Contains spoilers for New Mutants #28!
The mutant powerhouse Magik, former Queen and Sorcerer Supreme of Limbo and current member of the official Krakoan X-Men team, has revealed to the Quiet Council that she will begin training mutants in the use of magic at once, setting up Krakoa's very own version of Doctor Strange's Strange Academy.
Strange Academy was a Hogwarts-esque magical training school founded by Doctor Stephen Strange before his untimely death, and in the 18-issue run of Strange Academy the Marvel Universe was introduced to an entire new generation of powerful magic users. Now Magik, a former adjunct professor at Strange Academy, will be forming her own training academy to pass on her magical skills to the mutants of Krakoa.
In the pages of New Mutants #28 - written by Vita Ayala with art by Rod Reis and Jan Duursema - Magik has been on a hugely important journey of liberation and self-discovery in "The Trials of Magik," a throwback to the 1989 event Inferno. In the story arc, Magik returned to Limbo, the realm of her incredibly traumatic childhood filled with abuse at the hands of the demons Belasco and S'ym, to cede power and control of the realm to the former Goblin Queen Madelyne Pryor. However, the adventure ended up being a heart-wrenching and stunning story of a young woman's personal liberation, with Magik accepting and overcoming her past and her inherent darkness while learning to look forward to the future with hope. Upon her return to Krakoa Magik - one of the nation's War Captain's and a newly elected member of the titular X-Men team - files a report to the Quiet Council updating them on her time in Limbo, while also letting its leaders know that she is going to begin training mutants in the use of magic. While the faculty has yet to be declared, there are several mystic X-Men who could head up this new mutant Strange Academy, including Iceman and Rictor.
Magik's reasoning for training mutants in magical skills is incredibly logical, saying that if the mutants of Krakoa ever become depowered again, something that has happened many times over the X-Men's history, knowing at least the basics of magic could be the only thing that keeps them alive. Illyana is truly the perfect person to start a Magik Academy on Krakoa, seeing as she has trained one-on-one with Doctor Strange himself, was the Sorcerer Supreme of Limbo for years, and was a hilariously unprofessional but still impactful teacher to the students at Strange Academy.
Early on in the first days of the Krakoan nation the leader of the X-Men and War Commander Scott Summers, the mutant Cyclops, lamented the fact that so few mutants were able to fight or defend themselves after the closure of the Xavier School. With how close Cyclops and Magik are, hopefully she'll have his full support in this effort as well.
The mutants of Krakoa are in desperate need of skills and abilities that go beyond their mutant powers, so Magik of the X-Men is firmly committing to starting a magic training program on Krakoa akin to Strange Academy - the perfect next step in protecting mutantkind from future crises.
New Mutants #28 is available from Marvel Comics now.