Entry tags:

char: nico minoru, creator: phil noto

Back in the distant past of 2007 there was a four part miniseries dealing with minor magic characters from Marvel. At least that was what it was advertised as in reality it was the story of a one note redeemed former Dr. Strange villain Ian McNeil hunting down artifacts that in the past were encountered by Magik, Scarlet Witch, the original Black Knight and Nico Minoru (referred to as Sister Grimm on the cover of her book. Even though they pretty much forgot those codenames after three days).

Each issue took the format of two stories one Ian McNeil looking for the artifact, two the title character finding the artifact a long time ago. Nico’s story has 22 pages.





So we open with a recap of the first arc of Runaways which you all should go out and buy if you haven’t already. It even comes in a handy digest size (Does that save me from a DMCA Marvel Lawyers?).

Anyways we are skipping that page because you should know that already. Basically she has evil wizard parents, her and her friends fight said evil parents, one of the friends is secretly evil and then he dies, they defeat parents, Cap finds them and sends them to different foster homes and boarding schools. (Capdickery?) Nico got sent to “Father Flanagan's Home for Unwanted Goth Kids”. No really that’s what it was called.



So Nico wearing some painfully bland and mundane clothes meets some Goth friend from their absurdly named boarding home. The evil monologue is coming from the villain of this story as she stalks Nico. Stephanie Myers would call that romantic.



Black coffee is just so Goth right? While this story is decently written in other aspects I can’t help but feel that the writer learned about Goth subculture by sitting outside a Hot Topic for a few hours.
I am going to give our mysterious villain props for using cherry juice to make a magic ward of some kind in the second panel. Too often magic villains would just pull a live mouse out of their pocket, snap its neck and use that blood to make the ward.
So Nico’s friends suggest that she has survivor’s guilt and talk her into going to generic Goth Club #12355 or some such later that night. Rather unremarkable except the very last panel which makes good use of blur and has some interesting dialogue.



Wow...subtext ahoy! Just for the record this takes place before the reveal that Karolina is a lesbian despite being written a bit after. None the less Nico now has two other women who have been implied to be attracted to her. Probably not a record but kind of impressive anyways.



Okay then...let’s make that three. Maybe that Myers crack I made earlier wasn’t that far off.
So later at the club our Cullen-esque, pieomancer confronts Nico. She says she needs Nico’s help in dealing with a magic mirror that used to belong to her parents. To unlock it’s powers she needs some of Nico’s blood. You’d have thought that Nico’s parents might invest some time in learning some magic that doesn’t involve self harm.
Nico’s reaction to this give us the preview image.





“...Let the Staff of One Emerge.”

Wait? What? That guy had a beer? This club is licensed? Nico is only sixteen. How the hell did she get in?

No time to worry about that though. Goth zombie!



Or not...



I am running out of scan pages so Nico tries using the mirror to go back in time and save Alex and the mirror shows her mother telling Nico that she will “...always be one of us.”
Nico breaks the mirror and a piece of paper comes out that seemingly was the real powerful magic that the pieomancer wants. So she gets up steals the paper and teleports away leaving Nico alone to wonder if she is destined to go down the dark path like her parents.



Okay at this point I call bullshit. No, Nico would not be hiding something like this from the other Runaways. They are her family now you don’t hide shit like that from your family. Not to mention the Harry Potter jokes Molly would make about Nico fighting an evil witch would be golden.

So yeah that was Nico's Mystic Arcana story. I might do posts for the other three stories and maybe Ian McNee's metaplot if people because I feel this mini-event was underrated.