Magik

• 1. Introduction

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  Magik, born Illyana Nikolaievna Rasputina, appeared for the first time in the pages of Giant-Size X-Men #1 in May 1975. Writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum created her. For the next eight years, almost nobody noticed. She turned up now and then as a background character, known mostly as the little sister of the Russian X-Man Colossus. She belongs to a family of mutants, people born with superhuman abilities. She would also come to wield magic, a second kind of power that she gained through her dealings with a demonic villain named Belasco. How did a minor relative become a lead character with a following of her own? What does a dimension called Limbo do to a child who is raised inside it? And why do critics keep returning to her as an example of how a hero can live with a painful past?

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• 2. Background Years

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  The Uncanny X-Men #145, dated May 1981, finally gave the little sister a first name. Until then she had simply been Colossus' relative. The real turning point came in The Uncanny X-Men #160 in August 1982. In that issue she ages seven years inside a paranormal dimension called Limbo, emerges as a sorceress, and gains the power to create teleportation discs. The comics did not explain any of this right away, and she stayed in the background for about another year.

  In December 1983, a limited series called Magik (Illyana and Storm) changed that. It told the story of her years in Limbo, which doubles as her origin. Magik #1 put young Illyana on a cover, counted as only her second full appearance, and gave her the codename Magik for the first time. Magik #2, dated January 1984, showed her on a cover as an adult.

  Under East Slavic naming customs, the surname Rasputin turns into Rasputina for a woman. The comics have gone back and forth on the spelling, much as they have with Natasha Romanoff and Romanova. As of 2025, her solo book uses Rasputina. She was not the only one to use the codename. Margali Szardos once took the name Magik, and so did Amanda Sefton after she ended up in Limbo.

  When the limited series ended, Illyana joined the New Mutants. Her first cover as an adult in costume came with The New Mutants #14, dated April 1984. She appeared regularly in that title until The New Mutants #77 in July 1989. In that issue she reverted to childhood and went home to her family in Russia. During those years she also dropped into Uncanny X-Men as a guest star, thanks to her brother and her team. The country she returned to in 1989 would bring her little peace.

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• 3. Siberia to Limbo

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  The Ust-Ordynski Collective farm, near Lake Baikal in Siberia, was where Illyana was born to Nikolai Rasputin and his wife Alexandra. Her two older brothers are mutants as well. One is Mikhail Rasputin, who becomes an enemy of the X-Men. The other is Piotr, better known as Colossus. His powers first appeared when he saved Illyana from a runaway tractor. A 2006 miniseries, Colossus: Bloodline, added that the family descends from Grigori Rasputin and a Romani woman named Elena.

  At the age of six, Illyana was abducted by Arcade and brought to the United States. He used her and several other hostages to force the X-Men to oppose Doctor Doom. The X-Men rescued her and took her to the X-Mansion.

  Shortly afterward, Belasco called her into Limbo. He wanted to bring forth the Elder Gods so that they could rule Earth. To free himself, he needed to fill the Beatrix Medallion with five bloodstones. Each stone appeared only as Illyana's soul grew more corrupt. His underling S'ym bullied and tormented her through her childhood there.

  Help came from alternate versions of familiar faces. Limbo's Storm had turned to magic when her mutant powers waned, and she tutored Illyana in white magic. Limbo's Shadowcat, known as Cat, found magic abhorrent. She kidnapped Illyana and trained her in hand-to-hand and sword combat. Together they stormed Belasco's citadel and were overwhelmed. Belasco turned Cat into a feline demonic creature and took Illyana back. He then taught her black magic, hoping to corrupt her soul further. She plotted his defeat instead and kept resisting. Along the way she formed a mystical bond with both Storm and Cat, who had also been tutored by Belasco.

  Belasco did manage to create three parts of Illyana's bloodstone pendant. Then she brought the Soulsword into being, took over Limbo as its ruler, and banished him. S'ym became her servant. When she wielded the sword, she grew horns, a tail and fangs. She returned to Earth a decade older, although no time had passed there since her kidnapping. She joined the New Mutants, and the Soulsword came with her.

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• 4. Death and Darkchilde

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  One of her teleportation discs went astray and stranded Illyana and her teammate Mirage in ancient Egypt. There she met Ashake, an Egyptian priestess and an ancestor of Storm. Together they beat a sorcerer named Heka-Nut, who wanted an ancient weapon called the Sword of Bone and tried to use Magik's Soulsword to get it. Ashake sent the pair home, and Mirage's memory of the trip was erased. Illyana's sorcery also put her up against Baba Yaga, the Enchantress, Forge and Spiral.

  A routine trip through Limbo then went wrong and left the New Mutants stuck there. To open an escape route, Illyana embraced her demonic nature and created a colossal teleportation disc between Earth and Limbo. N'astirh held it open, and demons invaded Earth. Ashamed, she fled to Limbo and planned to end the invasion by ruling it again. Her teammate Rahne Sinclair talked her out of it. Instead Illyana gave up her demonic powers by creating a massive stepping disc that banished the demons, and she threw the Soulsword in after them to seal the portal. The New Mutants then found a seven-year-old Illyana inside the husk of her eldritch armor, still holding her bloodstone locket.

  The Soulsword, bonded to Shadowcat, passed to Earth's Shadowcat in England. It lodged itself in a stone near the lighthouse headquarters of Excalibur. After a conflict with the necromancer Gravemoss, Amanda Sefton acquired it.

  Months with her parents in Russia ended when the Russian government murdered them. The aim was to secure Illyana's abilities against a psionic being called the Soul Skinner. She went back to the X-Mansion to live with her brother and the other X-Men. Not long after, she caught the Legacy Virus. In The Uncanny X-Men #303, published in 1993, she died in the X-Mansion despite efforts by Charles Xavier and Moira MacTaggert to save her.

  Her spirit then reached Colossus through one of the stepping discs she had bound to the school. In a pocket world holding a memory imprint of her, he was persuaded to make a final sacrifice. When the cure for the Legacy Virus required the death of one mutant, he secretly gave his life so that nobody else would die as she had. An alien race later resurrected him.

  Illyana largely vanished from regular publication for the rest of the 1990s, apart from flashbacks, alternate realities and a time-traveling appearance in The New Mutants: Truth or Death #1-3 in 1997. Belasco resurrected her, and she returned to regular publication in 2007 with New X-Men #38-41. After seeing her reappear during "House of M," Belasco realized he carried a torch for her and cast a spell to pull her back to him. It drew out the remaining essence of Illyana held in Limbo, which took shape as Darkchilde, a semi-demonic version corrupted by dark magic. Belasco decided this was not the true Illyana because it lacked a soul, and he banished it to the outer reaches of Limbo.

  Darkchilde found some of the teenage New X-Men under attack by demons. After helping them, she immobilized them and stole part of Pixie's soul. She chose Pixie because she felt Pixie had the most innocent soul present, and she hoped to make a new bloodstone and a new Soulsword. Anole broke free and struck her down. The extraction was partly successful, creating one part of a bloodstone pendant and a soul dagger. Rockslide then stopped Illyana from finishing, and her human memories of her friends came back. Pixie could now do magic, because black magic had filled the hole in her soul. Illyana taught her a teleportation spell, and the New X-Men used it to defeat Belasco.

  The Darkchilde persona soon won out again. Illyana announced that she wanted more bloodstones to become god-like, and she retook Limbo's throne. She rejected Colossus when he tried to help her. Belasco's daughter Witchfire, who had claimed Illyana's Bloodstone amulet, conquered Limbo during her absence and captured her. Nightcrawler found Illyana chained to a pillar. At her direction, he stabbed her with Pixie's soul dagger and released the Soulsword inside her. With Pixie, she pried loose one of Pixie's bloodstones, and the Elder Gods were swept back to their dimension along with Witchfire. The other mutants convinced her to stay with them in the X-Men's base, though she had lost most of her soul.

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• 5. Prisoner and Pupil

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  Cyclops sent Illyana to team up, unknowingly, with X-Force and find Wolverine. Their mission was to teleport to Alcatraz and rescue any mutants held by Norman Osborn's forces. Afterward she and Pixie teleported all the X-Men from San Francisco to their new home, Utopia. The younger mutants still distrusted her. She seemed more emotionally detached than before, possibly because of her missing soul.

  During the 2010 storyline "X-Men: Second Coming," Bastion began eliminating mutant teleporters to trap the mutant population on Utopia. As Illyana tried to bring Hope Summers and Cable there, one of the Purifiers hit her with a supernatural weapon. It opened a portal to Limbo that she could not control, and demonic tentacles dragged her in. Pixie freed her.

  Pixie was then kidnapped by Project Purgatory, and Magik led the New Mutants into Limbo after her. There they met the Inferno Babies, mutants taken from their families as infants by the government and raised in Limbo. This adult team overwhelmed the New Mutants. Magik escaped to Earth with Karma and Pixie and hid the Soulsword inside Karma. She then teleported the X-Men to Portal Epsilon, Project Purgatory's gateway to Limbo, in what they believed was a rescue mission. The Elder Gods broke through just as they arrived. Karma used the Soulsword to free Legion's mind, and Legion destroyed the Elder Gods. He also returned the bloodstones of Magik and Pixie, restoring their souls. Magik later admitted to Cyclops that she had endangered the world and manipulated the X-Men to pursue a personal vendetta against the Elder Gods. Cyclops decided she must be restrained. She was unrepentant but accepted his decision.

  The X-Brig 2 was a newly built, ultra-high security prison 500 feet below sea level. Devices there detected and blocked any use of teleportation or magic. When Colossus visited to comfort her, she told him she deserved to be there. Colossus and Kitty later released her briefly to help against Juggernaut. After the events of Schism, she joined Cyclops' "Extinction Team," yet she remained a prisoner. She was freed only for missions, and her field suit carried lethal fail-safes to stop her escaping.

  In Avengers vs. X-Men, Illyana became one of the "Phoenix Five," X-Men granted extra power by the Phoenix Force. After Rogue defeated Ms. Marvel, Magik gagged the Avenger and teleported her into Limbo, which terrified Rogue. Illyana first read her new ability to channel Limbo's energy as an upgrade. Dormammu then pulled her into Limbo and showed her that summoning it so easily was destroying it. He later dragged her whole team in, meaning to kill them in front of her. Illyana absorbed all of Limbo's mystic energy, and the dimension and its creatures disappeared. She sent the X-Men home and traveled back in time to become the protege of a past Doctor Strange, hoping to learn enough magic to control her mutant powers.

  Later it emerged that Dark Beast had infected Magik, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magneto and Colossus with nano-sentinels after the Phoenix incident. The infection, not the Phoenix itself, had broken or boosted their powers. Illyana regained full control and recreated Limbo. Karma then employed her to lead a new New Mutants team with Wolfsbane, Rictor, Strong Guy, Prodigy and Boom-Boom.

  An odder assignment came when an eco-terrorist group tried to weaponize the Man-Thing. The part of Ted Sallis inside the creature tried to summon Belasco, with whom he had once made a deal to crack the super-soldier serum. The ritual brought Illyana instead. She helped stop the group, and she later summoned Belasco so that Sallis could punish the demon for his part in Sallis's fall.

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• 6. Krakoa and the Crown

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  After the founding of the mutant sovereign state of Krakoa, Magik was granted the rank of Captain in the Quiet Council. She joined Sunspot and the other New Mutants aboard a Starjammers vessel bound for Shi'ar space, to find Sunspot's best friend Cannonball. When the Starjammers tried to rob a highly valued object at a space station, the New Mutants were arrested as suspects. Cannonball's wife, Smasher, bailed them out on the condition that they protect Deathbird in transit to the Shi'ar homeworld. Deathbird was to instruct her niece Xandra in the ways of rule.

  The Death Commandos attacked, sent by Oracle to keep Xandra off the throne. Magik happily defeated several of them, knowing she was not human and so was not breaking Krakoa's laws. With Deathbird's help the team took control of the commandos' ship. On the homeworld Chandilar, they ambushed Oracle for trying to have them killed, which led to a fight with the Imperial Guard. Xandra ended it by naming Oracle and Deathbird as her mentors. The New Mutants returned to Krakoa, and Sunspot stayed behind with Cannonball.

  Magik went on more missions to bring mutants to Krakoa. She also developed a fondness for teaching. She trained the island's youth at the Akadamos Habitat, taught magic at Strange Academy, and formed her own version of the Dark Riders. Strange Academy #1 in 2020 presented her as a teacher in Doctor Strange's sorcerer school.

  In the 2020 "X of Swords" storyline, Saturnyne chose nine Krakoan mutants to fight Krakoa's sister island Arakko in a tournament in Otherworld. Magik was one of them. She prepared by training Cypher in swordfighting. She faced Pogg Ur-Pogg twice. The first bout was an arm-wrestling match, and his strength beat her easily. In the second, she realized that "Pogg" means "sword" in Arakkii. She let him swallow her and pulled the real Pogg Ur-Pogg, a tiny goblin-like creature, out of his armor.

  In "The Labors of Magik," Illyana decided she could not teach, serve as a captain of Krakoa and still be queen of Limbo. Wanting to move past her traumatic past, she offered the role to Madelyne Pryor, over the objections of her fellow New Mutants. Madelyne had a past connection to Limbo and had survived painful experiences of her own. Illyana declared that anyone normal and "untouched by darkness" was ill-suited to rule it. She took Rahne and Dani along to witness the handover.

  An army of demons led by S'ym attacked, with a weapon that disarmed her Soulsword. The four women tried to flee, but the portal failed and left them stranded in another part of Limbo. Magik could neither teleport nor summon her sword and concluded S'ym had destroyed it. Because Limbo is temporal in nature, they met an older Illyana in a castle. She used Warlock in place of the Soulsword. She said she had spent many years fighting demons infected by the Technarchy, and that she and Warlock were the last two mutants alive. The demons offered the group safe passage home if the older Illyana was left behind. Both Magiks laughed in their faces.

  The next day the whole horde returned. The older Illyana countered with an offer of a one-on-one fight with S'ym, winner takes all, and to everyone's shock he accepted. He seemed to be winning until he stabbed her. She revealed that she was bonded to Warlock and had used the stab to remove the techno-organic virus from S'ym and his allies.

  The group pressed deeper into a fairytale world modeled on Alice in Wonderland. Guards of the Red King, who was Belasco, ambushed them and separated Magik from the others. Her younger self, still Belasco's apprentice, woke her and said where the friends were held. She then cast a spell that brought Colossus from Krakoa, much to the older Illyana's dismay. At the Red King's castle, Magik took great pleasure in beating a weaker Belasco. This inspired her younger self to undo her spell and turn the fairytale back into his citadel. The older Illyana said goodbye to the younger, who was glad to know she would grow strong enough to escape.

  After months in a cave training Madelyne, the group attacked S'ym's castle. Inside, they found that another Magik created by Limbo was helping him. Limbo had made her because the original had spent too much time on Earth and neglected her duties. Illyana let her double think she was winning while Madelyne defeated her. The two merged, which made Illyana powerful enough to send everyone home. Madelyne Pryor finally became the new Queen of Limbo.

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• 7. Soulsword and Stepping Discs

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  The Soulsword began when Illyana, imprisoned in Limbo, magically made her own life force energy appear in front of her. She put her hand into a pool of eldritch energy and imagined a weapon. When she pulled her hand out, she held a blade made from her own soul. It starts as a simple-looking sword. With each use it grows more intricate and more powerful.

  The blade disrupts magical energy, constructs and creatures, and it boosts the power of any magic user who holds it. It generally has no physical effect, but it breaks even the strongest magic that it passes through. Since her return, it also seems to affect psychic beings such as Legion's personalities. Only Kitty Pryde can be cut by it while phasing. Illyana can make it appear and vanish at will. After Avengers vs. X-Men, she used it against physical beings, including a Sentinel.

  The more she uses magic, the more mystical armor spreads over her body, along with demonic features such as horns and hooves. The armor deflects or limits both physical and magical attacks and protects her from the Transmode Virus. It also gives her superhuman strength, shown when she threw the giant demon S'ym several feet off her.

  Her mutant gift is teleportation across time and space. She summons stepping discs, which are part of Limbo, and must pass through Limbo as a midway point on every jump. She has teleported across continents and, on occasion, across planetary and galactic distances. Unlike most teleporters in the Marvel Universe, she can also travel through time, moments or centuries into the past or future. Once she had absorbed all of Limbo, the discs ceased to exist. Now hellish images of ghosts, dragons and other supernatural creatures appear when she teleports.

  In Limbo she is the sorceress supreme and can cast any spell that Belasco could, because she had access to his store of knowledge. Her sorcery mixes black magic from Belasco with white magic from Ororo Munroe. On Earth she has shown astral projection, scrying, the sensing of mystical presences, and very simple spells. Her power there grew stronger once she became Doctor Strange's disciple. She used spells learned from him to destroy advanced Sentinels.

  Her mind is guarded by formidable psionic shields. Telepaths as powerful as Professor X, the Shadow King and Rachel Summers cannot read her thoughts. Since her revival, she can lower the shields. Belasco made the bloodstones from their souls, and that gives her a psychic bond with Kitty Pryde. A similar link to Storm could be inferred.

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• 8. Reception and Reach

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  Alex Schlesinger of Screen Rant argued that Illyana has risen meteorically over the past decade and has "the best long-term character arc of any hero in Marvel Comics." He read her story as showing that trauma is not required for growth and cannot be undone. Deirdre Kaye of Scary Mommy called her a "role model" and a "truly heroic" female character. Sara Century of Syfy described her as one of the X-Men's "surprisingly popular characters." Century wrote that her hope was crushed by a much older man when she was only a child. She also praised her for keeping her friends safe and surrounding herself with good people because she no longer trusted herself. David Harth of Comic Book Resources focused on her look, with an anime-inspired costume and giant swords. He argued that Marvel's magic side is mostly her, Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch, and that she is more fun than either of the others.

  Kofi Outlaw of ComicBook.com pointed to her growing mainstream appeal. He said the film The New Mutants became an infamous quagmire, yet the rise of Anya Taylor-Joy, who played Magik, helped make the character famous. Drew Swanson of Game Rant said her tragic backstory in Marvel's Midnight Suns made her a "standout character" who should become a "fan-favorite addition" to Insomniac Games' X-Men games. In 2022, the American influencer Olivia Pierson dressed as her for Halloween, alongside Kim Kardashian as Mystique and Natalie Halcro as Selene.

  The comics sold respectably. According to Marvel, X-Men: Return of Magik #1 sold out in September 2008, and Diamond Comic Distributors ranked it 128th among that month's comics. What If? Magik #1 ranked 115th in October 2018. Matt Lune of Comic Book Resources liked its look at Illyana's life had she walked away from the New Mutants at a pivotal moment. Jamie Lovett of ComicBook.com gave it 5 out of 5, calling it a story of trauma, abusive relationships, and the road to recovery. Alan Kistler of Polygon included it in a list of the greatest What If...? stories in Marvel history.

  On television, Illyana appears in the X-Men: The Animated Series episode "Red Dawn," voiced by Tara Strong. She was intended for Wolverine and the X-Men before that series was cancelled. In the X-Men '97 episode "Fire Made Flesh," Courtenay Taylor voices her. In the 2020 film The New Mutants, Anya Taylor-Joy plays her as a young adult and Colbi Gannett as a child. That version was sold into child slavery, is at odds with terrifying creatures called the Smiling Men, and is accompanied by Lockheed.

  She has also been a game character for years. She is a non-playable character in X-Men Legends, voiced by Jeannie Elias, and a playable one in Marvel Heroes, voiced by Tara Strong. She appears in Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Marvel Contest of Champions, Marvel Future Fight, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Marvel Future Revolution and Marvel Snap. Laura Bailey voices her in Marvel's Midnight Suns, where she is a member of the titular team. In Marvel Rivals, Abby Trott voices her. She will also be playable in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, voiced by Jesse Vilinsky in English and Fairouz Ai in Japanese. In 2024, Hasbro released a Marvel Legends action figure of her.

  Alternate versions have taken her in other directions. In Age of Apocalypse, she is captured and taken to the Core, a prison that powers Apocalypse's empire. In the Excalibur storyline "Cross-Time Caper," a version of her runs an organized crime cartel with Shadowcat. The Illyana of Earth-4210 joins the Exiles to replace Blink and is killed by Hyperion. In "House of M," she belongs to a S.H.I.E.L.D. squadron of mutants called the Hellions. In the Ultimate Universe imprint, she helps lead the Eurasian Republic until Wolverine kills her.

  The 1983 series had been out of print for decades when it was collected in December 2008 as the hardcover X-Men - Magik: Storm & Illyana. In 2024, Marvel debuted an ongoing Magik series by writer Ashley Allen and artist Germán Peralta. Its first four issues were collected as Magik Volume 1: Unleashed in September 2025. Volume 2, Shadows of Resistance, collects issues #6-10 and was scheduled for February 2026.

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