Post by sunofdarkchild on Apr 28, 2023 2:18:41 GMT -5
It feels like a return to the bad old days with what they're doing with Magik right now.
After Claremont left the New Mutants and Louise Simonson took over, she retconned Magik's origin story where instead of realizing that killing Belasco in anger would turn her into a demon forever and therefore sparing his life and making it so it was inevitable he would return for a final confrontation with her, she actually killed him. So instead of any sort of natural development during the Simonson run, she was suddenly a killer out of nowhere who had to learn the dangers of killing for the first time even though that lesson was such a major part of her origin and character. And since Belasco was 'dead,' he was replaced by a new demon sorcerer in N'Astrih for Inferno, ruining her final story when Claremont had set it up so perfectly by effectively doing the equivalent of replacing Darth Vader with a generic never-before-seen villain in Return of the Jedi or Voldemort with a generic never-before-seen villain in Deathly Hallows. It was necessary to bring her back since her return was the story her death always should have been in that she actually got to face Belasco again and get closer against him and against the Elder Gods he served. But unfortunately later writers have followed Simonson's lead in ignoring the lessons she learned about killing in her origin story, which has been the biggest problem with the way she's been written since her return.
In the 90s pretty much every story involving her was either a terrible retcon or just plain disrespectful to the character because Bob Harras wanted to purge the X-Men of everything to do with magic and turn the franchise into an unchanging monolith with no development or progression where they fought Magneto over and over again. They had a terrible mini called New Mutants Truth or Death in which they retcon her into having always had the Legacy Virus for no other reason than to close off the most obvious way she could return since there were 2 Illyanas in Inferno, the older one and the younger one, and they met face to face. Simonson always intended for Magik to still be around ruling Limbo and bringing it under control while the younger version lived on Earth, but Marvel made this mini-series for the sole purpose of killing that idea, even if it broke continuity and completely misunderstood the character because she never expected to live to adulthood and was in fact extremely suicidal the entire time.
Even worse were the retcons that were required for Amanda Sefton to get the soul sword and become the second Magik. The retcons that the soul sword always existed, that Illyana never created it but just found it, and that nothing of her soul was in it, were so stupid and dispespectful that no one who ever liked Illyana could ever like Amanda afterwards. And her stories as Magik were uniformly horrible with no writer having any idea what to do with her in the role to the point where she eventually just stopped appearing altogether.
Then there were all the alternate versions who were just bloodthirsty killers and even more ruthless than the main 616 version, from Exiles to House of M, showing that Marvel was completely missing the point about how her years of torture in Limbo and the physical corruption of her soul and subsequent loss of innocence shaped the person she became and acting like she'd have turned out the same even if she'd never been kidnapped to Limbo. Only Age of Apocalypse got it right in depicting a version of Illyana who was never taken to Limbo.
Thankfully, most of these bad retcons were fixed when she came back. When her origin was discussed, she was said to have banished Belasco and not killed him, and his being there for the story showed she didn't kill him since he was alive. Truth or Death was simply erased from continuity by her simple assertion that she had sacrificed herself during Inferno after meeting her younger self to give that younger version a chance, restoring the original intention that they were not the same. And the soul sword was restored to being her creation and a part of her, as demonstrated when she regained part of her soul just by touching it. And for over a decade things were actually pretty good besides for the killing thing, which to be fair pretty much all Marvel heroes are more comfortable with no than they were in the 80s.
It's in the last few months that the problems have returned. Last year Strange Academy had a throwaway joke where Wong was able to neutralize the soul sword with a spell, which if the author knew the first thing about the soul sword he would have known was impossible and would defeat the entire purpose of the soul sword, which is a weapon which destroys and disrupts magic like spells. If what Wong did was possible then the soul sword would be unable to fulfill its primary purpose, and every sorcerer who ever sought it out when she was dead, from Belasco to Dr. Doom himself, would be an idiot for having ever sought out such a useless weapon. And now there's this stupidity that Belasco always had a soul sword, cheapening the very concept again, and that he's such a complete chump.
After Claremont left the New Mutants and Louise Simonson took over, she retconned Magik's origin story where instead of realizing that killing Belasco in anger would turn her into a demon forever and therefore sparing his life and making it so it was inevitable he would return for a final confrontation with her, she actually killed him. So instead of any sort of natural development during the Simonson run, she was suddenly a killer out of nowhere who had to learn the dangers of killing for the first time even though that lesson was such a major part of her origin and character. And since Belasco was 'dead,' he was replaced by a new demon sorcerer in N'Astrih for Inferno, ruining her final story when Claremont had set it up so perfectly by effectively doing the equivalent of replacing Darth Vader with a generic never-before-seen villain in Return of the Jedi or Voldemort with a generic never-before-seen villain in Deathly Hallows. It was necessary to bring her back since her return was the story her death always should have been in that she actually got to face Belasco again and get closer against him and against the Elder Gods he served. But unfortunately later writers have followed Simonson's lead in ignoring the lessons she learned about killing in her origin story, which has been the biggest problem with the way she's been written since her return.
In the 90s pretty much every story involving her was either a terrible retcon or just plain disrespectful to the character because Bob Harras wanted to purge the X-Men of everything to do with magic and turn the franchise into an unchanging monolith with no development or progression where they fought Magneto over and over again. They had a terrible mini called New Mutants Truth or Death in which they retcon her into having always had the Legacy Virus for no other reason than to close off the most obvious way she could return since there were 2 Illyanas in Inferno, the older one and the younger one, and they met face to face. Simonson always intended for Magik to still be around ruling Limbo and bringing it under control while the younger version lived on Earth, but Marvel made this mini-series for the sole purpose of killing that idea, even if it broke continuity and completely misunderstood the character because she never expected to live to adulthood and was in fact extremely suicidal the entire time.
Even worse were the retcons that were required for Amanda Sefton to get the soul sword and become the second Magik. The retcons that the soul sword always existed, that Illyana never created it but just found it, and that nothing of her soul was in it, were so stupid and dispespectful that no one who ever liked Illyana could ever like Amanda afterwards. And her stories as Magik were uniformly horrible with no writer having any idea what to do with her in the role to the point where she eventually just stopped appearing altogether.
Then there were all the alternate versions who were just bloodthirsty killers and even more ruthless than the main 616 version, from Exiles to House of M, showing that Marvel was completely missing the point about how her years of torture in Limbo and the physical corruption of her soul and subsequent loss of innocence shaped the person she became and acting like she'd have turned out the same even if she'd never been kidnapped to Limbo. Only Age of Apocalypse got it right in depicting a version of Illyana who was never taken to Limbo.
Thankfully, most of these bad retcons were fixed when she came back. When her origin was discussed, she was said to have banished Belasco and not killed him, and his being there for the story showed she didn't kill him since he was alive. Truth or Death was simply erased from continuity by her simple assertion that she had sacrificed herself during Inferno after meeting her younger self to give that younger version a chance, restoring the original intention that they were not the same. And the soul sword was restored to being her creation and a part of her, as demonstrated when she regained part of her soul just by touching it. And for over a decade things were actually pretty good besides for the killing thing, which to be fair pretty much all Marvel heroes are more comfortable with no than they were in the 80s.
It's in the last few months that the problems have returned. Last year Strange Academy had a throwaway joke where Wong was able to neutralize the soul sword with a spell, which if the author knew the first thing about the soul sword he would have known was impossible and would defeat the entire purpose of the soul sword, which is a weapon which destroys and disrupts magic like spells. If what Wong did was possible then the soul sword would be unable to fulfill its primary purpose, and every sorcerer who ever sought it out when she was dead, from Belasco to Dr. Doom himself, would be an idiot for having ever sought out such a useless weapon. And now there's this stupidity that Belasco always had a soul sword, cheapening the very concept again, and that he's such a complete chump.
