardian Wars” arc). Ironically, purging her demonic side doesn’t make this Illyana any better at all.
- The New Mutants fought Magus in New Mutants vol 1 #46-50. None of them died.
- N’astirh and Madelyne’s attempted coup is Queen Illyana’s version of the “Inferno” storyline.
PAGES 13-16. Queen Illyana is defeated.
Magik’s neglect of her responsibilities has somehow allowed this potential alt-Magik to manifest within Limbo – suggesting that her “back story” isn’t real. Her plan is to usurp Magik and claim the throne for herself. Defeating her restores Illyana’s soul and lets her manifest the Soulsword again. Simple.
This less demonic, more conventionally heroic-looking version of Magik is apparently her new look, in which case this arc presumably comes after A.X.E: Judgment Day. There’s nothing on the face of it to make that a problem.
PAGE 17. Data page: Magik reports to the Quiet Council.
The contract with Madelyne is now defined as a contract never to “use her position or powers to willingly harm Krakoa or Krakoan citizens”, which seems both woefully inadequate and crawling with loopholes.
Magik’s teleportation discs were originally presented as a feature of Limbo that she had the mutant ability to control. It’s not obvious why they should no longer be taking her through Limbo.
PAGES 18-19. Magik and Colossus reconcile.
This arc is basically designed to get Magik out of her angry and distant persona, as she explains here.
Colossus reveals that he’s aware of gaps in his memory, which are apparently the periods when he’s being directly controlled by Chronicler on behalf of Mikhail. Quite why Colossus hasn’t sought someone’s help about this, if he’s aware of it and able to talk about it to Illyana, is unclear.
PAGES 20-21. Madelyne settles in as ruler of Limbo.
She seems to be enjoying herself. But this is very much like the angry and distant persona that Illyana has just spent the whole arc getting away from, and the idea that it’s a positive ending for Madelyne is dubious. Maybe that’s the point – she is about to appear in “Dark Web”, after all.
PAGES 22-24. Flashback: Furcas completes the time loop.
Furcas is a new character for this arc, but he’s the guy that we saw in issue #25 when he stole Magik’s hairbrush. He insisted at the time that he was helping Illyana. Apparently he helps by using the hairbrush (or maybe the hair on it) to create… well, the art’s not clear. Either he creates the storybook and gives it to the little goblin, or he creates the little goblin and gives it the storybook. The latter maybe makes more sense if the goblin (who represents Illyana) is being created from Illyana’s hair. Either way, Furcas turns out to be responsible for the storybook that inspires young Illyana to fight Belasco.
In demonology, Furcas is the name of a Knight of Hell, usually depicted as an old man with a long white beard much like the character seen here. He’s usually depicted with a pitchfork, which he doesn’t have here. He’s something of a teacher figure, and normally commands a legion of demons.
Cable. Cable did indeed visit Limbo in Cable #9, but they didn’t talk on panel about any of this – it’s just an arbitrary reference to a Limbo scene picked at random.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
“This less demonic, more conventionally heroic-looking version of Magik is apparently her new look, in which case this arc presumably comes after A.X.E: Judgment Day. There’s nothing on the face of it to make that a problem.”
The issue is this- in Amazing Spider-Man 7, Peter bumps into MJ who’s going to the Hellfire Gala and probably in this week’s Amazing Spider-Man 8 he apparently starts wearing it.( The preview art for issue 9 shows Peter wearing it. )The problem is that in the FCBD issue Maddie’s in the new costume she gets this issue and Queen of Limbo but Peter’s in his old costume. He should be in his new costume if this story takes place after the Hellfire Gala. (Of course, it’s possible his new costume was in the wash or something.)
“The contract with Madelyne is now defined as a contract never to “use her position or powers to willingly harm Krakoa or Krakoan citizens”, which seems both woefully inadequate and crawling with loopholes.”
I wondered about that wording, since issue 25 made it sound like a contract to prevent Maddie from attacking Earth, not merely Krakoa. Maddie seems to be able to attack Peter in the FCBD issue despite the contract. Of course, it’s possible her demon was under orders not to harm anyone but merely to trick Peter into destroying the mailbox, which probably wouldn’t violate the contract even if Peter was protected by it.Presumably what the contract does will be spelled out in more detail in Dark Web.
The arc is finished now and there were no major interactions between Maddie and S’ym. Which is annoying, since fans have been waiting 34 years to see the issue of his role in Maddie’s transformation into the Goblin Queen to be addressed.
Colossus mentions needing second chances himself- presumably he was referring to the time her nearly killed Peter Wisdom and his time as a member of the Phoenix Five.
Annoyingly, there’s no acknowledgment that Colossus and Maddie were once friends.
Also annoyingly both Queen Illyana and young Illyana seem to think of S’ym as a dumb brute. He’s supposed to be scarily cunning. Honestly at this point I’m wondering if Ayala actually read any of Maddie’s or Illyana’s backstory except for the Magik limited series.
As I’ve said before this storyline doesn’t seem to address the major issues fans had with Maddie’s transformation into the Goblin Queen. She was turned evil via a magic spell that made her “sluttier”. That’s essentially RAPE. And yet she wound up being turned into a permanent villain, without anyone addressing the fact that her whole personality was changed against her will. (Plus, as I’ve said before, the idea that she was turned into a baby-killer because she THOUGHT about harming someone is what prevents mothers with postpartum OCD from getting treatment.)
Off of Michael’s.. Yes, I really liked the idea of this more than the execution. I’m happy for someone to shake up Illyana’s status quo, which has seemed pretty stagnant for years now. She’s felt a bit more mischievous in NM, but other than that she’s gone to a place that I find stale for her. And good on Maddie for defending herself at least somewhat in this.
But in practice it meandered a bit and told a story that wasn’t bad, but wasn’t enough? There were good points, but Illyana and Maddie both needed more time. Maddie especially. I feel like we either shouldn’t have done the Little Goblin stuff because it distracted, or done the whole thing in a LS of maybe an issue or two more so that we’re not pausing all of New Mutants even longer for mostly just Illyana.
I’m also happy about Illyana’s new status quo and interested to see where they go with that.. up til I remember that this probably would now happen in X-Men and then doubt it’ll go anywhere until after her run in that is done. Glad for the visual redesign at least since that might force people to not just ignore all of this.
I liked this issue, but it wasn’t as good as the last three. I think Illyana was just trying to find a way to ditch her responsibilities to Limbo while Madelyne was looking for a way to gain power and escape Krakoa. Dani and Rahne were superfluous. I”m glad Illyana took steps forward in dealing with her trauma, but I agree with Michael that Madelyne wasn”t served well enough. Rod Reis”s art was excellent as usual. It’s unfortunate that Illyana is leaving this book, but I’ll be happy to get back to the rest of the cast.
Now, this was unexpected.
From the visual cues on Hellfire Gala I assumed that Illyana’s plan was going to blow out on her face and make her lose self-control to the point of no longer being able of maintaining her human appearance for more than short bursts of time.
Apparently we went the opposite direction. That means either that art coordination with other books was lacking or that this storyline happens after her induction into the second year of Duggan’s X-Men and the (at least) the first few issues of A.X.E. – or both.
X-23’s appearance in “A.X.E.: Death to Mutants” strongly implies that there are indeed coordination issues, but I still find it odd that Magik is being visually pushed into opposite directions in such a short timeframe and right before presumably getting more of a spotlight than she has had in a fair while now that she is a member of the supposed core X-Men book and team.
So I don’t know what to think. My best guess is that the A.X.E. and Dark Web happened, showing a renewed willingness at Marvel to allow the larger MU and the X-books to affect each other to some significant degree after years of careful distancing. Ayala was not given nearly enough cachet to much affect either crossover, but she was given enough leeway to tell her Magik story here in New Mutants.
I am assuming therefore that this new costume will be featured shortly in Duggan’s X-Men and other books, perhaps even including all the remaining A.X.E. books. This storyline happens in Limbo, so it is awkward but conceivable that it could happen between panels during A.X.E.
Going by what I have found out of preview covers and solicitations, it looks like Vita Ayala is leaving the book now, other than a commemoration issue (#30, not #29) which seems to feature the black leather Illyana look in the cover. I expect that she will appear inside in flashback if at all. #31-32 feature an entirely new writer and apparently a new, unrelated storyline and cast.
What will we see of Illyana in the next few months, then? Probably a feature issue in Duggan’s X-Men, some scenes with Madelyne in Dark Web, and with Piotr and Mikhail in X-Force or perhaps Immortal X-Men. Some more crowd scenes of her acting as a Mutant War Captain with whatever personality Duggan has decided she now has. And at some point fallout from the current storylines. That may or may not include some sort of revisitation of her bond with Colossus, whose mind control plot seems to have been put on hold by Immortal X-Men and this storyline. It will be interesting if it turns out that Piotr forgets that he has noticed memory blanks when he leaves Limbo, but Illyana does not and come to ask him about that.
Well, solicits for November’s X-Men #17 do show Magik in her new golden costume…
Magik is in the new Midnight Suns game/book. Maybe her new look is meant to coincide with those things more than synch up with continuity in a meaningful way.
That is a strong possibility, although current previews seem to consistently display her in a version of the black leather costume with some yellow X-Men branding.
Of course, I fully expect alternate skins to be a thing in the game.
I just noticed something else weird- in issue 25, Illyana said the Quiet Council approved of her decision to hand Limbo over to Maddie. But in this issue, Illyana says in her letter to the Council that no, she wasn’t drunk when she decided to hand over Limbo to Maddie. Why would she say that if the Council approved her decision?
Boob window aside, I quite liked Magik’s hotpants costume. It was fairly unique and it said something about the character without a single spike or flame in sight. Even those black things sticking out of her hair were cool, though they had no right to be. I hope we haven’t seen the last of the costume.
Luis Dantas> From the visual cues on Hellfire Gala I assumed that Illyana’s plan was going to blow out on her face and make her lose self-control to the point of no longer being able of maintaining her human appearance for more than short bursts of time.
Eh, I personally never saw any signs of Illyana having lost control in the Hellfire Gala. If you’re referring to her black face make-up and tail, Russell Dauterman designs these Gala costumes based on the character’s previous looks and fashion industry trends. He used to be a fashion designer before he became a comic book artist. I don’t think they are meant to foreshadow any story points.
Luis Dantas> So I don’t know what to think. My best guess is that the A.X.E. and Dark Web happened, showing a renewed willingness at Marvel to allow the larger MU and the X-books to affect each other to some significant degree after years of careful distancing.
I don’t know if I agree with this either – has there been any distancing since the Krakoa era started? The Fantastic Four and the Avengers showed up in HOX/POX and we’ve seen books like X+FF and Trial of Magneto come out. If by distancing you mean the characters don’t get along, that still hasn’t changed. The Avengers and some Krakoans don’t agree in AXE and I doubt Spider-Man will happy about Madelyne in Dark Web.
To my knowledge, Judgment Day and Dark Web have been in the works for a long time. Gillen originally pitched JD as a Eternals/IXM crossover but editorial expanded it to an event due to the scope of the story. Not sure about Dark Web, but surely something like this was in plans ever since they did the Beyond storyline featuring Ben Reilly’s corruption.
There WAS some scheduling problems with this NM story arc – remember that it was originally solicited to begin in January during the XLoW/XDoW era. According to Ayala, they moved it down to April/May to take advantage of the Destiny of X relaunch.
This meant that DoX was originally supposed to start with Illyana having already let go of Limbo, but now she lets it go after the Gala – which I feel works better because now we can say Illyana leaves Limbo because she’s busy being an X-Men.
As it is now, Magik’s timeline looks something like this:
1. Hellfire Gala 2022 (Magik gets elected to the X-Men, Gala costume)
2. Judgment Day 1-6 + X-Men 13-14 (Black costume, still in Limbo)
3. New Mutants 25-28 (The Labors of Magik, gets a new costume, leaves Limbo)
4. X-Men 15-18 (New costume)
5. Dark Web (New costume)
X-Men 15 is the start of a new Children of the Vault storyline post-Judgment Day. Magik and Firestar will start wearing their new costumes in this issue.
While Hickman paid lip service to the wider Marvel Universe on occasion, it does seem as if the Krakoa era has been happening in its own bubble for the most part. It’s not that the X-books seemed to happen in their own universe, but important events from the X-books are rarely mentioned or any effects of such shown in other Marvel Universe titles.
Krakoa is selling drugs to the world that humans were supposed to be taking on a regular basis, but nothing is shown in any other Marvel titles.
The changes of Krakoa on wider human/mutant affairs seem like it would be a huge plot-point in the entire Marvel Universe, but it’s not touched upon in other Marvel titles.
Even a lot of the events in Moira’s other timelines or the alternate future of Omega Sentinel don’t really work in the shared Marvel Universe.
All of a sudden, superhumans play a large role in Moira’s life eight (with Magneto going to war against the Avengers and FF); but otherwise, the Marvel Universe tended to be absent in the wider post-human/mutant/machine dynamic with Hickman.
In the couple of years before Krakoa you had Quire in West Coast Avengers, Cypher in Daredevil, Broo in Agents of Wakanda, Storm playing a small part in Black Panther, and lots of bit parts in stuff like Captain Marvel. I’m sure there was more too. After giving up on making the Inhumans anything, Marvel had a lot of blending going on, which was great because you got to see these characters from a different perspective.
Then suddenly, like an elastic snapping back, all of the mutants vanished from any book without an X on the cover. Even Wolverine pretty much stopped giving sales bumps. It was a real and very noticeable thing.
It works in the other direction as well. Wolverine has been in an Avengers storyline that explains why Echo is now the host of the Phoenix Force (and presumably why she is not being hunted by other superhumans), but it took a long time until the X-books finally acknowledged it (very recently in Day of Judgment #1 IIRC).
Of course, that is to be somewhat expected. Many of the X-Men main draws just don’t work all that well if the shared universe is emphasized, going back to the 1980s Claremont run at least. And Hickman’s high concept only furthered that trait. For decades now it is difficult to avoid a “de facto” compartimentalization to keep the X-storylines from acknowledging the wider MU too much without making a full event out of it. The disputes over movie rights did not help either.
I’m fine withe X-books being in their own cul-de-sac 90% of the time. As was said above, they work better that way. I think Claremont had the right idea: little cameos here and there, but not too much mixing. Even when Inferno (original) crossed over into Power Pack, Thor, and Daredevil the mutants had few or no interactions with those characters.
Also, past Avengers/X-Men crossovers weren’t all that great. Their ’60s crossover story was fine, but not the best we’d see from the Thomas/Buscema team. The ’80s mini-series is forgettable, Bloodties isn’t anyone’s favorite story, and the AvX comics weren’t fantastic. I like Avengers having cameos in the Krakoan-era comics, but I’m fine with their being little interactions between the titles. I’m liking AXE so far, but it’s more of an Eternals vs. X-Men story with the Avengers either caught in the middle or teaming up to create the new Celestial (oops).
An X-books cul-de-sac is fine, there’s a few built-in themes that don’t work as well in the wider world. But I firmly believe that individual characters should be allowed out to play with the Avengers or Champions or whoever, especially if they haven’t had a speaking part in an X-comic for years.
Oh right, now I get what you mean.
Si> In the couple of years before Krakoa you had Quire in West Coast Avengers, Cypher in Daredevil, Broo in Agents of Wakanda, Storm playing a small part in Black Panther, and lots of bit parts in stuff like Captain Marvel.
To me, this was less about Marvel wanting to segregate the mutants in particular and more about a change in editorial strategy from the ANAD era to the Fresh Start era.
In the ANAD era, they were heavily focused on this idea of franchise intermingling – which was supposed to highlight the larger Marvel universe but just ended up diluting the premises of all the books.
There were too many small-scale Avengers and faux-Avengers books at once, all at cross-purposes to one another. The FF had been gutted – Reed and Sue and the kids were written out, the Thing was on GOTG, the HT was on Inhumans, the Baxter Building had been sold off. GOTG had taken severe MCU inspiration and was full of non-space Earth heroes (Kitty Pryde, the Thing, Agent Venom, Ant-Man). The mutants, like you said, were scattered everywhere, with no solid direction for the central X-Men line and books like Uncanny Avengers weakening the premises of both Avengers and X-Men.
In the Fresh Start era,
1. Jason Aaron relaunched Avengers as a single book around the big three (IM, CA, T) and other A-Listers (CM, BP, DS, SH); focused around a big idea (the Avengers legacy recurring throughout time).
2. Dan Slott relaunched FF by reuniting the team and the kids, made their status quo workable again, and had them move back into the Baxter Building.
3. Donny Cates (and later Al Ewing) relaunched GOTG by moving it away from the Bendis/MCU direction, getting rid of the superfluous Earth heroes and bringing back prominent space characters (Moondragon, Phyla-Vell, Quasar).
4. Jonathan Hickman relaunched the X-Men by bringing all of the mutants to Krakoa, resurrecting the all the dead ones, and gave the franchise a direction to move towards (mutants vs posthumans as the inheritors of the Earth).
So yes, I can see how Marvel have moved back into ‘bubble franchises’ lately but I also don’t think it’s a bad thing. These franchises have regained their own identities now but they still crossover during events.
Yes, I agree it wasn’t just the X-books which moved in this direction. Immortal Hulk often seemed to exist in its own pocket bubble of continuity also (especially the first half). I think Hickman’s drastic change with Krakoa is the most striking example, but it does apply to most of the Marvel Universe titles. Marvel may be lessening this direction now.
It’s not completely unprecedented. Hickman’s Fantastic Four also often felt isolated from the Marvel Universe as a whole. I think it’s just most obvious with the X-books because of how far-reaching Hickman’s narrative stretched. It felt jarring to see some of the momentous ways Krakoa would have upended the world (such as humans supposedly taking drugs daily), but yet it went totally unmentioned outside of the X-books.
In many ways, Hickman’s House/Powers set-up didn’t mesh with a shared universe. It felt as if he was writing a standalone science fiction novel which shoehorned in other Marvel Uniiverse characters on occasion. This became all the more pronounced when other Marvel books seemed to ignore (or at least skirt) the Krakoa status quo.
Wasn’t S’ym infected by the transmodal virus before the 1980s Inferno storyline?
At the time it felt like an irreversible change, but I guess that is no longer the case.
All of the demons of Limbo were infected by Transmode virus in the lead-up to New Mutants #50. As far as I know, it was never explained why they’re not transmode any more. Maybe Magik cleansed Limbo at the end of Inferno, but I can’t remember that being stated outright.
But after Inferno there wasn’t much use for S’ym or Limbo in general, then the whole Phalanx thing got introduced, and the concept became less and less workable. I don’t know if robot demons were ever a good idea anyway.
@Luis- S’ym and the other Limbo demons have been written as no longer techno-organic since Illyana returned from the dead. No explanation was ever given.
I can’t see S’ym without thinking about how he was created as an in joke about Cerebus.
So, those spelling mistakes in the handwritten datapage, presumably setting things up so when it’s decided Magik has to become the ruler of Limbo again it’s because she’s either going mad or regressing to childhood?
Loz: there’s an ongoing joke that Magik is a bad speller. I think it started in the X of Swords crossover.