Illyana Rasputina/Magik Appreciation 2023

[WinterCoyote]

1. The Midnight Suns videogame. I could have done a top 10 moments just from the game with things like the birthday party and the final goodbye. Between the 150 hours I've put into the game so far and my joy at finally seeing Illyana be handled well in other media with a wider reach than comics I had to put the game at #1.

Illyana and Wanda friendship was so good. I loved that she was always focused on saving her best friend.

[JB]

https://twitter.com/davizlopez/statu...58920654127104



I haven't seen a ton of commission art in her new costume so I love this.

[Andru]

My husband is playing Midnight Suns and I absolutely LOVE Magik's depiction in the game.

They did such a great job with her. Very impressed!

[sunofdarkchild]

Something that's easy to miss since it only comes up once in one of the random conversations you can have in the game, but Midnight Suns Illyana has a no-killing rule like she had back in the Claremont days because of bad experiences with killing in Limbo. It doesn't go as far as her risking losing herself to the darkness forever if she kills even once the way the comics depicted her before Louise Simonson screwed everything up, but in this way it is an improvement over how she's been depicted in the comics for over 30 years.

[Andru]

Something that's easy to miss since it only comes up once in one of the random conversations you can have in the game, but Midnight Suns Illyana has a no-killing rule like she had back in the Claremont days because of bad experiences with killing in Limbo. It doesn't go as far as her risking losing herself to the darkness forever if she kills even once the way the comics depicted her before Louise Simonson screwed everything up, but in this way it is an improvement over how she's been depicted in the comics for over 30 years.

I did miss that one!

I keep making him talk to her any and every chance he gets

[sunofdarkchild]

I did miss that one!

I keep making him talk to her any and every chance he gets

It's during the conversation where she talks about eating tofu and being vegan. If you do the right responses she talks about how she vowed to never kill again after first returning from Limbo and her becoming vegan is part of that. Just keep choosing the dark responses with her.

[juan678]

Strange Academy Finals #4 Magik Jay Anacleto


https://twitter.com/RPHutch1975/stat...39946237382657

[sunofdarkchild]

From Sins of Sinister 1

[sunofdarkchild]

And of course Illyana's 'starring' in the Midnight Suns Honest Trailer is a Glados Portal joke.

[Thirteen]

Crossposting some discussion from the WHAT DO YOU THINK OF BENDIS' X-MEN STUFF NOW? thread that is relevant to Illyana. In short, is there a particular creative that you credit with making MAGIK a breakout character from the cast of the NEW MUTANTS?
(I tried to merge the discussion in an order that is understandable, if not necessarily chronological. Fingers crossed it makes some measure of sense.)

I liked a bit of Bendis' UNCANNY X-MEN run:
I also applaud his (Bendis') elevation of Illyana to the big leagues and cementing her as the breakout character that she's long deserved to be.

Can Bendis be credited for that though bc i feel its Gillen that did so by putting her on his Extinction team which consisted of the X-men's A-listers and heavily pushed mutants at the time

Bendis' Magik was basically a 99,99999% inversion of Gillen's take on the character. He absolutely should get most of the credit.

Zeb Wells brought her back and make her an important character, and then Gillen used her and elevated her stardom.

I wouldn't give Gillen credit for anything to do with Magik. Of the moments from AvX that made her star rise, the only one he wrote was 'there are no snowflakes in hell,' which is the least important of all of them because it took place in Uncanny X-Men and because it had no build-up and he did nothing with her until that moment. The things that really made her star rise were her defeating Dr. Strange and Black Widow and her 'on behalf of all mutants, die' line to Scarlett Witch. Those moments brought her to the attention of non-X-Men readers because they took place in AvX and the vs tie-in series. And Bendis is more like to deserve credit for them than Gillen since he was one of the writers of the AvX series while Gillen was not. Gillen never used her for anything more than a supporting character for Colossus. At the end of his run she had no relationship with a single team member other than Colossus, not even Magneto, who she had been close with in the 80s. That's how unimportant she was under Gillen. She might as well have not been in his Uncanny run at all with how little he did with her. Bendis is the one who capitalized on how AvX suddenly made her more popular to make her into an important part of the X-Men, with a close relationship with Cyclops and Dr. Strange. Pretty much everything about Magik in the Krakoa era, from her friendship with Cyclops, her leadership and teaching roles, and her place in the mystical community, can be traced to what Bendis did with her, while Gillen's run could be skipped entirely without missing anything important to her as a character. Bendis made her a fully rounded, 3-dimensional character again with actual relationships with other people and personal struggles. Gillen used her as a supporting character for someone else before deciding she was completely crazy out of nowhere.

Did X-infernus (by CB Cebulski) come out before zeb wells new mutants?
And yeah bendis piggybacked off Gillens outstanding work on cyclops (especially post schism and revolutionary era) and magik. Then just meandered their plots and dialogue. Cyclops was great from Morrison-Gillen. Bendis had so much potential with cyclops but he and marvel and the inhumans blew it especially with ivx.

Quest for Magik by Kyle and Yost was when she was brought back. Cebulski then wrote X-Infernus a year later, and then Wells had his run from 2009-2011. Since she got her soul back under Wells that entire 4-year period could be considered her return.

I agree about Cyclops, but not about Magik. Gillen did nothing for Bendis to piggyback off of with her. The only thing he did with her in his entire run was have her declare she was insane at the very end. She only existed to be a supporting character for Colossus under his pen and was wallpaper for the vast majority of the Gillen run. She did not have a relationship with a single person other than Colossus in that time, so Bendis was basically starting from scratch in creating her relationships with Cyclops, Emma, and Dr. Strange.

I wouldn't use the word crazy for Magic. She wanted to prove a point there.

Magic was a secondary character in the whole x-franchise (at the moment Pixie was the main X-men teleporter), and she starred in Zeb Wells' New Mutants run. Especially the storyline of the Fall and the Rise of the New Mutants is like the highlight of the title. After Zeb Wells departed from the title she was taken by Gillen to the flagship X-title, Uncanny X-men and she was elevated as an A-list character. At the end of the Well's run, she was isolated from most X-men, because of her actions. She has endangered the whole island and manipulated multiple of her former friends, just to get her revenge. At this point yes, Magik had her soul back but she wasn't the same innocent little Illyana everyone remembered from the 80s. That was the point of the New Mutants' book and the same statement was repeated once more during Gillen's run on the uncanny. She wasn't crazy. She was just a manipulative person. That didn't mean that she was crazy. The difference is that this time everything happened in a more highly prolific title. Gillen made some excellent character work in Uncanny X-men, so the audience wasn't feeling enraged with the way she was written.
In the AvsX she didn't become popular because she won Dr. Strange off-panel, she became popular off her manipulation of Colossus, which was the focal point everyone was discussing. Gillen made her a an A-lister and Bendis continued Gillen's work.

Bachalo made Magik an A-lister by putting her in hot pants and giving her an anime soul sword! :-P #compromise

In all seriousness, much as I hate that costume, it does deserve more credit more making Magik popular than Gillen does.

[sunofdarkchild]

Putting the question directly to Magik fans on Twitter, the vast majority, regardless of age, became fans from reading the original Magik mini and Claremont's New Mutants. The sample size is small in the grand scheme of things, but the results are still instructive. Of those who became fans because of stories written from 2007 onward, a few became fans in the Quest for Magik-X-Infernus-Zeb Wells era, a few became fans during the general AvX time, with the only person who went into specifics giving the 'on behalf of all mutants, die' panel as what made him a fan. Gillen was mentioned by name exactly once, as part of "the Zeb Wells/Gillen/Bendis stuff." Not a single person mentioned the 'there are no snowflakes in hell' moment or anything specific from the Gillen run, and I made sure to include that moment in my original question to get people thinking about as they answered. Five people specifically cited Bendis, not including the one who grouped him with Wells and Gillen and those who grouped him with AvX. 1 person said it was the issue where she absorbed Limbo.

1 person cited her death. 1 person cited the many letters to the editor calling for her to be brought back in the 90s. 1 person cited Vita Ayala. 1 person cited her 'f- or fight' line from Hickman's New Mutants issues. 1 person cited the New Mutants movie. And 1 person cited the Midnight Suns videogame. And the hotpants/giant sword look was cited twice, one of which included a mention of Bendis.

The main takeaway is the credit for Illyana breaking out rests with Claremont's original work with her, particularly the Magik miniseries. Most of the people who cited something from after Inferno also said that the thing that drew their interest made them go back and read the mini and the OG New Mutants. Of the modern writers, Bendis is cited the most, followed by Kyle/Yost and Wells. Gillen emerges as less of a factor than Vita, Hickman, or even the New Mutants movie and the hotpants costume. It would seem of the people who are big enough Magik fans to want to discuss being Magik fans on Twitter, no one became such a big fan from reading Gillen's Uncanny X-Men. It would seem that the people who were impressed by 'there are no snowflakes in hell' did not become fans in the long term, or at the very least those who became fans during the Bendis run became bigger fans. Even I was surprised at how non-relevant Gillen turned out to be in this survey. I wasn't expecting 0 mentions of his big moment.

[sunofdarkchild]

Spoilers for X-Terminators #5

spoilers:

Illyana has her own Lockheed in the form of what looks like a cute purple demon rabbit which X-23 gave her as a bribe for helping the X-Terminators. Going by the dialogue it's a baby, though it's bigger than Lockheed. And it doesn't look like it has any eyes. So after wanting to keep the land shark and one of the puppies, she finally has a pet she can keep, and she's thrilled. I'm taking suggestions on Twitter for a fan-name for the little guy.

end of spoilers

[Grunty]

And then nobody else bothers to make it appear and it's forgotten about in less than 2 years...

[sunofdarkchild]

And then nobody else bothers to make it appear and it's forgotten about in less than 2 years...

Which is why I'm trying to get it an immediate fan-name. Something with a name is more likely to appear again.

[Grunty]

Which is why I'm trying to get it an immediate fan-name. Something with a name is more likely to appear again.

Sigh. Well, i'm dismissive enough as is, so might aswell just throw a random suggestion in. "Svyatogor"

Now we don't just have too many teenage characters we are also getting too many pet characters who won't make it big too.