Warning: SPOILERS for Amazing Spider-Man #14!Madelyne Pryor wants revenge on the X-Men, and she's getting started by betraying the immense sacrifice that Magik made on their behalf. The promotional campaign for Dark Web has long teased that Illyana Rasputina's choice to abdicate the throne of Limbo to the Goblin Queen would come back to bite her almost immediately. However, a prelude to this winter's Spider-Man/X-Men crossover reveals that Maddy's schemes for Manhattan involve an intimate level of treachery that none of the heroes could have expected.
Both Magik and Madelyne Pryor have traumatic histories tied to the demons of Limbo. Illyana was imprisoned by Belasco, a demon ruler who kept her as an apprentice and servant, and it’s heavily implied that he sexually abused the young mutant as well. In Maddy's case, she sold her soul to the demon S'ym in exchange for infernal sorcery in what she thought was merely a dream. While Limbo is the source of Magik's trauma, for Madelyne it ended up being a tool she used to cope with having her life fall apart thanks to Mister Sinister. With that in mind, it's understandable to believe in the unlikely trust Illyana puts in Maddy by giving control of Limbo to the Goblin Queen after so much time has passed.
Madelyne is eager to put that trust to the test in Amazing Spider-Man #14 by Zeb Wells, Michael Dowling, Richard Isanove, Kyle Hotz, Dan Brown, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, Ryan Stegman, Tim Townsend, JP Mayer, Matt Hollingsworth, VC's Joe Caramagna, and Nick Lowe. Serving as a prelude to Dark Web, the issue fills in the gaps of what Ben Reilly and his girlfriend Janine Godbe have been up to since the end of the Spider-Man: Beyond arc. Very quickly the newly-christened Chasm finds himself in the Goblin Queen's domain. Finding kinship in one another as traumatized and neglected clones of iconic heroes, Madelyne is eager to collaborate with Janine and Ben in their revenge schemes. Janine is capable in her own right, but she feels powerless when her collaborators are a demented Spider-Man and the Goblin Queen of Limbo. Madelyne's solution is to offer Janine the same deal that S'ym once gave her, and the new supervillain Hallow's Eve is born. Maddy gives Janine the dignity of not preying on her while she dreams, but the Goblin Queen conspicuously omits any details about the soul price of their bargain.
Magik Wants To Break Limbo's Abusive Cycle, But Madelyne Pryor Has Other Ideas
In abdicating Limbo's throne to Maddy, Illyana hoped to disrupt both of their traumas. Magik is at a point where she is comfortable defining herself outside the abuse she suffered in Limbo, and handing it to Madelyne offers her a place to have power and agency without having to be around Jean Grey and the X-Men. Of course, Magik cannot force the Goblin Queen to heal, or force her to prescribe to an Illyana-approved set of morals. It's still shocking to see how deeply Madelyne betrays that gesture of trust. Her contract with Janine completes the cycle of abuse she received in Limbo so many years before. While the issue does not confirm that Janine has unwittingly sold her soul to Madelyne Pryor, the structure of their deal mirrors Maddy and S'ym's to the point that the cost has surely remained the same.
Madelyne Pryor's deepest trauma is having her entire world decide that she is not real, that her personhood and her soul are disingenuous. Her turn to villainy is a rejection of this claim, and it seems that she's not done testing the boundaries of the autonomy that she's been granted. Even if Madelyne's schemes have a coherent logic behind them, that does not negate how deeply it betrays Magik's attempts to free them both from their past traumas. They may not be prepared for what all the Dark Web has in store, but hopefully Magik's fellow X-Men are able to support Illyana as her ultimate sacrifice comes back to punish her.
Amazing Spider-Man #14 is available now from Marvel Comics.