Illyana Rasputin: Magik Appreciation 2019

[sunofdarkchild]

Nope. No Illyana yet

So none of my money for Marvel yet.

[Drey]

Unfortunately when I became a fan of Colossus in the 90s Illyana was back to a little girl and their parents died and then the legacy virus happened. It wasn't until after Colossus died and Illyana had been long dead at that point that I discovered that Colossus little sister had become a cool character in her own right and In a lot of ways more interesting than her brother. I wish I had discovered New Mutants earlier as I'm a sucker for teenaged superhero stories.

When I started collecting, even the child Illyana was dead. The first time I saw her was in that Christmas issue of Uncanny#365, if I'm remembering right. She was a ghost that appeared to Colossus using a bound stepping disc in the attic to make contact with him. As I started collecting back issues, I eventually came upon the New Mutants' almost entire run in my LCS's quarter bin, so I scooped them up! Illyana (and Dani) instantly became a favorite New Mutant of mine after I read the Demon Bear Saga. For years I always thought it'd be cool for her to be resurrected. When she finally was, I was there for all of it.

Around 2013/2014, I began losing interest in comics (the 05 didn't really do anything for me) so I missed Secret Wars, Civil War II, IvX, etc., and now I'm trying to get back into them. I'm glad that Illyana will be on the new Uncanny team with Scott.

[pandafarmer]

So none of my money for Marvel yet.

I think it's still worth a read, esp to set up what it takes to get our New Mutants back into the fold and how/if they get rid of the virus. I enjoyed it and am ready for the next issue.

[G0RM]

Do you believe the current August 2, 2019 release date for "New Mutants" or do you think it will be delayed yet again?

How do you think it will affect the popularity of Our Lady of Darkness?

How will they deal with mind-shield, mystical, extra-dimensional, demonic, Soul-Sword aspects: all cut out?

Do you think there's any chance the Darkchylde will come out to play in the film?

[244]

Do you believe the current August 2, 2019 release date for "New Mutants" or do you think it will be delayed yet again?

How do you think it will affect the popularity of Our Lady of Darkness?

How will they deal with mind-shield, mystical, extra-dimensional, demonic, Soul-Sword aspects: all cut out?

Do you think there's any chance the Darkchylde will come out to play in the film?

Simple answer: I’m keeping my expectations low.

[sungila]

In-universe Belasco IS the inspiration for Dante's Inferno and actually fought Dante.

He means the classic sci-fi/art/fantasy magazine of the same name.
http://www.heavymetal.com/

Simple answer: I’m keeping my expectations low.

Me too, subterraneanly low.

I actually fear that with the premiere of the on screen Illyana as played by Anya Taylor-Joy, that's who the comics Illyana will be.


I can clearly see Magik in the seats of this theater at this movie with her popcorn. Maybe just enjoying the light entertainment and with the out track blaring from the speakers, standing up, just ahead of the crowd - leaving her complications of bloodstones, fractured pasts and futures all there absently behind her...to be swept into the aisles and into the trash and out to the dumpsters. In that human ceremony of sanitation.

I'll miss her. But I sorta already do.
Dead Souls was a bittersweet mini for me. A very true few final issues drawn from the dregs of...oh, well.

[sunofdarkchild]

My expectations for the movie as a whole are not so high anymore, but my expectations for its handling of Illyana are pretty high given what we've heard so far.

ATJ has said that her character is "a bad-ass b- from hell" with "sass."

https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1085351573578907648

And the movie will have a Russian-speaking little kid version of Illyana, meaning her origin and kidnapping as a child is being touched on.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BaPH_ErjLXM/



A trailer that was only shown in Brazil is reported to have shown her armor and soul sword. This is the only thing I have brought that has a chance of not being true since it was only shown there and no footage has been released since then, but no one involved has ever dismissed or disputed the report and both the armor and soul sword appeared in the concept video where she attacks the demon bear. There is also a brief flash of a hell-like realm the moment she stabs the bear in that video.

https://comicbook.com/marvel/2017/12...utants-teaser/
https://www.slashfilm.com/new-mutants-video/

Kidnapped as a child, 'from hell,' bad-ass, and sass are all very important boxes that are being checked, and it seems rather likely that the soul sword and armor are also included. The elements are all there. It's now just a matter of the writing and visuals being up to snuff. I might have been satisfied with her being a badass spouting 1-liners, but the inclusion of the younger version adds a ton of depth already.

[G0RM]

Me too, subterraneanly low.

I actually fear that with the premiere of the on screen Illyana as played by Anya Taylor-Joy, that's who the comics Illyana will be.

I'll miss her. But I sorta already do.
Dead Souls was a bittersweet mini for me. A very true few final issues drawn from the dregs of...oh, well.

That's certainly a problem, but even "Dead Souls" just provoked a lot of thought on my part.

I'm a continuity lover; the fact that Marvel is a half-million page Mosaic Novel that makes War and Peace look like a paragraph is for me the true beauty of Stan Lee's extraordinary creation.

At this point, my experience of Illyana is almost entirely "Back-Story" based, very little of it "on-the-page". Rather than feeling constant annoyance that the authors are "doing it wrong", instead like Dhalpin3 of Fanfiction, I imagine a completely self-consistent story of Illyana 1.0 & 2.0 that explains what's on the page, while mostly enjoying the story my mind tells in order to make it all fit together: the part of the iceberg below the water.

In my mind, I perceive her as a Hell Lord (at a level with Odin, Zeus, or Mephisto), operating an ant-puppet (her non-Darkchylde girl-mask) trying to form connections with mortal ant-pets while trying not to accidentally crush them, all because she's so terribly, terribly lonely.

In my head-canon, a major part of her performance is to throw fights & lean on other's "help", because otherwise anyone less powerful than the Silver Surfer would be redundant. Her cross-time "Groundhog Day" replay until final victory over the Elder Gods, "bored now" play with the Phoenix-force & Cytorrak, crushing of Dormammu, and recent dismemberment of a space-god show her upper power levels... but her frustration at Moon-Girl's unbirthday party shows that she really is still defeated by what other people take for granted: interpersonal connection.

I fear a bit whether her post-movie characterization will be nerfed or dumbed down like Simonson's version of Magik, but that just means I'll have to do more internal fictionalization of her backstory of fight-throwing... while I spend my leisure time rereading Zeb Wells & Dhalpin3. (Like I did during the Extraordinary Era, when a policy of "Let Magik Do Everything" showed how wise her normal 'I'm just a little girl' pretense really is.)

[sungila]

I haven't read Gillen's Uncanny or Lemire's Extrorindary X-Men or any of Illyana's appearances in other post Bendis events and/or ongoings such as Secret Warriors.

When did Magik dismember a space-god?

Is Secret Warriors good? It looks good from the pages and panels I've seen.

Can anyone tell where this image comes from? I really like the art here. I think it has been lifted from an in panel action scene but I haven't been able to find the original source.

tumblr_n9ugolgHoz1rix2dqo1_500.jpg

What are the best issues and series featuring Illyana since Bendis' Uncanny?

"What If" and "Dead Souls" were both great, especially 'What If' - I know I'll end up eventually seeking out mostly everything featuring Magik but I was wondering if any of you have definitive favorite runs or single issues since Bendis' Uncanny and AvX.

[Fokken]

I haven't read Gillen's Uncanny or Lemire's Extrorindary X-Men or any of Illyana's appearances in other post Bendis events and/or ongoings such as Secret Warriors.

When did Magik dismember a space-god?

Is Secret Warriors good? It looks good from the pages and panels I've seen.

Can anyone tell where this image comes from? I really like the art here. I think it has been lifted from an in panel action scene but I haven't been able to find the original source.

tumblr_n9ugolgHoz1rix2dqo1_500.jpg

What are the best issues and series featuring Illyana since Bendis' Uncanny?

"What If" and "Dead Souls" were both great, especially 'What If' - I know I'll end up eventually seeking out mostly everything featuring Magik but I was wondering if any of you have definitive favorite runs or single issues since Bendis' Uncanny and AvX.

That should be from Bendis's All New X-Men, issue one iirc.

[sungila]

That should be from Bendis's All New X-Men, issue one iirc.

Thank you Fokken. I was hoping it was from something else. Something, I don't know, just something else I guess...but thank you! That was haunting me.

That's certainly a problem, but even "Dead Souls" just provoked a lot of thought on my part.

I'm a continuity lover; the fact that Marvel is a half-million page Mosaic Novel that makes War and Peace look like a paragraph is for me the true beauty of Stan Lee's extraordinary creation.

At this point, my experience of Illyana is almost entirely "Back-Story" based, very little of it "on-the-page". Rather than feeling constant annoyance that the authors are "doing it wrong", instead like Dhalpin3 of Fanfiction, I imagine a completely self-consistent story of Illyana 1.0 & 2.0 that explains what's on the page, while mostly enjoying the story my mind tells in order to make it all fit together: the part of the iceberg below the water.

In my mind, I perceive her as a Hell Lord (at a level with Odin, Zeus, or Mephisto), operating an ant-puppet (her non-Darkchylde girl-mask) trying to form connections with mortal ant-pets while trying not to accidentally crush them, all because she's so terribly, terribly lonely.

In my head-canon, a major part of her performance is to throw fights & lean on other's "help", because otherwise anyone less powerful than the Silver Surfer would be redundant. Her cross-time "Groundhog Day" replay until final victory over the Elder Gods, "bored now" play with the Phoenix-force & Cytorrak, crushing of Dormammu, and recent dismemberment of a space-god show her upper power levels... but her frustration at Moon-Girl's unbirthday party shows that she really is still defeated by what other people take for granted: interpersonal connection.

I fear a bit whether her post-movie characterization will be nerfed or dumbed down like Simonson's version of Magik, but that just means I'll have to do more internal fictionalization of her backstory of fight-throwing... while I spend my leisure time rereading Zeb Wells & Dhalpin3. (Like I did during the Extraordinary Era, when a policy of "Let Magik Do Everything" showed how wise her normal 'I'm just a little girl' pretense really is.)

I sigh and nod in affirmation to the main pang of the pulse in these sentiments Gorm. I should really seek out the Dhalpin3 fanfics you've mentioned. But, like you, I'm continuously drawing from the backstory and it's miraculous sustenance is so inter-purposed with me and my stuff that it's somehow always enough when I need it. Somehow Magik is in more than just the pages of the books. She's in the soundtracks the sentiments of when I've been even before I was there...she is also somehow where I'm headed. In every story there's a sword or a satchel or a book or a spell...something to contain the ingredients...and in many ways Illyana is that...one of the essentials. Like possibility.

She's here in bread and in the bellies of the songbirds that ate the bread crumb trail. And in Earth where those songbirds fell.

I'm grateful for your curations Gorm. These installations are a kind of performance art that both celebrate and remember the fire in the embers, so much of who Magik is, and the What If told this so well, Illyana is self as creation.

The amber in her own embers.
In her Limbo, the throne of demon hordes as endless as seas, there in the station of the season of interned unrest...a Siberian winter cast deep down in the regenerative furnace of purgatory...a nightmare recurring, repeating an incantation: Ill..y...ana..Ill...y...ana...echos on lips in rings and bones.

Chanting incarnation out of a familiar pace for silence of distant scream...rattle of chain and sometimes...someone calling out...a name...

A chime in the battle-axe. Glint on the edge.

Limbo, it's a good place to heal and work things out. To rule a that place with unforgiveness...to put the place in it's place.

To chop at forest of the trees that wouldn't be!

I can see her in her Darkchylde, axe grinding in her stillness. Sharpening that blade in the blaze of her tear-spent unseeing gaze. Cold fire in her eyes reflecting. I think of that stillborn acorn. I think of the shadow trees the grew from that failure and I see her axe and I smile.

Timber terror and rage and the composure of violence: solid as a pearl bead...solid work.
Fuel for the flame and always and forever...how we go on...holding an axe by the handle, making a handle for an axe...the pattern in hand.

[G0RM]

When did Magik dismember a space-god?

Is Secret Warriors good? It looks good from the pages and panels I've seen.

What are the best issues and series featuring Illyana since Bendis' Uncanny?

Magik dismembered the Space-God "Scythian Algurus" in X-Men Gold #25 using a giant stepping disk. (The rest of the X-Men fought Scythian for an hour or so with no effect, so Illyana finally killed him, but made them feel like their effort was important.)

Unfortunately Gold25 was immediately following #24, where she had two panels conscious & three panels unconscious, probably the worst treatment I know of Magik ever.

However, I enjoyed Illyana in 'Secret Warriors' very much. I felt she had the "Bendis Snark" version down pat, humor-centric & kick-ass warrior appearances, rather than the gloomy goth-girl version in 'Dead Souls'.

(Both "Secret Warriors" & "Dead Souls" were written by Rosenberg, which is weird; normally Magik changes by author, not scenario, so I don't know how she'll be written by Rosenberg serving under the resurrected Cyclops... Maybe she'll quip, "Next time, will you listen to me when I say something is dangerous?")

'Secret Warriors #12' was a non-combat issue of Moon-Girl's party, and I thought it was both hilarious, and a deep examination of Illyana's character, but I think it goes best at the end of reading the whole series, where she regularly kicks substantial ass & is generally sarcastically comedic.

I also thought Illyana had some good appearances in Death of X & IvX, but typically scattered panels rather than solid chunks.

[Fokken]

'Secret Warriors #12' was a non-combat issue of Moon-Girl's party, and I thought it was both hilarious, and a deep examination of Illyana's character, .

Is that the cake eating scene you're referring to? If so, the artist for that scene really tugged me out of what may have been intended to be a serious moment. It was so Toony.

[Maestroneto]

Is that the cake eating scene you're referring to? If so, the artist for that scene really tugged me out of what may have been intended to be a serious moment. It was so Toony.

Didn’t Javier Garron draw that?

[pandafarmer]

I enjoyed the Secret Warriors line, it was fun and light and still managed to keep Illyana's tough but warm presence. It's on Marvel Unlimited so it's easy to track down if you have a subscription (which you should, as it's a handy tool to track down side issues and crossover events that you might not want to buy at a comic shop). I too didn't think much of the art to be honest, but was just happy she was in a book.

I think for Post-Bendis Yanna, she jumped over as a major fixture in Storm's X-team all the way up to X vs Inhumans. Then she appears in the related material there as mentioned above (Death of X, Secret Warriors, etc). Then she pretty much was relegated to background until Dead Souls came out, and has been off roster since the cliffhanger but is due to return to the recently re-launched Uncanny.

As for the movie, I'm cautiously optimistic. I think it largely depends on what Disney's intentions are for X-Men. We know that the best X films have pushed the PG-13/R range, and they wanted to go that route here. We know that they will be using young Illyana for something in the movie, but I could see them toning down the "kidnapped by the devil" and Limbo wars completely in favor of a "Poltergeist" flavor where the little girl is captured by an evil force. She "fights her way out" and resurfaces as a teen with a knowledge of arcane arts much like Dr Strange. They likely won't go into Belasco and his weirdly icky obsession with her, and instead use a "sensitivity" to things like ghosts and demons. Allows them to keep the emotional struggle with the paranormal she has without having a monster with Satanic features always looming in the background. More Ghostbusters and less Legend.

If they are doing a fresh reboot on all things X we need to consider that this film will be a one-off and that any characters appearing would be re-cast or never revisited. Considering just how important New Mutants are to the larger X-continuity I could see them using them in a tv show or referencing them in stories like with Dr Strange and Magik appearing together in a fight combining powers or something.