Magik #10 // Review
Something inside Cal wants to open a portal. Illyana is trying to explain to him that he can’t do that inside the school. It’s inside him, but he’s inside it too. And Cal isn’t exactly Cal. He’s been possessed by an entity known as Liminal. Cal is still buried somewhere within his own body and Illyana wants to set him free. It’s going to be tricky as things get intense in Magic #10. Writer Ashley Allen concludes a story arc for one of Marvel’s most underrated characters with artist German Peralta and colorist Arthur Hesli. The supernatural drama draws to a close in another tumble thrugh the pages of action magic.
The headquarters of The Society of the Eternal Dawn are a maze. Illyana, Liminal and Dani are having considerable difficulty navigating their way around. The maze of corridors would be bad enough, but they’re also getting attacked by an endless parade of muscular people in black bodysuits wering full-head masks. So even the people that are trying to stop them, all look more or less the same. This isLiminal bored. And he's got the kind of power that would be very dangerous when bored. Illyana doesn't exactly have the ability to entertain him or what with it being the case that there is a constant flood of guards who are trying to stop them.
Allen makes a casual run through a villains layer seem a lot more interesting than it has any right to be. The ticking time bomb of the adversary who is also in the body of a friend of the title character adds a really nice dynamic to it. As does some of the moral ambiguity of the situation. Illyana has made a few decisions that might not necessarily be in everyone's best interest. But she really is trying. And so there's a complexity that's going on there that feels really interesting to engage with.
Peralta has a remarkably deaf sense of composition on the page. Everything seems to be settling into its own panel with just the right sense of drama and motion. There's a real sense of power, even if it doesn't necessarily feel like it's very perilous. There's a little quesion of how everything is going to turn out. But there is a strong sense of power in what it is that's going on on the page. Hesli’s colors learn some magic to Magik that feels more or less suitable to the overall mood of the visuals.
The ending may be more or less predictable, but that doens’t mean that it’s not fun. Allen does a strikingly good job of extending the moral ambiguity of the story in a way that lens a certain amount of power to the title character and what she's capable of. The villain in question is villainous. There's no questioning bad. However,Illyana interacts with her in a way that respects the complexity of who she is. And there's a sophistication in Allen’s approach to the finale that grants Illyana a real sense of character development by the end of the eleventh issue.
