Why can't everyone do magic?

[Sea Hound]

I'm not clear on why only some characters work magic, and I'm sure someone out there knows.


Lots of powers you either completely have or not. You can take super soldier serum, have an X-gene, be exposed to cosmic radiation, be an alien or not. I don't entirely understand magic in the MU though.

I understand that to be a sorcerer you need training, but can anyone who gets that training do magic? Is it like athletics, where anyone can run, but only a small few have the inherent ability which with training allows them to run at an Olympic level? OR is there only a tiny fraction of the human population with any inherent ability at all?

I can think of a couple of examples where primarily non magical characters have worked spells. (Doug Ramsey in the last run of new mutants for example). So why isn't everyone doing it?

[ed2962]

I'm not clear on why only some characters work magic, and I'm sure someone out there knows.


Lots of powers you either completely have or not. You can take super soldier serum, have an X-gene, be exposed to cosmic radiation, be an alien or not. I don't entirely understand magic in the MU though.

I understand that to be a sorcerer you need training, but can anyone who gets that training do magic? Is it like athletics, where anyone can run, but only a small few have the inherent ability which with training allows them to run at an Olympic level? OR is there only a tiny fraction of the human population with any inherent ability at all?

I can think of a couple of examples where primarily non magical characters have worked spells. (Doug Ramsey in the last run of new mutants for example). So why isn't everyone doing it?

As much as I like the Scarlet Witch, her powers being the result of a mutation didn't make sense for a long time.

The way I think of it is that there's magic that anyone can learn. But only the really talented and take it to the next level.

Then there's some folks/beings that have natural abilities due to being part demon or blue meanie or whatever.

I wanna say that I read that a Marvel editor actual did write a rule book for the way that magic is supposed to work in the MU, but after he left no one followed it. Mark Gruenwald?

[emac1790]

As much as I like the Scarlet Witch, her powers being the result of a mutation didn't make sense for a long time.

The way I think of it is that there's magic that anyone can learn. But only the really talented and take it to the next level.

Then there's some folks/beings that have natural abilities due to being part demon or blue meanie or whatever.

I wanna say that I read that a Marvel editor actual did write a rule book for the way that magic is supposed to work in the MU, but after he left no one followed it. Mark Gruenwald?

Mark Gruenwald came up with a lot of rules for how things work in the MU, for example, the rules of time travel. It's just some of the current writers don't know or don't care. They want to do their own thing.

[Sea Hound]

Thanks. So it's not an all or nothing kind of phenomenon?

I've never been able to make much sense of the Scarlet witch's abilities.

I do remember specifically that Magik could still teleport when her MAGICAL abilities were cancelled, because she said that teleporting was her MUTANT power. That's what started me wondering.
I've always liked sci-fi/fantasy better where there are consistencies in how the impossible stuff works. It'd be better if the writers made it their business to know or care.

[Joe Acro]

I think the logic within Marvel is that anyone could do magic. However, doing so normally requires a very specific mindset and a very specific type of training. Alternatively, one could be greater inclined toward magic or imbued with mystical power due to an enchantment within their bloodline.

Scarlet Witch is able to channel magic as her mutant ability presumably due to the influence of Chthon. And, yeah, Magik's power is to open teleportation discs--not an inherently mystical power.

[scribbleMind]

Marvel magic, and comic book magic in general, has very poor rules. I remember way back in Bendis's New Avengers that there was some hype about structuring it a bit, but that never happened. I wish someone would come up with some general rules, though, just because I think it would be all around more interesting.

[Pat Thomas]

It does seem like all somebody would have to do is recite the spells to do magic in the MU, because I can think of more than once when a non-magic-using
character has been able to cast a spell by reading it. I think the excuse is that if the cadence is wrong, bad things can happen to a novice.

[Lee Stone]

I think the Magic handbook (Realms of Magic) from the original Marvel Super-Heroes RPG covered it well.
It may not be as "official" as DC's magic sourcebook was but they did get input from Carl Potts, who was one of the key writers of Dr. Strange and the Defenders around that time (circa 1986).

Of course, that was almost three decades ago. So it's quite possible some things have changed since then. However, it's still good reading if you're into Dr. Strange and Marvel's mystic crowd.

You can find the pdf online at ClassicMarvelForever.com.

[MichaelC]

In theory anyone can learn magic. However, being able to learn it at a serious level is a gift on the level of being able to become a 10th-plus-level blackbelt martial artist. If you don't have that talent, then your basically going to spend years of immense training to learn to do spells that aren't anymore impressive than mundane technology. Moreover, it's incredibly dangerous, not just physically but to your soul. Even working with plutonium is a small risk compared to that. Really, who wants to spend ten years on grueling training to learn a flying spell when you can just buy and airplane ticket? Especially when that training could end up getting your soul eaten by a demonlord because you misspoke one syllable?

[Sutekh]

I've never been able to make much sense of the Scarlet witch's abilities.

Scarlet Witch's mutant power was to inflict bad luck on people with her 'hex bolts.' Just probability manipulation, at a very low level, and nothing at all to do with magic. She later learned some actual magic from Agatha Harkness, but it was never really much more than 'I can sense magic' and 'Poof, I just changed my clothes!', mostly cosmetic and not terribly relevant (since lots of people could change their clothes, thanks to unstable molecules shenanigans, even Storm was shown changing her clothes by zapping herself with lightning). Too much use of her mutant power fatigued her, which could consist of using her power many times in rapid succession, or trying to affect more than one person at once.

Byrne further developed her powers to retroactively change stuff, so that if she made a steel pipe collapse from metal fatigue (that it hadn't had in previous scans), suddenly it was always defective, and showed her doing stuff that didn't involve bad luck (and wasn't random, she originally had no control over what happened. Your gun could misfire, or something next to you could explode, or you could have a muscle spasm!), but actually manipulating probabilities and making stuff that wasn't bad luck happen, like the decades-inert Human Torch robot spontaneously turning on.

Bendis then further added that her power was no longer retroactive, affected the entire multiverse and all infinity hojillion people in it, and didn't affect anyone who anybody cared about, only boring extra people he wanted killed off. It's range went to infinity and beyond, and she probably could say 'No More Skrull Invasion,' 'No More Fear Itself Hammers,' 'No More Incursions' or 'No More Hate,' but that would wreck many plotlines, and so she has bumble around making excuses for why she doesn't do anything good with her amazing power to *change the universe* (which was taken away at the end of Children's Crusade, and then given back without explanation in the first issue of Rememder's Uncanny Avengers, because... blue foxtrot warble).

Somewhere in the middle years, it was briefly called 'chaos magic,' but then Dr. Strange said there was no such thing and that was all a big misunderstanding. Who knows what was up with that.

So, yeah. Still not much to do with magic.

Magic is messy in the Marvel-verse because there's at least three types of magic, according to the old Marvel Handbooks, one of which isn't really 'magical' at all, since any human seems to be able to learn telepathy, telekinesis, astral projection, etc. (as Moondragon and Mantis did, without any mutant gene or magical training), and many magic-users learn all this psychic stuff as part of their training.

The second was tapping into this dimensions 'ambient magic' for effects like illusion-casting, energy manipulation and teleportation.

The coolest magic, IMO, is invocations of other-dimensional powers, like Dormammu, Cytorrak, the Vishanti, etc. Lots of fun spells, and the most 'magic' feeling, to me.

But they were never hugely consistent with that. Brother Voodoo was called a magic-user, but never used any of that, originally, instead having a few specific tricks (animal control, hypnotism, summon black smoke, resist fire, speak to / control his dead brother's spirit). He got bumped up to the current definition of 'magic user' as 'able to do anything the plot requires, until next issue, when being able to do that same thing will wreck the plot, in which case he mysteriously can't do it anymore...' and then killed off anyway.

[Chainsaw Vigilante]

Older Dr. Strange comics (I think the 90's series) actually made it clear every human has the potential for it (just like every human has the x-gene, it's just that it's dormant in most). Most people do not have the training, talent, intellect, knowledge, and resources to accomplish much of anything though.

There are tons of different types of magic in Marvel, the "call" magic where one invokes entities is just one. Late in Dr. Strange vol. 3 (the 90's run) Dr. Strange even came upon abstract entities that represented every individual form of magic that was not "call" magic, and there were a ton there (some listed, some not), this was when he started using Chaos magic after he lost his Sorceror Supreme title to Salome.

[Darth Phoenix]

The 616 world in general thinks magic is fake or not real. Our heroes learn it usually from those who know it or study like Storm in the original Magik series. Selene learned from wizards during the time of Conan or b4, and some are born magical fashion for a various reasons.

[CSTowle]

It's sort of like saying "why isn't everyone an Olympic level athlete?" Sure, there's potential for a large group of people to be one but you're probably going to have to go through years of training and there's no guarantee of success. And training for the Olympics could lead to a torn muscle or broken bones. Training with the "mystic arts" could lead to you being eaten by extra-dimensional beings, or having your mind or soul devoured, or becoming evil, or a million other horrible things.

[Rochedalaix]

Thanks. So it's not an all or nothing kind of phenomenon?

I've never been able to make much sense of the Scarlet witch's abilities.

I do remember specifically that Magik could still teleport when her MAGICAL abilities were cancelled, because she said that teleporting was her MUTANT power. That's what started me wondering.
I've always liked sci-fi/fantasy better where there are consistencies in how the impossible stuff works. It'd be better if the writers made it their business to know or care.

Teleporting isn't her mutant power control of the stepping discs of limbo is her mutant power. But she also has teleport spells she can cast without using the stepping discs, but now that she absorbed limbo within herself I don't know how that works anymore.

[MyriVerse]

Yeah, it's kind of a willpower thing. Magic is using your willpower to use various energies to change your surroundings. Everybody has the potential for it, but it has a very steep learning curve.

I didn't particularly like when Doug Ramsey did it; it made it seem like magic was just saying and/or moving a certain way. It's more than that.