{"id":11147,"date":"2025-06-13T22:55:37","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T21:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11147"},"modified":"2025-06-13T22:55:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T21:55:37","slug":"magik-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11147","title":{"rendered":"Magik #6 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>MAGIK vol 3 #6<\/strong>
\n“The Road Back Home”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Ashley Allen<\/strong>
\nArtist: Jes\u00fas Herv\u00e1s<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Arthur Hesli<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nEditor: Darren Shan<\/strong><\/p>\n

And let’s welcome new cover artist Pablo Villalobos, who actually thinks Illyana’s most noteworthy features are from the neck up.<\/p>\n

MAGIK.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She still\u00a0\u00a0feels 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

SUPPORTING CAST.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Goblin<\/strong> Queen.<\/strong>\u00a0For 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\u00a0her agenda in the Dark X-Men\u00a0<\/em>miniseries.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Belasco’s old castle is resistant to any attempts by Madelyne to reshape it. Magik thinks it has “even more cobwebs” than before.<\/p>\n

K’yrb.\u00a0<\/strong>The Goblin Queen’s functionary previously appeared in\u00a0X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Psylocke\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Juggernaut<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Mirage.\u00a0<\/strong>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…?<\/p>\n

VILLAINS.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gar’hn the Alchemist. <\/strong>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<\/em> #9.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/em>#9. So clearly word has got around.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAGIK vol 3 #6 “The Road Back Home” Writer: Ashley Allen Artist: Jes\u00fas Herv\u00e1s 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\u00a0\u00a0feels guilty about letting down Cal last issue, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11149,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11147\/revisions\/11149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}