Magik and Shadows: How Kate Pryde and Ilyana Rasputin Made Me a Better, Gayer, Comics Fan (Patreon)

By Zoe Tunnell

Hi. My name is Zoe Tunnell, and I was an awful comics fan. To be clear, I don't mean I liked awful comics. (I still do! They're trash, but they're my trash.) The type of awful I'm referring to is one probably all too familiar to a lot of you. When I was a teenager, and even into my twenties, I was The Comics Nerd. It was my all-consuming identity, and being the person who could answer any question about the latest Marvel Movie when asked at a party was my lot in life.

It turned me into a cruel, shitty little person who began to view comics as a series of Facts and Events to learn and catalog and lord over others, rather than just...stories I love and cherish. Thankfully, I'm better now. And as much as I'd like to credit that all to looking inward and personal growth, strangely enough, I can thank two comic book characters for getting my shit together—specifically, Kate Pryde and Ilyana Rasputin.

All- New X-Men #13 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Stuart Immonen (artist), Wade Von Grawbadger (inker), Marte Gracia (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Marvel Comics - November 2013

The X-Men were never my biggest interest growing up. I enjoyed them just fine; I was a rabid devotee of X-Men: Evolution as a kid and kept up with the movies while reading the occasional book. The dual launches of Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men and Kieron Gillen's Uncanny X-Men hooked me in as a reader, but Marvel's merry mutants continued to play second fiddle to the Avengers and Spider-Man as far as I was concerned.

They had convoluted backstory from decades before I was even born and kept showing up as hyper-aggro jerks in all my precious Avengers titles. Of course, I read hundreds of pages of Wikis and story synopses so I could spout all the requisite facts and details when asked what the hell Wolverine's deal was by someone at some random house party. I never needed to read the stories themselves. I had the important bits.

Enter: Jonathan Hickman.

When Hickman was announced as revamping the long-floundering X-Men line in 2019, I immediately got curious. The writer's tenure on Secret Warriors, Avengers, and Fantastic Four were some of my favorite runs at Marvel, and the idea of a story so big it would drag him out of his self-imposed indie title exile got my attention. In the initial interviews for House of X and Powers of X Hickman professed his life-long love of the X-Men and how excited he was to bring together threads from across their decades of stories. Well, if it was good enough for Hickman, it was good enough for me. So, I embarked on a quest to read all of Chris Claremont's legendary 17 year run with the X-Men.

For full context, I still thought I was a guy at this point. My journey to coming to terms with my identity as a woman was long, painful, and full of self-defeat. I had been interested in gender-swapping fiction, erotic and not, since I was a teenager and dipped my toes into cross-dressing and other activities. Of course, I wasn't trans. I knew that. It was just a fetish, something that I could ignore and repress outside of a sexual context. I knew I was a man. I had lived as one for 27 years. How could I be wrong?

Reading Claremont was a journey. I had a bone-deep distaste for “old” comics. As a child of your Bendises and Millars (to reiterate: I am better now), the clunky dialogue and stiff art was inherently worse to me than my slick, modern comics. Despite being aware of the most prominent plot beats of the era, the sheer entertainment and emotion of Claremont's work was as gripping as it was in the 1980s and won me over after just a handful of issues. From The Dark Phoenix Saga to the rise of New Mutants, I was hooked and thrilled to read every new issue. But the biggest surprise, to me, were two mutant girls who I could have sworn weren't gay.

For folks who, y'know, actually read X-Men, Kate (then Kitty) Pryde and Ilyana Rasputin being not only queer as hell, but specifically for each other was an incredibly open secret. For me, The Big Comics Fan, it was bullshit. A bunch of folks eager to project themselves onto the characters and ignoring the textual relationships. Kate loves Colossus; everyone knows that! So when I finally reached that stage of Claremont's run and got to plenty of the two interacting, I was left with only one thought: “Oh, these girls are gay as hell.”

New Mutants #63 - Chris Claremont (plotter), Louise Simonson (scripter), Bo Hampton and Joe Rubinstein (artists), Tom Orzechowski (letterer), Neil Yomtov (colorist) - Marvel Comics - May 1988

For an idea of just how undeniably wildly thirsty for each other these two ladies are, you need not look further than New Mutants #63. The issue, plotted by Claremont, scripted by Louise Simonson and drawn by Bo Hampton and Joe Rubsinstein, opens on Kate and Ilyana chatting in their shared room. On the very first page Kate playfully jumps on her grumpy roommate and begins tickling her. Just gals being pals. Kate becomes so excited that she ends up phasing the pair through 'Yana's bed in a fit of lost control. Something that happens again decades later in the pages of Astonishing X-Men after a particularly powerful climax while fooling around with Colossus. Y'know. Friend stuff.

Even going beyond just flirty excitement, Kate and Ilyana's love and trust with one another is thoroughly established in no uncertain terms on the comic page itself. When Ilyana is temporarily struck down by The Beyonder in New Mutants #36, her Soul Sword is transferred to a very surprised Kate. The sword is, to quote Claremont, the ultimate expression of her arcane might and constructed from her very soul itself. According to Magik, it transferred to Kate because she is her closest friend and has the most powerful connection. For reference: Ilyana's actual, for-real chrome-plated idiot brother is also an X-Man. Yet, Kate is the one who is closest to Ilyana's soul. If only there were some sort of word for two people who are so in sync and important to each other that their souls are paired. Guess they're just BFFs!

The realization that these two ladies were deeply, tangibly gay and in love with each other shook me—more than you would think, probably. But in dozens of internet arguments over the years, I had dug my heels in and insisted that they were straight. Aside from the casual bi-erasure I was unwittingly engaging in; I had no reason to think I was wrong. It was A Fact, the most crucial thing in comics. I knew all of the Facts because that was what I did, who I was. And if I was wrong about that, one of my precious, important Facts...what else could I be wrong about?

New Mutants #36 - Chris Claremont (writer), Mary Wilshire and Bill Sienkiewicz (artists), Michael Higgins (colorist), Tom Orzechowski (letterer) - Marvel Comics - February 1986

I'm not about to say Kate Pryde and Ilyana Rasputin made me into a girl. (I've read that fanfic, and I wish it worked that easily.) No, my journey culminated a few months after finishing Claremont's run and after several very long and personal conversations with some trans friends of mine. Spurred on by the general sense of questioning that Claremont left me with, these friends made me feel like my experiences weren't strange or unusual, and that my questions were never going to go away if I ignored them. If Kate and Ilyana got that ball rolling, my friends...slam dunked it? Is that the right sports metaphor? I don't know. The point is, it was something I wouldn't have been able to do alone.

Realizing that I am, in fact, a trans lesbian also proved to be the missing piece of the X-Men puzzle, bringing it all together. I still love plenty of non-X Folks, but now I understand why the mutants have such a loyal, die-hard fanbase. The mutant metaphor is messy and clumsy, but it speaks to people. Spider-Man is hated and feared, but just because one guy with a lousy mustache prints smear stories about him. Daredevil is sad and tortured, but he goes back to his lush penthouse he bought with his Lawyer Money at the end of the day. The X-Men are a group of misfits and outcasts, brought together because they have nowhere else to turn in a world that wants them dead. After joining the queer community, it isn’t tough to see the parallels.

Thankfully, Hickman's tenure as conductor of the X-Men orchestra has, thus far, lived up to the frankly unrealistic level of hype and expectations I had placed on it. Primarily due to the profoundly talented, diverse team of writers he has recruited for the Dawn of X era. Seeing queer writers like Tini Howard, Vita Ayala, and Leah Williams thrive writing X-Books and try to inject as much queer content as they can within Corporate Comic Structures is an absolute delight to behold. Even that oh-so-obvious subtext with Kate and Ilyana is no longer sub; it is only text. (Well, Kate might be a little sub. Magik’s got that vibe.) Rather than merely reading them for the Events and Data, I'm reading these stories because I love the characters and see myself in them, to varying degrees.

In Kate's case, I have been blessed with the gift of seeing myself very directly in her current journey. Starring in Marauders, Kate has spent the Krakoa era of the X-Men on a journey of self-discovery. After a jarring debut where she learned she was the only mutant who can't cross through the teleportation gates that link Krakoa across the globe, Kate goes on a bit of a manic spiral and ends up as the new Red Queen of the Hellfire Club and exhibiting a level of feisty confidence she hadn't in ages. As fun and exciting as Marauders first 11 issues were, the Big Moment for me came in #12.

Following Kate's brutal death at the hands of Sebastian Shaw, Marauders #12, from Gerry Duggan and Matteo Lotti opens on a newly reborn Kate feeling more at peace with herself than she has in years. No longer bearing the weight of being the only mutant that can't thrive on Krakoa, Kate Pryde is once again, according to Ilyana herself, Kate Fuckin' Pryde. The return of her big curly hair (much like my own) and returning to her Jewish roots (not like my own, to be clear) were delightful enough on their own, but they can't hold a candle to Kate Pryde finally, after decades of subtext and hints, finally kissing a woman on panel. I can't overstate how much it meant seeing the woman who I hold near and dear to my heart finally be canonically queer. I cried, I yelled nonsense at my comics-loving friends, I felt validated and seen on a level almost no comic ever had before. Now they just need to let her kiss Ilyana I swear to God, if she doesn't I will be very upset, Duggan!

Marauders #12 - Gerry Duggan (writer), Matteo Lotti (artist), Edgar Delgado (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Marvel Comics - September 2020

Now, nearing my first anniversary of coming out (November 18th and, yes, I will accept gifts), I am more entrenched in comics than I have ever been. A lifelong passion has become something I am finally actually passionate about, and, somehow, I've tricked people into letting me write about them for their websites. It's wild! Life is scary. I’m trans in America in 2020 and transitioning presents new challenges all the time. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm not The Comic Nerd anymore. I mean, I am, but I can be chill about it, at least. My brain is still rotted with useless trivia that shoved out useful knowledge like basic algebra, but I don't need to prove that I know it to anyone. So, let’s try this again: Hi! I'm Zoe Tunnell, and I was an awful comics fan. I'm better now. I'm roughly 100% gayer and have the power of raw estrogen running through my veins. These are my Facts now, and it's all thanks to Chris Claremont creating an awkward Jewish teenager and her demonic Russian roommate who proved my ass wrong.