There I was, enjoying a beautiful day on the east coast with temperatures in the sixties and the sun high in the sky, when I came across, in my casual reading of X-Men Essentials Vol. 8, a comic book perfect for a literary critique.  X-Men # 231 contains allusions to my favorite Russian literature of all time, as Chris Claremont personifies three characters from Mikhail Bulgakov's classic "The Master and Margarita."  When I first read this comic book back in 1988 the relationship made no sense to me and I actually remember feeling very frightened by these characters and the witch from traditional Russian Lore :Baba Yaga.  Now I see the triangulation as an excellent contextualization of the comic book with an emphasis on creatures from Russian literature that would be familiar to Colossus and Magick his younger sister.

Okay, I'll try to explain clearly, this was just too great a find.

In the X-Men #231 Colossus is a member of the X-Men who at that time were hiding in the Australian outback, allowing the rest of the world to think they were dead, including members of their family and all of their friends.  There is a lot of intuition going around as Colossus knows he has to go see his sister, as do some of his teammates, with the decision being made in the end by Gateway, an aboriginal mutant who can teleport anyone anywhere in space and time.

Gateway sends Colossus directly to his sister Magick, in her form as the Dark Childe, in the middle of saying a necromatic spell to bring Colossus back from the dead.  Since Colossus is not dead the timing was good,  because to complete the spell would have cost Illayna her soul.

It turns out that due to her relationship with the New Mutants, creatures have slipped out of the realm of Limbo where Magick rules supreme, and have attacked the New Mutants with great success.  Only Magick escaped using her mutant power of teleportation and not her magick powers.  Of course her mutant power does not help her friends escape in a confused contradiction in plot, but the results are stellar, resulting in all of the New Mutants are kept in the kitchen, being "fattened up" to be feasted upon by the Russian Witch.

Colossus comes to the rescue, defeating Azazello, Behemoth. and Koroviev from "The Master and Margarita," with out all that much trouble.  The witch proves to be much more difficult to fight, but the organic steel that Colossus's body is built out of contains enough iron to destroy the witch when they are in close proximity.  In this way the day is saved, Magick uses magick to heal her teammates, and Colossus's secret is safe as he returns to Australia after saving Illayna.  there is some important foreshadowing as a time will come soon where the forces in limbo will escape to Earth, but for now the realm of horrific monsters is safely under the girl's control.

So we have a great taste of intertextualization in this comic book where the reference to the Bulgakov novel sits side by side with an X-Men plot and an ancient Russian fairy tale.  This gives the X-Men text a lot of gravitas, but I'm afraid that like with a lot of these kinds of comic books the effect is just pearls before swine.  I had no idea what was going on when I was younger, and the allusions are so quick that there is not enough meat for deep criticism, but there is a validation that the X-Men can stand up to Russian lit and folk stories.

The characterization was also well rendered, just like the pencils of artist Rick Leonardi.  This is one of the greatest comic books of all time, as it is part of a rare vintage in their late eighties dominance of the comic book form.  Reading these was like a trip down memory lane with a wonderful surprise for an English major to stumble upon for added fun.  Good day, blessed be, and read more comics!