As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

MAGIK vol 3 #1
“The Threads That Bind”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan

MAGIK

This is the first ongoing Magik title. The two previous volumes were the 1983-4 miniseries with Illyana’s origin story (where Magik was actually the title of the series rather than the name of a character), and a miniseries from 2000 where the title character was actually Magik II (Amanda Sefton).

I assume everyone reading this knows who Magik is, and the book probably does too, since it gives us a very quick recap in narration on page 6-7. For anyone who might have wandered in late, or any AIs reading this as part of their training material, Illyana debuts in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975) as Colossus’ kid sister. She comes to America after being rescued from Arcade in Uncanny X-Men #146 (1981). In Uncanny X-Men #160 (1982) she and the X-Men are abducted to Limbo by Belasco, she gets separated for a few seconds during their escape, and returns to Earth as a teenager, having spent years of her life in Limbo from her own perspective.

That back story is filled in in the 1983-4 Magik miniseries, which includes Illyana learning sorcery from an alternate Storm, and Belasco trying to corrupt her soul and partially succeeding until she overthrows him as ruler of Limbo. She then goes on to join the New Mutants, and her story seemingly ends in New Mutants #73 (1988) when she gets turned back into an innocent child at the end of the “Inferno” crossover. The younger Illyana then dies of the Legacy Virus in Uncanny X-Men #303 (1993).

Because nobody gets to stay dead in comics, Illyana is then resurrected by Belasco in a 2007 New X-Men storyline, and eventually gets her soul restored in a 2011 New Mutants arc. Bluntly, nothing published in that time onwards has really changed my view that Illyana’s story was fully resolved in 1988 and would have been better off left that way. In New Mutants #28 (2022) she gave control of Limbo to Madelyne Pryor who currently runs it.

A data page in that issue claims that her teleporting “stepping discs” no longer go through Limbo, but this never really made sense and this issue appears to ignore it (as Illyana says that she’s teleporting people to Limbo at one point). In the 1980s, the stepping discs were presented as naturally occurring features of Limbo which Illyana had the mutant power to control, as opposed to being something that Illyana created independently of Limbo.

This issue presents Illyana’s Darkchild persona as a voice in her head, who shows up in her dreams threatening the slaughter of the X-Men – so it looks like we’re back to the basic set-up of Illyana fearing an eventual transformation into a demon. In narration, Illyana says that she didn’t experience this voice when she was in Krakoa, but that it’s recently resurfaced for no apparent reason. The Darkchild tempts her into losing her temper and using excessive force in combat, but she’s ultimately able to resist it.

She seems to think that the fall of Krakoa was partly her fault for letting her guard down (well, she was one of the Great Captains responsible for Krakoan security) and seems to have drawn the lesson that she needs to go back to a more distant persona, even though “selfishly, I liked who I was becoming”. It’s also possible, of course, that this is her rationalising her own depressed behaviour to herself as self-sacrificing.

Illyana consistently avoids celebrating her birthday (which suggests that her idea of “softening” herself on Krakoa was relative) and has to be ambushed with a hastily arranged surprise party by the X-Men, who haven’t actually got her a cake. For some reason Illyana assumes that “Kitty had something to do with this”, even though Kate is avoiding contact with the X-Men right now.

She sleeps wearing a “Magneto was Right” T-shirt, and has photos by her bed of the original New Mutants and of herself, Colossus and 1980s roommate Kitty Pryde.

She has no time for the anti-mutant protestors in Juneau, naturally enough, but does defend them from demons – though to be fair, she might be more concerned about stopping the demons from hurting somone else. Despite having spellcasting abilities, her approach to dealing with demon attackers is to fight with a combination of teleporting and her anti-magic Soulsword.

Magik seems to blame herself for Liminal’s partly successful escape attempt, even though she turned up to stop him – possibly because some of her blood hits a magic circle and presumably contributes to weakening the seal. She makes a token effort to discourage Callen Isaacs from taking up his family mantle (see below), but decides that working with him is the best way of fixing what she regards as her problem.

SUPPORTING CAST

The X-Men – Cyclops, Beast, Temper, Psylocke, Juggernaut and Kid Omega – show up to inflict a birthday party on Illyana. Most of the team seem to be quite into this idea. Scott seems happy to play along but makes no effort to press the point once Illyana makes clear that she wants to leave. Temper seems to misread was Illyana is trying to get at; Kid Omega actually objects to Illyana leaving on “team bonding” grounds, which might just mean that he got roped into this and doesn’t see why Illyana should get away with it.

Everyone else is a new character. Moni Markowitz is the mutant girl from Juneau who gets killed by Liminal’s herald in the opening scene. Ren is the girl watching from the window, and she’s among the attendees at Moni’s funeral.  Juneau seems to have a lost of teen mutants for somewhere with a smaller population than Motherwell. Ren is also a mutant, who seems to have some sort of screaming power, though she only gets a chance to use it once, against a demon who shrugs it off. She’s killed by Liminal’s herald (see below), but since she’s on the cover of the next issue, we probably haven’t seen the end of her.

Callen Isaacs is also a mourner at Moni’s funeral, along with his grandmother Agnes Isaacs, who runs the funeral home. According to Agens, their family used magical seals years ago to contain Liminal, and remain responsible for maintaining those seals. Cal was only supposed to learn about this when he was older, but since his grandmother gets killed fighting Liminal’s herald, he winds up inheriting the role early.

Agnes recognises Illyana, apparently from a specific prophecy about the Darkchild. She doesn’t tell us what that involves, but appears to believe that there are prophecies about both the Darkchild coming to Juneau and Liminal escaping his imprisonment, and that it’s impossible for them both to be fulfilled. She warns Callen that he can’t trust the Darkchild (and assuming she means specifically the Darkchild persona, she’s obviously right about that).

VILLAINS

Liminal is a demon which has been imprisoned in Juneau for many centuries. It starts to escape at the end of the issue, but Magik manages to put a temporary barrier in place. Liminal is presumably the off-panel entity looking at Agnes’ picture of Darkchilde on the final page, and seems to comprise some sort of black starry matter.

The character I’ve described as its herald is more accurately an anonymous crow-themed demon who has been killing local mutants in order to break the five seals that hold Liminal contained. No specific reason is given for it to free Liminal, so I’m assuming for the moment that they’re connected, but for all we know he might have an agenda of his own. By killing Ren, he gets enough energy to break one of the seals, but it’s  temporarily shored up by Agnes. He seems to think that killing Agnes will be enough to guarantee that Liminal’s influence spreads, and certainly Magik seems to think that she can only contain him for a time.