Originally Posted by
sunofdarkchild
That's an interesting point. While Illyana has been very prominent, the last time she was the focus of a story was New Mutants Dead Souls, which was practically a stealth solo for her. The focus was on her development as a leader, with an entire issue dedicated to how she dealt with the death of someone under her command. All of the plot point from that series were dropped when Rosenberg returned to them in Uncanny. While Illyana did a lot of cool things there, the focus was all on Wolverine and Cyclops. For all the appearances she's made in the Krakoa era, she's never been the focal character of any story. The closest she's come was the DOX New Mutants issue, which was more about Glob than her, and the New Mutants X of Swords tie-in, which was more about Doug than her. The only on-panel development she's gotten has been her fantastic letter to the Quiet Council.
In general she hasn't gotten that many stories that focused on her. There was Quest for Magik, X-Infernus, the Zeb Wells New Mutants run, I guess her 'there are no snowflakes in hell speech,' but I consider that more about Colossus than her since the focus was on him and she was wallpaper until that moment, the Dormmamu arc and her subsequent training with Dr. Strange, the story where she and Kitty team up and save Bo from monster island, her making up with Colossus in Uncanny 600, the Sapna storyline, and Dead Souls. That's it. 9 stories in the last 15 years. A major shift in her development, her becoming completely at peace with herself for the first time ever, happened off-panel and what we have been seeing are the results of this development, which is a big part of why I wrote those 2 fics about how she became a captain and Kitty admitting she prefers the older Illyana to the younger one, to provide the context behind this radical change.