Magik #8 // Review
Eddie is getting down on one knee. He’s proposing to Bella. She’s saying “yes.” It’s a very happy moment and it’s going to be one that she’s going to remember for the rest of her life. Not because it was the moment when her life changed for the better, though. She’s going to remember it because some young, blonde woman burst through a gleaming portal with a reidiculously large sword and pushed him out the window. She’s there to get a little bit of information in Magik #8. Writer Ashley Allen continues a fun magical adventure drama with artist Matt Horak and colorist Arthur Hesli.
Anyone can seem like a nice guy while proposing. Eddie isn’t a nice guy. He’s pulling a gun on Illyana as she pushes him through the window. He’s a member of the local drug ring. All she wants to know is the location of a certain site. He isn’t really in the mood to tell her. She’s telling him that he’ll be fine if he tells her what she wants to know. He’s not exactly in the line of business where anyone can be trusted to speak the truth about that sort of thing, so there’s a problem that she’s going to have to solve.
Trust is a theme that lies right at the heart of everything that Allen is putting on the page. It echoes through everything with such a powerful resonance. The fact that Allen can focus so closely on. subject like this without compromising the overall presence, power and rhythm of a standard superhero story is quite an accomplishment. More than that, Allen makes the conflict between Illyana and her ally Danni feel remarkably compelling even though it’s getting resolved right in the middle of a very complicated fight with a mutual enemy. It’s traditional superhero stuff, but Allen does a brilliant job of making it an interpersonal drama as well.
Horak’s attention to detail hits the page without slowing-down the action. He knows where to cast the sharpest details without compromising the overall impact and energy that needs to shoot across the page. And Horak has a very clever sense of composition as the action tumbles across the page in pleasantly overwhelming bewilderment. Hesli’s colors lend quite a bit of warmth to the page from a number of different directions. Nowhere is this felt with more force than in the rendering of Illyana herself. She’s absolutely gorgeous as she’s launching herself through some very, very dangerous magical stuff in the course of the issue. And the drama between her and Dani feels remarkably vivid.
So...the precise nature of the continuity doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense, but between Allen’s writing and Horak’s art, it really feels like this is Dani and Illyana from the 1980s all grown-up and working together as a pair of adults who knew each other in high. school back in the 1980s. I mean...they still look like they’re in their TWENTIES and there’s been a lot of story that’s passed between them over decades, but it’s cool to hang out with a couple of old friends in a new issue that’s so well-written.
