Illyana Rasputin: Magik Appreciation 2019

[G0RM]

As for her teleportation, it never made sense to me that 'the farther she traveled, the greater the time-skip. If she already has to go to Limbo first, then total distance should not matter. Limbo is a different dimension whose relative point to anywhere in our universe should be the same, so it shouldn't make any difference if she's teleporting to the next room or to the next galaxy.

I've been saying for years that I'd like to see more logical limits placed on her ability to summon stepping disks, for instance that summoning a large number of stepping disks at once, one really big stepping disk, or keeping a portal open for an extended period of time would put a big strain on her. So if she transported a large group of X-Men to a battle she might have to sit the opening of the battle out to recover from the large teleportation. She's already OP without her mutant powers. She doesn't need to be able to decapitate entire armies from another continent.

I originally disliked the time slippage gimmick, thinking it might be an act for underestimation & so she didn't dwarf the rest of the group, but now I feel it made sense.

In terms of 'effort', she only ever seemed stressed by the *size* of the Inferno Times Square disk, plus was defeated by barriers of the Adversary, Enchantress, and the Hydra takeover.

For me her limit wasn't strength, but precision & aim.

The fact is, that there is a LOT of space-time, billions of years and light-years to choose from, like finding a particular grain of sand in all the beaches of the world.

Many mutant powers come with extra senses, like Ororo's elemental awareness, Richtor & Magma's perception of the Earth etc.

Somehow Magik can sense going-on within Limbo while on Earth (can give demons orders with no visible interactions) and on Earth from Limbo, but what direction do you point to go to when John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassinated president Oswald?

A one-eyed horseshoe player might have perfect angle throws, but getting the depth right would be hard, and would get worse the greater the overall range

I suspect when she departs Earth, Asgaard, Hala etc, that she leaves an 'anchor' trail, a bookmark 'search history’ that lets her easily go back close to where she started, rather than having to search through all the galaxies, millennia, and alternate histories of the multiverse every time. It isn't a matter of having to go through all the books of the library of Congress every teleport, but I suspect the time element was like loosing track of which page of a particular book she was reading.

Later she developed scrying pools that allowed her to view the target area, summon a disk there, and only step through if a portal opens where the screen is aimed. I refer specifically to TNM v1 #46, the issue where she kidnaps Moira to provide medical care in the Mutant Massacre, and they have to wait a few minutes to synchronize until after the time they left before re-entering Earth (demonstrating she could spy on anywhen and anywhere, tracking histories, recovering lost artifacts etc.)

(Does anyone remember a panel when Illyana held a dozen candle-flame sized portals floating around her head? We hardly ever saw Illyana practicing her powers, and unlike Cannonball endlessly trying to learn to maneuver, we basically never saw her try out or experiment with her time-travel abilities, given that finding her way back from an error might be insurmountable.

(If you accidentally end up in Guam you could take a flight back, but if you end up in a timesteam where the letter 'C' was never invented, how do you get back if you haven't left a trail behind? There are a transinfinite possible histories, with a lot more than 3 dimensions of directions to search through, if you've ever watched the series 'Sliders’ for example.

(I also always wondered about using the disks as 'botched' teleports, say pushing a disk through an object to leave a hole, having two sides in the ocean or core of the Earth or sun to create a firehose of water, lava, or plasma, or closing one that's halfway through a person for chopping/decapitation purposes etc...