Not All Superheroes

The various media that make up pop culture can be useful places to explore current events and aspects of current society. Not all media however are suitable for this, and Marvel Comics' misleadingly titled What If? Magik Became Sorcerer Supreme is, perhaps, a cautionary tale.

(Overanalysis Mode: Engaged. And, by the way, if you're not familiar with the character of Magik, who is soon to be introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I'll give a brief rundown at the end of this post.)

One of the themes that What If? Magik Became Sorcerer Supreme attempts to tackle is abuse. This makes sense, given this history of the Magik character, as she was transitioning from minor incidental character to superheroine. But given that the book is a one-shot and only has a total of 28 pages (including several given over to full-page advertising) to tell a story, the shortcuts that needed to be taken seemed to undermine the entire enterprise.

The biggest difficulty that I had with the book was with Doctor Strange, and how he interacted with the character of Magik. The book opens with an adolescent Magik hitchhiking away from Westchester, New York, where the X-Men are headquartered. Resigning herself to the need to project some sex appeal to get a lift, she takes off her hood to allow her hair to be visible. This results in her being picked up by a man who, predictably, turns out to want sex in return. Doctor Strange enters the picture at this point, as Magik first flees the man, then starts beating the tar out of him with a broom when he corners her in an alley. Believing her to be some sort of sorcerous monster, Doctor Strange swoops in with a comically oversized battle-ax, saying:

"I'll admit this one probably had it coming, but your redneck reign of terror still ends tonight, creature."

While it's understandable that Doctor Strange believes that he's just rescued a man from being severely injured or killed by something masquerading as a "malnourished child," the fact of the matter is that the man was attempting to rape that same child. The "probably" seems misplaced.

And where the comic falls down is that Doctor Strange never seems to get any better about his treatment of Magik as the book quickly moves on. Despite being told more than once that he's doing the very things that other people have done to her with nefarious intent, Doctor Strange seems intent on restraining Magik until she gives in; which she does with remarkable speed, given how Doctor Strange is behaving.

Of course, being a comic book, things all turn out for the best, with Magik accepting Doctor Strange's tutelage, and embarking on a course that promises to turn her into a magical powerhouse (to go along with her mutant power), but it's unclear to me if the whole thing is really subversive or really tone-deaf, because Doctor Strange, in effect, forces himself on a young woman who has been running from years of abuse. The odd part of it all, is that the book seems to understand how bad Doctor Strange's choices are, even if Doctor Strange seems incapable of doing so. And even though Doctor Strange is setting off Magik's "abuser" sirens like a five-alarm fire.

And this, to me, is where the story seems broken. (Apologies for the long set-up.) In the end, Magik bears the responsibility for understanding that Doctor Strange is one of the Good Guys. Despite the fact that he seems incapable of behaving any differently from men who have set out to abuse her in the past, the story requires that she trust him and allow him to teach her, so she does. The book is so invested in its portrayal of Doctor Strange as arrogant, self-centered and out-of-touch that it makes Magik bend to that. And in doing do, takes on a strange feeling of "Not all men."

Not all men who abduct you are abusers. Not all men who pursue you in the face of "no" are bad. Not all men who attack your self-esteem are toxic. Not all men who see you as an end to their own goals have contempt for you.

And maybe these aren't the worst lessons in the world; even if I find them a bit suspect in a medium that's typically aimed at boys and young men. But I would submit that to really do them justice, and place them in a broader context where they don't seem like abuse apology, requires more than twenty or so pages of a one-shot comic book.

(Overanalysis Mode: Dis-engaged.)

Backstory: The character of Magik started out simply as Illyana Nikolievna Rasputina, the much younger sister of the X-man Colossus. She first appears as a small child when the international X-Men team was introduced in the mid-1970s, and would occasionally show up as a plot element. Eventually, she was abducted and taken to Limbo (one of Marvel Comic's versions of Hell) by a sorcerer/demon, where she learned some limited magic. Since time passes in Limbo much faster than on Earth, she also effectively aged several years over less than a day. Once returned to Earth, she became a member of the X-men's "junior" team, The New Mutants, as she also manifested the mutant power of creating disks of energy that allowed her to teleport. The What If? scenario posed by What If? Magik Became Sorcerer Supreme posits that Illyana instead ran away from Professor Xavier's school, and after apparently fighting off a number of sorcerers and mundanes alike who had designs on her, is brought to the attention of Doctor Strange.