[Poll] Magik Expy

[Jason Liang]

Magik has always been a popular character among X-Men geeks, but over the past 2 years she's gained a lot of mainstream popularity as well due to the New Mutants movie and Marvel's Midnight Suns, and Marvel Snap. She has also established her own fantasy character archetype, basically an innocent waif with childhood trauma, is given demonic powers and a magical sword and becomes an Elric distaff (would be uncanny if Magik was actually inspired by Elric! Elric 1961, Magik 1975/1983). However Claremont was inspired to synthesize Magik, she has proven to be an attractive and popular design in grimdark fantasy.

Magik:

Zero:


Shane:




Shiki:

Kind of a Magik expy since she has Magik's portal teleportation? But she clearly has a ton of other influences including Psylocke, Rei Ayami and Blade of the Immortal Makie Otono-Tachibana.

Sky Striker Ace Raye:

Enormously popular cardboard waifu in Yugioh.

Peko Pekoyama:

Don't know much about this one.

 

[The Decline]

Who?

 

[Falksi]

Chi?

 

[Ash]

Marvel geeks should be euthanized. Lowbrow, unengaging, minimal style, zero substance fiction.

 

[Jason Liang]

Dark Knight:

Taarna:

Taarna is such a fantasy icon that she is certainly a proto influence of this archetype. In fact she is likely the "missing link" connecting Moorcock's Elric to Claremont's Magik.

Snow White:

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[Jason Liang]

I think it's fascinating for Elric/ Magik/ Taarna to end up spawning an incredibly specific and popular fantasy character design archetype, 40-60 years later. And it's certainly currently one of the most dominant design archetypes for female fantasy characters right now.

Compared to the Joan of Arc archetype (Janne from World Heroes, Charlotte from Samsho) that was very popular when I was young, or a Darth Vader distaff (including Mara Jade and Sorceress Ygraine), or a female ninja/ kunoichi type like Kitana or Psylocke.

Think of the hundreds if not thousands of comic superheroes designed by Marvel since the 1980's, or even the hundreds created by Claremont alone, and its this one that has evolved and spawned its own unique fantasy archetype.