Of all of the characters to pair with Kate Pryde, why did I go with Magik?

That’s a great question.

Shadow and Flame was such a great miniseries, perfectly drawn by Paul Smith.

The title has a fun, if you know you know, element – before that was a thing.

Illyana Rasputina, Magik, has some competition with who is Kate Pryde’s best friend. The only real competition is Rachel Summers, but Kurt Wagner has an argument to be made.

At the time I was creating the blog, June 2013, Magik was back in a big way, but when I started really taking my back issue buying serious, she was dead from, well, that gets complicated.

Magik, as we knew her from the original run of New Mutants, ‘dies’ at the end of Inferno, and is reverted back to her six year old self. The six year old dies from the Legacy Virus so Uncanny X-Men 303 in 1993.

So after 1993, it is super easy to be a Magik completionist. Just have to track whenever the New Mutants are having memories, or when Pryde is having a flashback. I was already tracking all of Pryde and Lockheed’s appearances, so I had that covered, but every so often, Sam or Dani (when she was in a title), would think about their lost friends, so play Truth or Dare.

Rachel, I have most of her appearances, until Claremont returns again and puts her on Uncanny and she becomes a dinosaur, it gets complicated.

When I had the thought of maybe actually committing the dollars to getting all of Rachel’s appearances, Ed Brubaker had her in SPACE! for the Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire storyline and that was enough for me to not want those comics. Rachel doesn’t think about Pryde at all, or Lockheed for that matter, so I was safe from buying those comics.

Kurt was never really in the running for this thought experiment as he is part of the Giant Size X-Men 1, All New All Different era, so all of those early issues are expensive, and predates Pryde, so that was an easy one to write off. Then again, Illyana is in Giant Size X-Men 1, so I did commit to getting a beaten up version of that, but then I was done as she doesn’t show up again until Arcade takes her prisoner along with other friends of the X-Men. Heck, Colossus doesn’t even think about her during any of those comics, continuing why he is the worst.

(in my mind, this was Illyana on the cover, but what a cover by Carl Potts!)

Also, Lockheed is much closer friends with Illyana than he ever was with Rachel, that’s just a fact. I can picture Lockheed, who essentially becomes pals with the New Mutants with how often he’s in that title, but he doesn’t hang with Rachel nearly that much unless Kate is with Rachel in the scene.

So I wanted to own every appearance of Kate Pryde and Lockheed, that was the initial mission. So I started buying all of these New Mutants titles that don’t have Pryde referenced at all. As I’m buying these comics, I’m getting to see what Illyana is like without Pryde around, and I’m just loving Magik, and all that she brings to the table.

So I start having these holes in my New Mutants collection, which makes sense, but if I commit to buying Magik appearances, I can fill in those stories and find out more about my third favorite X-Men character. Plus, New Mutants comics were not expensive, so that helped the decision.

I was working for NAU-Yuma at the time, living with my parents, so I had very little overhead, so I was essentially dedicating one paycheck to back issues. The two checks I committed to buying Uncanny X-Men 141 and 142 were pretty exciting. Those definitely cost more than 129 did or 166. I was all in at that point.

also, one of the rare Magik toys came with a Lockheed! So even someone in the toy department knew how they were besties!

Also, Lockheed’s one film appearance, thus far?

In New Mutants with gal pal, Magik!

So I feel like I made the right decision