{"id":11376,"date":"2025-09-06T22:18:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T21:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11376"},"modified":"2025-09-06T22:18:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T21:18:33","slug":"magik-9-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11376","title":{"rendered":"Magik #9 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>MAGIK vol 3 #9<\/strong>
\n“Above All”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Ashley Allen<\/strong>
\nArtists: Germ\u00e1n Peralta with Matt Horak<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Arthur Hesli<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Ariana Maher<\/strong>
\nEditor: Darren Shan<\/strong><\/p>\n

PAGES 1-2.<\/strong>\u00a0Lexi Larsen attacks Magik, Mirage and Liminal on the Las Vegas Strip.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last issue, the Embodiment (the leader of Society of the Eternal Dawn) sent Magik and Mirage to Las Vegas to retrieve Zosimos’ Quill, a magical artefact supposedly capable of exorcising Liminal from Cal Isaacs’ body. The mission looked suspiciously like a suicide mission, the Quill turned out to be in the possession of a Society splinter group and the Society’s “Examplar of Recruitment” Lexi Larsen showed up at the cliffhanger to wipe everyone out and leave no witnesses.<\/p>\n

For some reason, the immediate resolution of that cliffhanger has taken place off panel between issues: Magik teleported herself, Mirage and Liminal to the Strip, and Lexi is in pursuit. It’s not entirely clear why Magik didn’t simply leave the city entirely, but presumably she still has designs on the Quill.<\/p>\n

“Proeliuz.” <\/strong>This doesn’t seem to be an actual word in any language, but “proelium” is Latin for “battle”.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-7. <\/strong>Magik and Mirage fight off the Society.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mirage’s bow.<\/strong> Mirage explained in issue #4 that the Society had given her an enchanted bow, “Dawn Piercer”, which allowed her to use her psionic arrows to repel demons. The Society shuts off the bow once Mirage has turned on them, though the storytelling is confusing on this point – she fires an arrow which seems to explode on contact with Lexi’s dragon, and then immediately declares that something is wrong. In the art, the arrow seemed to work just fine.<\/p>\n

At any rate, shutting off Dawn Piercer really doesn’t take the Society very far, because its function was to extend her powers to fighting demons. She can handle the rank and file Society members just fine without it, leaving Magik to deal with Lexi’s dragon.<\/p>\n

According to Dani, she was given the bow by Yanisa Suwan, the “Exemplar of Weaponry”, whom we law saw in issue #7. She shows up later in the issue.<\/p>\n

Liminal.<\/strong> As in the previous issue, Liminal continues to entreat the heroes to trust him and to remove his bonds. A possible reading of what’s going on here – supported by Magik’s reaction to him in the next scene – is that Cal is managing to influence what Liminal says up to a point, and is trying to drop hints where he can.<\/p>\n

“We have to get Cal’s heart back.”<\/strong> The Embodiment magically removed Cal’s heart, supposedly in order to keep Liminal under control when he was in Magik’s custody, at the end of issue #7.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-9.\u00a0<\/strong>Magik, Mirage and Liminal fight their way through the Society base.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note that Liminal\/Cal makes a point of stopping to admire the “inverted star” (which we heard about in issue #7) and to draw attention to some information that he thinks will be useful later. Magik appears to dismiss this as mere distraction or timewasting.<\/p>\n

The two caped figures are the other two Exemplars – the aforementioned Yanisa Suwan, and the Exemplar of Prophecy, Kian Mir. (He’s the one in the blindfold.) The wider Society membership appear to be unaware of what’s going on, and the Exemplars try to pass the fight off as a “drill”.<\/p>\n

We saw this route to the Embodiment’s office (including the white room with the free standing door) in issue #7.<\/p>\n

“For a moment, he almost sounded like…”\u00a0<\/strong>Presumably Magik is about to say that Liminal sounds like Cal.<\/p>\n

PAGES 10-11.\u00a0<\/strong>Magik and Mirage confront the Embodiment.<\/em><\/p>\n

The two golems in the room seem to be the ones that were controlled by Lexi in issue #7.<\/p>\n

The Embodiment is holding Cal’s heart in her hand.<\/p>\n

“After all, there’s an opening for an Exemplar.”\u00a0<\/strong>Is there? Are there meant to be more than three, or has Lexi been expelled for failure? (It seems unlikely that Magik killed Lexi, since Mirage would have reacted to that.) Anyway, all of this gives Mirage her moment to reject the Embodiment’s offer and for Magik to side with her, finally drawing a line under their tension in this series.<\/p>\n

The Embodiment claims, presumably on the basis of her precognitive powers, that it “will be the world’s downfall” if Mirage side with Magik. Again, it’s not clear why – is she worried about something specific that they’ll do, or simply concerned about the downfall of her Society?<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-16.\u00a0<\/strong>The Embodiment’s origin story.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a nutshell: Eloise Bennett was born into the Sevenths, one of a number of American magical sects of the 19th century. From the art, she appears to have a white father and a black mother; this isn’t directly mentioned in dialogue, but presumably this is at least part of the reason why she says that her mother was ignored by the Sevenths’ leaders.<\/p>\n

When Eloise developed precognition, her father James assumed that they were magical powers. But the Society’s leader Clement identified that she was a mutant, and rejected her as an abomination. James died trying to defend her, and the Society forced Eloise to use her powers to probe the future for them. (Eloise is shown being hooked up a machine, which is presumably meant to play into the parallel with the Industrial Revolution drawn in the dialogue.) We see her having apparent visions of a nuclear holocaust and the Sentinels.<\/p>\n

Eventually her mother Sarah rescues her by getting access to the “machine” and using it to work out a rescue plan. Sarah dies in the escape attempt, but transfers Clement’s life force into Eloise in order to slow her ageing. Clement’s last words are to call mutants “the embodiment of the end”. The fact that Eloise has chosen to take on this name is not encouraging, but she goes on to talk about taking up the mission of her parents (who seem to have been unequivocally good).<\/p>\n

According to Eloise, she created the Society she knew that the existing magical sects would reject her as a mutant. We get a montage flashback which includes her buying the Quill from the previous issue, and recruiting the Exemplars. The lesson she appears to have drawn from all this, if we’re to take her at face value, is that she has created no more than a pale imitation of her parents’ sect, which would have survived and provided a better defence for humanity if only she had been able to accept her role as a machine. Thus, she considers herself to be an ends-justify-the-means hero.<\/p>\n

Blackstone River Valley, Rhode Island.\u00a0<\/strong>One of the earliest sites of the Industrial Revolution in the USA – the opening panel shows us the mills, and the Embodiment draws a comparison between the Industrial Revolution and her society’s “magical” revolution. But the Industrial Revolution was decades before the time frame of this flashback – the first textile mills in Blackstone River Valley date from the 1790s.<\/p>\n

“The Sevenths and my family were destroyed…”\u00a0<\/strong>It’s clear enough why Embodiment blames herself for the death of her parents (who were trying to save her from the fate that she now believes she should have accepted). It’s more interesting that she refers to the destruction of the Sevenths – all we actually see is a building set on fire and the death of Clement. Is the implication that she consciously wiped out the Sevenths when escaping, and only later came to the view that the world would have been better off if the Sevenths had stayed around?<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-20.\u00a0<\/strong>Magik, Mirage and Liminal retrieve Cal’s heart.<\/em><\/p>\n

Magik has evidently been persuaded to remove Liminal’s bonds as the lesser of two evils. Presumably this happens between the first two panels of page 8. It can’t be a reaction to noticing that Liminal sounds like Cal, because that happens\u00a0after<\/em> they’re in the building, and Magik expressly says that she removed the bonds\u00a0before<\/em> coming in.<\/p>\n

Krakoa.<\/strong> This point was brought up in dialogue back in issue #4, when Magik questioned why the Society hadn’t prevented Liminal’s rise. Mirage’s answer at the time was that Liminal had moved more quickly than expected and that their resources were limited. She then went on to give Krakoa as a specific example of something that she could have averted with access to the Society’s information. Back in that scene, Magik was openly sceptical about the Society’s intentions and an obvious possibility here is that the real answer to Magik’s question is that the Embodiment foresaw Liminal’s rise and chose not to intervene (if only because she knew it would work out anyway).<\/p>\n

The Embodiment\u00a0did<\/em> foresee Krakoa’s fall but chose not to take any steps to avert it. To be fair, her claim is that the alternatives would have been a world war, and that the Society is concerned with existential threats to the whole global population. The issue isn’t for her isn’t that it was a mutant nation, but simply that it was just one nation. However, she certainly doesn’t have any sense of mutant identity, despite her back story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAGIK vol 3 #9 “Above All” Writer: Ashley Allen Artists: Germ\u00e1n Peralta with Matt Horak Colour artist: Arthur Hesli Letterer: Ariana Maher Editor: Darren Shan PAGES 1-2.\u00a0Lexi Larsen attacks Magik, Mirage and Liminal on the Las Vegas Strip. Last issue, the Embodiment (the leader of Society of the Eternal Dawn) sent Magik and Mirage to […]<\/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-11376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376","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=11376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11378,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11376\/revisions\/11378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}