Magic Cards that Should Fly, But Don't

By Your Birthday, I Expect a Flying Prototype

The gift of flight is one that we humans have always coveted. 

We've built all kinds of machines to imitate what birds and bats and bugs can do from birth, and because we're humans, once we've perfected those machines, we slowly make them worse over time in the name of profits. But flying is flying, even if it's crammed into a steel hot dog with the worst 100 people to ever walk the earth, or soar above it on their way to Las Vegas. 

We like to make assumptions about flight based on certain anatomical features. If it's got wings, it probably flies. Ignore the ostrich. If it's in the air, it probably wants to be. Just don't ask the whale from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 

The art of Magic: The Gathering is no different. There are many examples of cards that depict creatures that, for all intents and purposes, should have flying, but, according to the little text box just below it, do not. 

There's also a card called simply Flight, with a Fifth Edition printing that famously features a flying zebra, but that's the opposite problem.

Whippoorwill

The most famous and egregious offender in this regard is the Whippoorwill. Perhaps it's our fault for assuming that a bird in the air got there by flying. Maybe it's just really good at jumping. Maybe it wandered onto and triggered an elaborate catapult-like trap. We may never know. But we do know that what we're looking at is a bird seemingly soaring through the sky, despite the word "flying" not appearing anywhere on the card.

We also know that a whippoorwill is a real bird that does in fact fly. It's also pretty goofy-looking:

It gets its name in much the same way that Pokemon do, by screaming it into the night endlessly.

Despite the card not featuring flying, the rest of the text is actually pretty accurate to folklore surrounding the weird little guy. According to legend, a whippoorwill can sense a soul leaving a human body and can snatch it out of the ether on its way to wherever it was going. If you're a Lovecraft fan, you've already heard about this, as it's showcased in The Dunwich Horror. 

There are plenty of non-flying birds in Magic, but the rest of them make sense. They're either little baby birds, like Roc Hatchling or Fledgling Osprey, or they're ground-lovers, like Bronzebeak Moa or Darba. There are also a few bird-adjacent abominations.

Sovereigns of Lost Alara

What's the difference between the act of flying, and the act of floating? Or hovering? Is there any? Is Levitation considered flying? According to Magic, it does.

So what do clouds do? 

They're in the sky and seemingly resistant to gravity. Statistically speaking, you can probably see one right now, just hanging suspended in the sky. Looming. If those clouds are shaped like people, are those people flying? Or are Sovereigns of Lost Alara people shaped like clouds?

It doesn't help that the card is blue and white, a color combination that historically heavily features flying creatures. But Sovereigns of Lost Alara does not fly. The sky might be its domain, judging by the art, but we have no idea how it got there or continues being there. One argument could be that, from our perspective, there's no telling just how high in the sky they are. Maybe they're not clouds, but fog, and what's fog but a cloud come crashing down to the earth?

If we look at other Alara art done by Donato Giancola, however, that argument doesn't hold as much vaporized water. 

Overbeing of Myth

We're looking at the Magic Online promo art of Overbeing of Myth because it specifically looks like it should fly. There's also a paper version:

Again, we have clouds in the art and a general wispyness that seems to imply feet that are not touching the ground. We also have a couple owls who (who, who) appear mid-flight. There's a lot going on with this particular version of the Eventide demi-god, and it all points to the sky. The regular art for the card isn't quite as bold, but again, show me those feet. (ed. note: people might get the wrong idea with this, Nick.)

It gets even more muddled when we look at Favor of the Overbeing, which is a gift that the entity can bestow in the form of an Aura:

This does say flying, in the sense that the Overbeing can provide the gift of flying for others. But it doesn't fly on its own? There can be a scenario in which the Overbeing of Myth is enchanted with its own favor, giving itself flying. Or in other words, the "vantage point of the divine."

And don't get me started on the green half of Favor of the Overbeing providing a boon of vigilance. That's another article entirely.

Blinking Spirit

We're starting to see a pattern here. Other than Whippoorwill, every creature we're talking about so far is a Spirit. In the entirety of Magic, there are 256 cards that are either flying Spirits or can become flying Spirits, a la Behold the Unspeakable. Another 97 cards can create a flying Spirit token, including Avacyn's Collar, the symbol of her church.

Conversely, there are 381 cards that are Spirits but don't fly, and 40 cards can create Spirit tokens that are ground-based. So the idea that Magic's Spirits are a generally airborne bunch is just factually incorrect. The problem, though, is that most of the non-flying Spirits don't have wings like Blinking Spirit.

Everything about the art here says "flying." I know we discussed previously that wings do not a flying creature make, but come on. Look at the little guy. It doesn't even have feet. 

Designers might have recognized the error of their ways with this one, though, since for future printings they employed the same artist to do a new version:

It's still pretty abstract in its bits and pieces, but the wings are noticeably excised. What it lost in wings it gained in bumblebee friends, which, despite physics and logic, do fly, but poorly enough that it can be assumed this depiction is only a few inches off the ground.

Void Stalker

It's an Elemental, not a Spirit, but the two creature types are very similar in terms of "it looks like whatever the art director and artist feel like it should look like." And for Void Stalker, it's clear that they felt it should look like an octopus. 

Octopodes do not fly, thank God. In terms of Void Stalker, though, at a glance we would assume that this art was taking place above the horizon, not below the sea, and its effect, which steals a creature and whisks it away, seems like a very "flying" thing to do. And how would an octopus fly? By spinning really fast, of course.

Now that the creature type "cephalid" has been retconned into being simply "octopus", the door's open for more flying octopuses, like Cephalid Scout. 

Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp

You might consider this one cheating, since technically for the low, low cost of one white mana, Zabaz can fly. But just look at that art and tell me how that makes sense. 

Think of a regular bird not named whippoorwill. Like, a sparrow or something. It certainly can fly, but more often than not, when you see it, it's probably just chilling in a tree, decidedly not flying at that moment. Would Magic not still consider that good enough to earn the "flying" ability? Do creatures have to be actively flying for their entire existence to be considered "flying" creatures?

So, sorry if Zabaz has to convert energy in the form of a white mana into upward mobility. Surely a Crimson Roc has to eat a horse or whatever so it has the energy to take off from the cliffside where it lives. You don't see that card say "sacrifice a horse" anywhere on it.

This all makes the case of Coastal Hornclaw that much more confusing:

Is it considered flying to consume the very earth beneath your feet? 

Iname, Death Aspect and Iname, Life Aspect

We'll go back to the spirit realm one last time to talk about these two mega-spirits. Neither have flying, despite the clear evidence of yes-wings and no-feet, and when you smush them together, you get Iname as One, which also features those attributes.

Imagine for a moment, if you would, what it would be like to see either the Death or Life Aspect of Iname in real life. We know it doesn't fly, and it doesn't have legs, so it would be slithering while pulling itself along with its spindly arms. It would also probably be screaming. Its wings would be dragging behind it, vestigial and useless. Every yank from a bony claw would displace the earth as it inches closer and closer to you. I don't know about you, but I'd rather the damn thing just fly. 

More accurately translated as 'falling slowly'

This is just a small sample of all the Magic cards that look like they should fly, but don't. I am confident that you'll tell me of more, and I'm looking forward to it. Perhaps a Vivid Flying Fish makes the cut.