Guide to Magik (New For Patrons!)

This week I have the somewhat rare pleasure of debuting a new X-Men reading order for Patrons of CK – rare because I cover so many X-Men titles already! When this character got her own ongoing series earlier this month it was an easy choice to dig in and create a reading order for her every appearance because she is one of my favorites – a feeling shared by many fans and players of Marvel Rivals! Of course, I’m referring to the woman who is the magic, the muscle, and the teleporting-through-Limbo school bus of Cyclops’s X-Men… yep, it’s a brand new Guide to Magik – Illyana Rasputin!

Guide to Magik – Illyana Rasputin

CK readers have requested many different X-Men solo guides and given an infinite amount of time I’d love to create them all!

One of the deciding factors of what guides I’m actually willing to attack is whether a character who has rarely had a solo title still has an identifiable story arc. There’s a big difference between Magneto, who has a finite number of gradual pivots to and from heroism, and Storm, who has just been in a whole heckin’ lot of comics every single month for the past 50 years.

Odfel Cosplay as Magik Illyana Rasputin shot by The Portrait Dude

Ødfel Cosplay as Magik – Illyana Rasputin, as shot by The Portrait Dude.

Magik is experiencing a surge of popularity right now thanks to her appearance in the recently-launched Marvel Rivals. That led us to finally hold an often-teased “Map My X: Magik” panel on Near Mint Condition’s channel last week… which is a super-obvious thing to do when your panel always includes Ødfel, who is an amazing Magik cosplayer!

In prepping for the panel, I started to re-read every Magik appearance – which, fun fact, I have read all but five issues of already. As I rea-read everything there is to read about Illyana Rasputin, my mapping notes for the show quickly morphed into the beginnings of a Guide to Magik. I quickly realized that Magik is one of those X-Men characters who has a specific arc despite going 40 years without a solo title of her own.

I also realized writers love Magik. She is never in the cast of a comic purely as an accessory or a background player. Every time she has appeared in a run over the past four decades she has been used often and used well. There are truly no bad Magik stories.

Really, Magik has had three arcs over the course of her publishing history.

First, there is what I think of as “The Rise and the Fall of the Darkchilde.” This begins with Chris Claremont aging up the adorable toddler version of Illyana via her stepping out of a time bubble in Limbo for a split-second during Uncanny X-Men (1963) #160.

Her arc continues through her discovering her powers and coming to terms with her experience in Limbo (as revealed in Magik (1983) #1-4) before joining the New Mutants. Then it takes a darker swing under the pen of Claremont’s former editor Louise Simonson. Illyana cedes control of her soul and becomes the hellish Darkchilde. That culminates in Inferno, which de-aged her back to childhood.

(And, of course, any long-time X-fan knows what happened next… a little story in Uncanny X-Men (1963) #303 that kicked off Fatal Attractions and altered the course of Colossus’s story forever – as well as Magneto’s and Wolverine’s!)

Illyana had her second arc starting in 2007 when she was brought back by Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost in the pages of New X-Men: Academy X (2004) with their “Quest for Magik” storyline. This spun into the X-Infernus (2008) mini-series and the first 25 issues of Zeb Wells’ New Mutants (2009), which at points felt like it could’ve been called “Magik & The New Mutants” for how much focus it put on Illyana and her dangling plot threads.

You can think of that entire arc as “The Quest for Magik,” not only because it was about bringing her back from Limbo, but also because it was about Illyana Rasputin finding her own humanity after a long time spent disconnected from it.

Then, something amazing happened for Illyana to kickstart her third character arc. Three things, really: Kieron Gillen, Brian Michael Bendis, & Jonathan Hickman.

It was Gillen who called Illyana up from the ranks of the New Mutants to be a member of Cyclops’s “Extinction Team” in the final issues of Uncanny X-Men (1963) and its second volume in Uncanny X-Men (2011). This began with Cyclops viewing Illyana with wariness – not trusting if she was still controlled by her darkest urges.

Then, Illyana’s cause was taken up by Brian Bendis, abetted by Jonathan Hickman. They were two of the major architects of the Marvel Universe in 2011-2012, which meant they were part of the brain trust that wrote Avengers vs. X-Men (2012).

I’m not a fan of the event and Illyana is barely in it despite ostensibly being one of the five lead characters. However, they handed Kieron Gillen a gift of being able to foreground Magik’s character arc in Uncanny. And, because Magik and Cyclops now shared the experience of losing control as part of the Phoenix Five, that forged a seemingly permanent understanding between them that carried into Bendis’s time running the X-books in Marvel Now.

Bendis not only made sure to use Magik in as many issues of All-New X-Men (2012) and Uncanny X-Men (2023) as possible – he also made her more human. Bendis kept Illyana tough and hot-headed, but brought out her snark in a way that made fans eager to clip and share her panels.

That lined up Magik to be the main POV character in Jeff Lemire’s Extraordinary X-Men (2015) and she was prominent enough for Matthew Rosenberg to have her lead his version of New Mutants and return her to Cyclops’s side in his run on Uncanny X-Men (2018).

And then Hickman made his grand entrance as Head of X, launching the Age of Krakoa and cementing Magik as both a mentor to the New Mutants and a general under Cyclops’s command. Plus, other authors were clamoring to use her, too! Illyana became one of the only mutants during Krakoa to appear in non-X-titles! She was an ongoing cast member in Savage Avengers (2019), Strange Academy (2020), and Midnight Suns (2022).

Together, that run of authors achieved something magical that has rarely happened for any other X-character: they permanently upgraded Magik from a student to a main team player, and her spot on the main squad is never erased by hanging out with her old new mutant friends. Of the entire cast of Marvel’s mutants, really only Kitty, Laura Kinney, and Sunspot have experienced the same trajectory (the latter also due to Hickman’s influence).

That brings us to today. Magik has become one of the most-recognizable X-Men to a new generation of fans. She was one of the top picks for mutants to feature in Marvel Rivals. And, she has her own ongoing comic – something that very few X-Men can claim.

Want to read all of that in a perfect order, including a curated list of the 140 issues that tell the full story of those three major arcs of Magik? Get instant access to new Guide t0 Magik – Illyana Rasputin and every future guide to Marvel, DC, Indie Comics, and more! Become a Patron of CK for as little as $2 a month or $20.40 a year to gain access to this exclusive guide and over 70 other guides months before the general public gains access to them. Plus, in the past year I’ve also updated over 150 of my 200+ guides for both patrons and the general public.

Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 54 Guides!

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