May our Queen keep you safe and bring nice stuff in your life for this new decade, my brothers and sisters.
May our Queen keep you safe and bring nice stuff in your life for this new decade, my brothers and sisters.
To address questions from last thread:
The simple answer is that Limbo changes, especially so now that Illyana has eaten and regurgitated it, and can presumably do anything she wants with it.by Hypestyle
has Limbo ever been mapped? How vast is it? Is it a planet, effectively? Is it flat?
Anything there besides demons?
Secondly, it's clearly multiply connected, given stepping disks, like "Chutes and Ladders" (which was actually the title of its origin story in UXM v1 #160.
But we know that in the past it has contained at least a section of flat plane, thousands of miles across, given Cat & Illyana's travels when she was 7-9 years old. The more recent ride during the Fall of the New Mutants showed a similar "thousand miles+" quality, much of which is like a conveyor belt or whirlpool, requiring tens of thousands of miles of travel just to stay in place.
"Demon" mostly means living creatures from another 'dimen'sion, like Americans are citizens of America. Project Purgatory seems to have found a vast ecology of exploitable marginally subsentient demons, a medieval 'demonology' of domesticated demons to do things like silence opponents, use demon senses, beasts of burden, trackers...
And another great outfit from the Magus War of #50
Yes, they were all great looks.
I don't think the "sexy" outfit is a bad design, I just don't think it's practical, and I feel the same with male characters who are depicted with shorts or sandals or opened chest shirts. As a super hero, you are going to get into physical altercations, and unless you are invulnerable, I would think that covering yourself to protect from injury is a priority.
Of course, if all heroes wore outfits from neck down to toes, that would be boring, so I wonder what the happy medium is?
When the SoulArmour first appeared, it covered whatever part of her body had just been hit, keeping her from harm without enclosing her
My favorite armor is the liquid kind, shifting from panel to panel, actively displaying her mood and the artist's free expression
Supers tend to have mostly identical 'perfect' manikin bodies, different only by costume & hairstyles. As demonstrated by Cypher's death, a functional uniform would be helmeted full body armor; anything else requires "Editorial Armor" to keep characters safe from harm (although in Illyana's case, it's probably justified by magic.) Magik is sometimes invulnerable to squads with machine guns, protected by 'luck' & portals, but on other occasions gets 'knocked out' so the rest of the team can appear relevant
So variable armor and variable writing go, and look great together
TBH, I don't miss any of Illyana's old stuff. What I 'miss' is an is-ness of the absence of the branding adolescence that my heroine passed through, that she doesn't have, that is a blur in memory, a smote field or empty boat on a dark river on a shore that she knows...just because she knows...is meant for her...but she knows...because she knows...she should never enter...never ever...though it could be so nice to drift...it would mean death...the end....and as such...access into that forever never land of not-ness that was and never is her in between and becoming. So no, I don't miss any of her old outfits, personas, grand schemes, must dos, doubts, allegories, spells, securties, insecurities, means, modes or methods...none of them or her or are her.
In my heart/mind Illyana could and would be somewhat forced into forging ahead and salvaging her fashions from blazing futures. Sword in hand and sword itself ever changing in its flame (no sheath)...tempering...untempered.
I do so much wish that creators would be willing to allow her constant and inconsistent randomness and change and also periods of seemingly and entirely expressive arrested or stuttering or staggered cadence to show her otherness and indebtedness to a life ahead and behind ends and beginnings. At times she might simply stop (time). Or appear to. She may suddenly vanish! Or not!
Illyana is herself a living embodiment of an animate dead space and anti-Limbo, the shadow or the light of that otherness.
I miss what has never been.
I miss risks and failures and the consequences and realities of relationships with people who sometimes fear, sometimes sympathize, sometimes don't really care about that **** and just love her anyway...and I miss her growing, learning and maybe approaching that same sense of...kinship...within, abiding...coming into...here(ness). At-one-ment.
If I were to project one central guest in her imagined solo book it would be Miles Morales.
I want Miles to know Illyana. And yea, I want Illyana to know Miles. To learn and touch and connect with that story that person that goodness that is Spider-Man (girl and/or Gwen etc.) in comics.
I want them to know one another and for them to have fought and laughed and freaked out together.
I'd want him to 'not understand' her. But get it.
I feel like that's important to my MU, and that just in sharing this, it's a part of where I'm reading to.
Not that boat on that river...but a good team-up in a solo ongoing...on and on going...with webs and swords!
Last edited by sungila; 01-05-2020 at 12:19 PM.
“The reason of the unreasonableness which against my reason is wrought, doth so weaken my reason, as with all reason I do justly complain on your beauty.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote
From that last picture and many others, it appears that Magik can target individuals using stepping disks without actually looking at them. She can also teleport specific demons from Limbo at will, suggesting complete targetting knowledge of Limbo at all times, including giving instructions to her servants by some unspecified ability
Do you think Illyana has special senses over Space and Time: clairvoyance and precognition allowing instantaneous saves from explosions, bullets, and beam weapons when necessary?
My headcanon is that after, or even before a fight, she watches using scrying mirrors in slow motion, and teleports whatever and whenever is convenient
That would mean she is also potentially immune to power dampeners, given that if she ever gets out of them later, she could use her recovered powers to rescue herself in the past. There is also the fact that other wielders of the SoulSword have used stepping disks despite having no mutant powers, so I see Magik as only being confinable with her full cooperation, as with the bomb-jacket
Last edited by G0RM; 01-05-2020 at 07:31 PM.
Secret Warriors involved Illyana teaming up with a bunch of young heroes entirely outside of the X-Men for the first time. But she found herself as isolated there as among mutants
Magik's gift and curse is to be an outsider, a DemonGod among mortals, hiding behind a lovely mask, a mask that protects her from giving or receiving love
I've often hoped Illyana could be shown sometime chatting with Magneto and Rachel about growing up in genocidal deathcamps, but those two also never talk about 'it' with anyone, their traumas hoarded like dragon's gold
I've heard that "Suffering shared is suffering divided, but joy shared is joy multiplied"
Victory over the Elder Gods is still not Illyana's ultimate task; that is probably reaching out to love without expecting love or understanding in return...
But perhaps accepting being loved, allowing her heart to be touched and accepted for exactly who and what she is, would be a step further still
Last edited by G0RM; 01-06-2020 at 02:47 AM.
Inferno went into it in depth, and again her time in the bomb jacket investigated it, but Magik's deep question is something most authors want to ignore (perhaps because it's awful to contemplate)
Beyond the "With great power comes great responsibility" of heroes, Illyana has the question of the Cursed: the concept "If I'm pure poison, if everything I try makes things worse, what can I do?" It comes up a lot with survivor's guilt, victims of trauma and abuse, the twisted psychology that follows from being powerless, then gaining questionable freedom, but with a lingering stain of shame
These questions popped up a lot in Magik's original New Mutants run, but have lurked in the background after her Resurrection. Perhaps that's about how Illyana 2.0 had no internal monologues, that she has stayed 'mysterious' for years, and still currently is, potentially running ongoing scams and long cons like she did with the Elder Gods and Piotr
As one of the Great Captains, are Apocalypse, Xavier, Magneto, Sinister etc going to fully recognize her, or is she manipulating them to underestimate her even now?
Last edited by G0RM; 01-06-2020 at 02:44 AM.