Magik #6 // Review
Illyana is happy to have all of the work that Scott is giving her. She’s just had a great deal of stress in dealing with someone known as Liminal. (He’s a demon.) So having to have dealt with the whole deal with him was really straining and it’s just really, really nice to have Scott giving her a little bit more work. Personal matters get in the way of TOTAL distraction through work in Magik #6. Writer Ashley Allen continues an engrossing walk with a Russian-born mutant who grew-up in a dark Limbo. Jesús Hervás conjures the story to the page with the aid of color artist Arthur Hesli.
It’s the embassy. Illyana has a sudden awareness of something going wrong at the embassy. This would normally be a very earthly concern if it we like...the Russian embassy or whatever, but this is the embassy for Illyana’s OTHER home. So it’s going to involve a realm of demons that she once ruled over. And if she’s going to be able to help contain things, she’s going to have to deal with concerns of a Goblin Queen who is convinced that Illyana wants her crown back. Illyana is going to have convince her that’s NOT the case if the two of them are going to be able to work together.
Allen renders relations between Magik and the Goblin Queen in remarkable detail. There are a lot of nuances between the two characters. It's a very complex working relationship that also happens to involve a lot of shared baggage and emotional trauma, and that sort of thing. There's not really easy for the two of them to connect up. However, Allen renders a very complex emotional relationship between these two characters and still be able to move forward the plot in a way that is very very dynamic and interesting. Given the amount of deep, emotional character development that Allen is engaging in, it’s quite a n accomplishment that she doesn’t slow-down the action really at all.
The full impact of conflict in another dimension that is essentially demonic, doesn't really hit the page it quite as intensely as it could. There ARE a few really gorgeous panels of dark fantasy action that feel quite impressive, but a lot of opportunities are lost in and around the edges of the action. That being said, the art team does a really good job of delivering the subtleties of the relations between the two women with a great degree of detail even though the script doesn’t allow them a whole lot of opportunities for tender close-ups and soul-searching face-to-face dialogues.
Allen is really giving Illyana an opportunity to explore multiple different angles of her personality. There is so much going on in her life that a series centered around her could easily feel like a bit of a haphazard cluttering of different elements. Thankfully,Allen is doing a remarkable job of keeping it all very tightly defined around a single psycho that pulls everything together in its own kind of appealing gravity.
