Seriously if there is a twist I think it's in the fact that Magician's power is illuisons and not reality warping. Making him no match at all for Pheonix, making his death at Jean's hands...well not sad for me I hate the guy, but Jean's conscience will tear her apart even more.
Other than maybe that...I really don't think there's a twist. And the illusion thing is a reach man.
The character himself...meh he's a watered down Syndrome from Incrediables. I've seen this type of character and I've seen it done better. Kirkman's normally great writing is off and on in Ultimate X-Men. I think his sucess is getting him more jobs and he's used to not turning down a job and as such he has way too much of a workload, and we're lucky we're not getting something worse.
That said. He was talking about Cable a long while ago on his site. That says to me he's been thinking a long time about Ultimate Cable and that the only 3 issues of Ultimate Cable will be way better than the 9 Magician issues.
Even the annual's plot between Nightcrawler and Dazzler does nothing for me. Nightcrawler's set up for the great big fall here. Dazzler, while maybe not too faithful (we simply don't know since she's only been with Angel here), will not like Nightcrawler. In the Longshot arc she jumped Nightcrawler's case over what he said about Colossus and there's no chemistry between the two at all. She even asked for where Angel was when she woke up!
I'd really like to see Nightcrawler hook up with someone...but not Dazzler. And as such I really don't want to watch Nightcrawler get kicked around emotionally for an issue. OR see Nightcrawler and Dazzler getting together...in a rather forced way IMO.
