#ironically it’s Ayala bringing back the illusion part of Mirage’s powers and exploring that

[daisyachain]

I do wish X-Books leaned into powers more. There are a lot of major characters with complex or tricky mutations whose powers get dumbed down for quick fights or because writers hop from one project to the next without actually reading up on the characters.

First up, Mirage’s powers of paralyzing people through personalized fears offers a chance to dig into the minds of opponents as well as to explore the horror side of superpowers, but they get summed up as ‘psychic arrows cause shocks.’ New Mutants V. 1 and V. 2 used her powers as major tool in exploring the characters around her and used her reaction to the those revelations as a way to further her own development.

Karma often gets hit with the ‘story-breaking’ designation and so writers nerf her rather than letting her mind-control powers work as designed. There are ways to keep her from interfering with the story by leaning into the powers rather than ignoring them. She could be reluctant to use them, since she’s a victim of mind control herself. It could be hard to fully control a mind, she might have to sacrifice fine motor control in order to control more people. It might be harder to control her own body when one mind is split between several bodies.

Even the more popular Sunspot gets flattened out to flying brick powerset. The original idea of ‘strong, not invulnerable’ doesn’t make much sense, but there were ways to work around that other than a straight-up retcon. His powers coming from the sun is also something that invites exploration. The sun is a nearly infinite power source, so how much can be siphon off? Can he store it? Why don’t antagonists just target him at night? How can he learn to modulate the levels of power he takes? Ewing experiments with the idea of variable power levels in US Avengers, but again it’s dropped the moment other writers step in.

Obvs this applies to most B- and C-list X-characters, but it’s especially clear that the New Mutants were introduced to have powers that were odd, specific, and hard-to-use, and that those concepts got dropped fast.