Hey, is Illyana still the Queen of Limbo? What if she’d rather someone else do it? It’s a triumphant return for our creative team (and perhaps less so for our hero team!) in New Mutants #25, from Vita Ayala, Rod Reis, Jan Duursema, Ruth Redmond and Travis Lanham.
Liz Large: It’s been 3 months since we last saw the New Mutants (and if your memory is as bad as mine, check out this article on issue 24!). I’ve missed them VERY much.
Stephanie Burt: Comparisons are odious but this book has been maybe my favorite continuing X-book since the Liu Astonishing, or maybe the Claremont era. So, yeah, I missed them.
Liz: This article is going to be spoiler free, so get ready for some very carefully worded thoughts about The Labors of Magik, Book One.
Stephanie: What does “spoiler free” even mean? We can give away stuff that happens in the first half of the comic but just tease at the second half?
Liz: We’re just going to be very careful not to ruin the experience of reading this issue for everybody, because it’s a stunner.
Old Friends
Liz: I am a sucker for comics bringing up the history of characters, and Ayala always manages to do so in a way that rewards people who have a depth of knowledge (or have skimmed a fandom wiki) while not alienating those who have only picked up some recent issues. If anyone is looking for some extra reading before Wednesday, or generally, I can’t recommend the original Inferno event and the Storm & Illyana: Magik miniseries enough.
Stephanie: This book manages to summarize them– in dialogue, for the 1989 Inferno, and in a fairy-tale illustrated-book style about a Little Goblin, with Duursema’s literally fantastic (as in they look like a fantasy novel) art, for Magik. And that’s the right choice, because where the focal character is Illyana Rasputina, for Inferno we just need to know (most of) what happened, but for Magik: Storm & Illyana we need to see it again, and to know how it felt.
And if you want to know right now, hold on to your hats, kids and grownups: in between two panels in Uncanny X-Men #160 Illyana got kidnapped into a hellish dimension called Limbo by a devilish-looking total jerk called Belasco and then escaped, returning to Earth-616. Pre-kidnapping, she was Colossus’s adorable little (like six-year-old) sister and Kitty Pryde told her stories. Post-kidnapping, she was a tough, traumatized, magic-using, teleporting mutant who became Kitty’s roommate, soulmate, best friend.
Liz: Just gals, being pals.
Stephanie: She also came back with a big silver sword, the Soulsword, a weapon of violence and control that manifested itself out of her body (Illyana herself was the sheath), and a new title: she had become Queen of Limbo, defeating Belasco and acquiring the right to boss around the various demons who still lived (or “lived”) there, among them a big purple jerk called S’ym, named after the big sexist jerk and pioneering comics creator Dave Sim (compare S’ym’s head to the head of Sim’s aardvark Cerebus if you dare to doubt me). Magik told the story of Illyana’s years in Limbo, accepting help from the demonically corrupted versions of Kitty (renamed Cat) and Storm, learning magic, serving as Belasco’s reluctant apprentice, and waiting till she could get free.
In other words, the original Magik mini worked as a call-out to every reader who had grown up in a psychologically– or otherwise– abusive home. It was a story about hiding and reading and realizing your own potential for patience, and violence, and fighting back, and getting out. It is a very serious book, and it’s kind of amazing that early-1980s Marvel published it at all. Unless it would be a big trigger for you (and it might be) please stop whatever you’re doing, log into Marvel Unlimited if you can, and go read it.
OK, thanks. Now back to the issue at hand, in which we learn that nothing ever dies. Certainly nothing in Limbo. We are allowed to discuss the setup here, right?
It’s a Set-Up
Liz: Reis’s art really shines in some dynamic fight scenes. He has a great way of showcasing the motion of characters, and it works so well against the colorful backgrounds here. There’s so much grace and power behind every move, so many of his panels are standouts.
Stephanie: It absolutely does! He’s pretty great later on in the issue, where [spoiler] has to square off against [spoiler], and they end up [spoiler] [spoiler]. There’s a bit of a Dave McKeon Sandman vibe to some of those later panels, where sorcery rather than swordplay takes over, I think. My favorite parts of the great Reis art here aren’t even the fights: they’re the facial expressions. Especially Rahne’s. She’s half-wolfy on Krakoa, and then wide-eyed and happy to help in Limbo, and then she has to wolf out completely when battle begins against [spoiler] there.
Also cool: part of this issue involves the creation and signing of magical contracts, and the reading of magical books. Reis and Redmond understand how a magic library should look. Half Bodleian, half your New England great-uncle’s gross basement.
Liz: We were lucky enough to get several different styles of art here— a framing story, a more…metaphorical story, and a flashback. I love how well they all fit together. The flashback art from Duursema and Redmond is a really good balance of their own style and making what looks like pages that could have convincingly fit back in the era they’re set in.
Stephanie: I am jumping up and down in agreement. Duursema has a very few pages to retell, and add to, the story of Illyana’s horrific youth, and she just nails it. The biggest addition? Little Illyana spent a lot of time hiding out in the library. Belasco’s library. Raise your hand if part of your childhood sucked and you spent as much time as you could in books? Yeah, that’s everyone. You can put your hands down now.
Liz: I suspect that the crossover between “X-Men readers” and “spent a lot of time hiding in libraries” is extremely large.
Stephanie: OK, I think we can tell at least as much of the story as Marvel shares in the previews: this issue starts a new Illyana-centric arc entitled “The Labors of Magik,” with some connection to Hercules’s labors, though I don’t think we’re gonna see twelve. Those labors begin when she decides she’s really not that into remaining Queen of Limbo. So she wants to pass the title on, and she wants her best friends’ assistance in doing so. Dani and Rahne (since Kate Pryde is in outer space) accompany Illyana to a Very Important Space in that hellish dimension, where Illyana prepares to [spoiler] [spoiler]. Liz, this is hard! But I want everyone who can to pick up the comic the day it comes out, rather than having to wait for our review. It’s that good.
Liz: Agreed! In a weird unintentional synergy, I read Agatha Christie’s The Labors of Hercules this week, and my brain is spending a lot of time fantasizing about Illyana and friends solving some crimes. I think they’d have more fun busting a dog ransoming scheme than doing whatever it is that Limbo has in store for them.
S’ym City
Stephanie: At least we can talk about one of the villains, and about the allegory of survival and control that Illyana’s story always includes. Big purple dude who’s been calling Illyana “Boss” for most of his modern existence (though for all we know he could be immortal: he was adult-sized when she was a child) works with a shadowy Belasco-like figure in a shadowy Limbo lab and drinks a potion that “smells like death.” After he’s poured it down his ugly gullet, he gets a shadowy weapon, a mace. Which he can use to fight, or resist, or subdue “our quarry.” That is– presumably– Illyana…
Liz: A mysterious setup for a mysterious world. I have a tendency to assume that things are never as they seem, so I will—wildly—speculate that there’s more to our hidden grinning figure than meets the eye. Someone very powerful is involved here, and they’re saying nothing outright. Who are they? Who do they want S’ym to fight with his new weapon? S’ym knows, so there’s no need for it to be repeated for our benefit.
Stephanie: All that material happens before we see anything of the three New Mutants who appear in this New Mutants book: one who wants to get out of the Limbo Queen business, and two who want to keep their friend safe.
Dani, as we saw in the last arc, has acquired a bias towards the status quo: she thinks Illyana’s taking a big risk in even considering giving up Limbo-supremacy. Illyana thinks [spoiler] [spoiler] [spoiler]. Remember how Dani wouldn’t listen to Cosmar, last arc? Leaders tend to want to lead. And that makes listening harder. You get used to thinking you know what’s best for the people around you. Sometimes you’re right! But when one of the people around you is Illyana Rasputina and she disagrees, I’m gonna say you’re probably wrong.
Liz: I hope we don’t see too much of them butting heads during this arc. Limbo is pretty firmly in Illyana’s zone of expertise, and at a certain point you have to trust people. Like you said, we did just spend a lot of time in the last arc learning to trust each other, so fingers crossed that the New Mutants are feeling ready for some teamwork.
Stephanie: Good news: Madelyne Pryor and her boob-tastic black costume are on the cover! That means we can give up at least one secret: Maddy wants to run Limbo herself. If you are familiar with the 1989 Inferno event you may know why that’s a bad idea. If not, this issue will tell you: last time she ran Limbo she kidnapped human babies and tried to take over the human world. (Also I love Illyana’s costume here and I still dislike Maddy’s: the first one’s sexy but practical, and the second one looks like she’s gone through an entire roll of magical costume tape.)
Liz: I love Maddy’s outfit. It’s extremely stupid and makes no sense from an actual structural integrity perspective, but it’s very dramatic and over the top. I feel like any character who is known for, let’s say “over the top reactions” should have an equally over the top outfit. I believe that that woman is spending 2% of her magical energy to make sure everyone looks at her when she walks into a room. Or a battlefield! Illyana’s is also threatening and dramatic, but I don’t think she cares enough to use extra resources when she could just wear an outfit that fits.
Stephanie: Illyana’s a character who’s been defined, not by her originary trauma, but by the methods she used to survive it: she’s tough. She’s armored. She’s self-sufficient, or at least she looks that way. She engages only with situations she thinks she can master, or else with situations where she needs to save kids. She’s a terrific combat leader– on Krakoa, a War Captain– who won’t let herself take charge of anyone or anything where punches aren’t thrown, unless it’s a coffee machine. (Is there coffee in Limbo?) She knows a great deal about how to get through an absolutely scarring garbage trough of a childhood, and she has next to no experience with appropriate parenting from adults, though she does know how to find and keep a teen friend.
And– I’m almost done, Liz, don’t worry– she’s been defined by recapitulation, reliving, re-doing her traumatizing situations: in the original “Inferno,” in the “Quest for Magik” story where she came back, in the epically complicated Zeb Wells-written New Mutants run where she got the US military and the Elder Gods out of Limbo for good (or so it seemed). She’s done with this place. But it’s not done with her.
Liz: This issue is setting up what’s clearly going to be an interesting arc about Illyana, Madelyne, and Limbo. There’s a lot swirling under the surface here, and between hints at what’s to come and the gorgeous art, I’ve already reread this issue multiple times. 10/10 weird magic potions, would recommend.
X-Traneous Thoughts:
- There’s a lot of talk of contract disputes and contractual language and the law of Limbo. Are there Limbo lawyers? Or Limbo courts?
- It’s all very fairy tale, and what is Illyana’s life but a fairy tale?
- Where do Illyana and Madelyne shop for mascara and eyeshadow and eyeliner and can I go there?
- The dialogue balloon that begins “Why is it important,” with a closeup on Illyana’s attentive face, belongs in a lot of Tumblrs, a lot of bedroom walls, a lot of explanations for why kids and adults have made one choice and not another. Dammit, we’re not allowed to quote the whole thing. Just go read the issue willya?
- In the past, when Stuff Has Happened to the Soulsword and its armor, Kate Pryde has Known. Will she figure it out when she’s stuck in space?
- The tiny goblin in the fairy tale portions of this issue is EXTREMELY CUTE.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
