Magma Man

aka: Magma Cum Laude

Of course, there can be Magma-Women, too!

"Fools dig for water, corpses, or gold. The earth's real treasure is far deeper."

— Grim Lavamancer, Magic: The Gathering

A character who has power over all things igneous: magma, lava, and hot rocks. They can either liquefy ordinary rocks, control the flows of a perpetually active volcano, or simply manifest the hot heavy stuff ex nihilo. This can be considered a combination of Dishing Out Dirt and Playing with Fire, and is often an Elemental Fusion of these two in-universe; a character with power over lava might possess these powers separately as well, or two separate characters with these abilities might use a lava-based Combination Attack.

A Sub-Trope of Lava Adds Awesome. Compare Living Lava, and Elemental Embodiment of lava that may or may not be able to control lava separate from their own body.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In episode 23 of Daitarn 3, Villain of the Week Jenoba uses rituals to control volcanic eruptions to cause destruction in populated areas. Her battleships can pierce the ground to reach magma chambers and spew the stuff out without relying on the location of volcanoes. Jenoba's Megaborg form can shoot scorching rocks from her fingers that function as heat-seeking missiles.
• Marco Maldini from The Law of Ueki has the power to convert tomatoes that he throws into magma.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid has Volcanic Blaze, a powerful, ranged, eruption spell that comes out from the ground that the target is standing on. Harry/Halley Tribeca developed it as a secret trump card to use against Victoria or Sieglinde, but she was forced to use it against Rio when Rio managed to back her into a corner.
• The Lava Release in Naruto is a Kekkei Genkai created by combining Fire and Earth chakra. Mei Terumi (the fifth Mizukage), Kurotsuchi (the granddaughter of the Third Tsuchikage), and Dodai (an elder shinobi from the Cloud Village) were all born with it, and Roshi has it by virtue of Son Goku (the Four-Tailed Monkey) sealed inside of him. Naruto later gains it himself after absorbing Son Goku's chakra along with those of the other Tailed Beasts. Besides magma, it's also shown to include control of quicklime and, in Dodai's case, rubber (or at least lava that he can make very rubber-like).
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Fate Averruncus' strongest spell, Terra Findens, causes a huge explosion of lava. It's powerful enough to match Negi's Khilipl Astrape.
• Admiral Akainu from One Piece possesses a Devil Fruit called the Mag Mag Fruit. It grants him the ability to control, generate, and become magma. By becoming magma, as with all Logias, he achieves Blob Monster-style Nigh-Invulnerability, as conventional attacks will simply be absorbed into or pass through his magma-fied body doing nothing to him at best, or severely wounding/crippling the attacker at worst. It goes without saying that Akainu is extremely powerful, being one of very few character present at Marineford who was capable of killing Whitebeard in a one on one fight. He's also a Knight Templar extraordinaire.
• Saint Seiya the Asgard Arc has Hagen, a God Warrior with both magma powers.
• 3×3 Eyes has Chi Luo (Red Net), the guardian of the inter-dimensional passage known as Kunlun/Kong Rong situated in the Himalaya. He's essentially a giant Blob Monster made of searing magma that rises up to burn to death all those who try to reach the inner sanctum without the required Key.
• Takeru from Snow White and Seven Dwarfs is capable of generating heat and magma with his right arm, typically resulting in Stuff Blowing Up.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The Triple Contact Fusion of Elemental HERO Neos, Neo-Spacian Flare Scarab and Neo-Spacian Grand Mole is Elemental HERO Magma Neos. He can charge a meteor-like magma ball with his left hand and throw it.

Card Games

• Chaotic:
  • Magmon's home is a lake sized Lava Pit.
  • This is made more apparent and cooler looking in the animated series that focuses around the card game.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The color Red is strongly associated with earth and especially with fire; when its take on wizardry isn't being represented with pyromancers, lavamancers such as Ghitu Lavarunner, Grim Lavamancer or Magmatic Channeler are used instead.
    "Fools dig for water, corpses, or gold. The earth's real treasure is far deeper." — Grim Lavamancer
  • The Vulshok of Mirrodin can range from simple Volcanic Veins up to this.
  • The Planeswalker Nahiri, aka the Lithomancer, is a rare White aligned example (lava is usually Red's domain), melting rocks to forge weapons from the metal within.

Comic Books

• Minor villain Magmaniac from Invincible. He's one half of a villainous duo alongside Tether Tyrant.
• Magma from New Mutants, who also has the full range of fire powers at her disposal. She can create earthquakes too, but this is simply the logical side effect of bringing magma to the surface. Professor X once noted that training her is difficult due to the inevitable property damage her powers cause.
• Volcana from the Marvel Universe. Also in her name.
• Long before any of the above appeared, the subterranean Lava Men attacked The Mighty Thor.
• Spider-Man has a villain called the Molten Man. He is mostly-reformed these days and has helped Spidey out a few times.
• The Red Volcano ("brother" of the Red Tornado) from The DCU controls both unheated earth and rock and molten magma.
• Robin (1993): Krakatoa is a villain with a body made out of magma with a crumbling hard outer shell. His heat makes him a liability for those he's trying to team up with when he tries to fight Robin, Ragman and Blue Devil alongside some other villains.
• The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior has Moltar and his Magma Men minions, who are evil beings of magma unlike Moltar's brother Crystar and other heroes, who are all Crystalline Creatures.
• A race of lava creatures lives deep under the Earth's surface in Savage Dragon. One is even a member of the supervillain army Vicious Circle.
• Wild C.A.T.s (WildStorm) antagonist Slag, a member of the Troika.
• Wonder Woman (2006): Pele, as the goddess of among other things volcanoes, uses lava in her somewhat misguided attack on Diana.

Comic Strips

• The Wacky Adventures of Pedro: Pedro has a run-in with some Lava Lizards while on IO.

Fan Works

• Daylight Burning: Nightmare Sun can spontaneously create and control molten rock, such as by making balls of lava to throw at her foes or fighting with whips of molten rock.
• Dance with the Demons: Geo-Force can control all kind of rocks, including molten magma.
  The floor beneath them continued to crack, and the crack reached deep into the Earth itself. From it, Brion Markov summoned the molten rock that undergirds its cooled and hardened crust.
• Journey to Raftel has, of all people, Nami, who ate a Mythical Zoan Devil Fruit heavily implied to be the Hito Hito no Mi: Model: Pele. She's fairly stronger than in canon.
• In ManhattanTheory's Fairy Tail fic Necrophobia, which you can find through here, Samerina Volcuzas is one, being a Magma God Slayer.
• Pokémon Wack: The Magma type is introduced. Unsurprisingly, the primary type of Heatran (a Legendary Pokémon made up of magma and lives in volcanos) has been changed from Fire to Magma, and its Secret Art Magma Storm (as well as Lava Plume, another move it often uses) are now Magma type.
• In War of the Biju, besides canon examples like Mei and Kurostuchi, the Second Raikage is known for his use of Lava Release.

Films — Animation

• The Firebird in Fantasia 2000, a giant bird made of lava.
• The Lava Titan, Pyros, from Disney's Hercules.
• In the How to Train Your Dragon film series, the Gronckles and some other Boulder Class dragons don't have an actual fire breath. Instead, they eat rocks and metal, heat them to melting point in their stomachs, and vomit them up as lava.
• Te Kā in Moana appears as an Anthropomorphic Personification of all things volcanic, at least until the Heart of Te Fiti is restored to her, and she changes back to her former self.
• In Incredibles 2, one new super that appears is Reflux, an Old Superhero that spews molten lava from his mouth.

Films — Live-Action

• The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl: Lavagirl, obviously.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) depicts Rodan as a pterosaur-like beast whose skin is augmented by an outer layer of volcanic sediment, and whose insides appear like molten lava, while ash and cinder trail from his wings. Appropriately enough, he's initially found sleeping in an active volcano, submerged in the magma.
• The Lord of the Rings depicts the Balrog as a giant creature made of magma and lava. The animated version portrayed it as more of a minotaur with wings.
• Wrath of the Titans features Kronos, who takes the form of a walking volcano monster.

Literature

• Karon of The Spirit Thief is a lava spirit who, when let out, takes a form of a giant human made of magma.

Live-Action TV

• The Pyroviles from the Doctor Who episode "The Fires of Pompeii".
• A recurring character on The Good Place is Todd, a lava monster who works at the Bad Place.
• In an episode of Grimm Nick and company battle a Volcanalis, a magma monster who kills people who take stones from the rims of dormant volcanoes without showing proper respect.
• The very first Monster of the Week from Kamen Rider Double was the Magma Dopant.
  • In Kamen Rider Build, Kamen Rider Cross-Z's final form had magma-based powers.
• The Excalbians from Star Trek: The Original Series live on a Lethal Lava Land planet.
• Several Ultra Series kaiju possess lava/magma-based powers
  • Golza from Ultraman Tiga is able to absorb lava in order to become the even more powerful Fire Golza, who has Volcanic Veins and the ability to shoot fire from his forehead.
  • Giralen from Ultraman Dyna is made of lava and possesses a fiery Breath Weapon. However, he's also very slow, so all Dyna had to do to defeat him was simply change to his Miracle Type.
  • Sodom from the same series lives in the veins of active volcanoes and controls eruptions by creating tunnels to divert magma, making him a less destructive example than most.
  • Grangon from Ultraman Max lived inside a volcano for centuries and is able to breath fire. But more potently, being immersed in lava heals any of his wounds and can even revive him from the dead!

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The Para-elemental Plane of Magma in 1st and 2nd Edition is at the intersection of the planes of Earth and Fire, and is home to magma paraelementals and the small and imp-like magma mephits. 3.5 has magmins, a type of humanoid elemental made out of magma. The 4th Edition Monster Manual has an entire section devoted to lava monsters, including a fifteen-foot-high lava strider/spider. 4th edition also has the Stonefire Rager Paragon Path for barbarians. As of 5th Edition, although there is no dedicated Plane of Magma, this kind of elemental creatures still originate where the planes of Fire and Earth come in contact and their respective elements collide and fuse.
• Fabula Ultima: The Volcano spell, which can only be obtained by mastering the Elementalist class, summons a wave of magma to crash over your enemies for heavy, resistance- and immunity-ignoring fire damage.

Toys

• Gormiti has an entire faction dedicated to this, with more figures than any single other faction.

Video Games

• The Volcania boss in The Adventures of Rad Gravity.
• Kronos from Age of Mythology, ten years before Wrath of the Titans did the same.
• The Gohma from Asura's Wrath are monsters made out of magma and rock. It's because they are the antibodies of the world and are lead by the will of the planet, Gohma Vlitra.
• The Stage 5 boss in Axelay.
• Ozzy Osbourne as The Guardian Of Metal in Brütal Legend can transform into and from lava. Although he is never seen doing much else.
• One team attack in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin summons a volcano that shoots lava at the enemies.
• Child of Light has the living humanoid mountain Magna, whose insides are made up of volcanic caverns.
• Magmites from City of Heroes.
• Dark Souls has a few powerful fire based abilities, aptly named pyromancy, and chaos pyromancy in particular causes pools of lava should they impact solid ground. Played straight, however, with the magma giant Ceaseless Discharge, who constantly oozes lava from his open wounds.
• Diablo II has the Druid with attacks such as Volcano, Fissure and Molten Boulder.
• In Dissidia Final Fantasy and its prequel Dissidia 012, Chaos and his One-Winged Angel form Feral Chaos use a lot of fire attacks with a visual theme closer to lava and magma than the fire attacks of other characters, such as fireballs that appear to be meteors wreathed in flame, and summoning plumes of fire from the ground.
• In one section of Dragon's Lair, these appear as enemies. They will turn you into one of them by tackling you.
• Dragon Quest IX has various magma enemies, amorphous blobs of the stuff with a single arm and a face.
• Drakan has the dragon Arokh's final power being a Magma Breath Weapon. It's Awesome, but Impractical in that while it's Arokh's most damaging attack, it's also slow-moving and uses the most energy.
• Dwarf Fortress has Magma Men. And Fire Men. And Fire Imps. And dwarfs themselves are very capable of building a giant cannon that shoots a spray of magma. Or simply flood the outside world (or their own fortress) with the stuff. Notably, the Required Secondary Powers to let such creatures live in magma but also survive coming out of it to menace your dwarves means they don't need to breathe and (for Fire Men and Magma Men) can emit heat without changing their own temperature, meaning putting them in water will do nothing but boil it... unless you pour magma into the water and make obsidian. All three are naturally occurring golems and therefore feel no pain, emotions, or exertion but can be beaten to "death". A fire man or imps is a Glass Cannon, dishing out a world of "Fun" while being so weak that a dwarf baby could beat them to death... and then die from the explosion.
• Obsidius, a monster created for Godzilla Unleashed, is a creature born of rock and magma given life by space crystals. His breath weapon is a stream of lava fired from his mouth, and he is immune to the lava in Seattle and resistant to fire-based weapons.
• Golden Sun:
  • Mars Adepts and Venus Adepts have access to the Volcano and Gaia Psynergy series respectively, the former causing pillars o fmagma to erupt from the ground and the latter the ground to break and some kind of energy attack the enemy from below.
  • The Samurai class family, which has aspects of multiple elements but takes some micromanaging to get into, gets the Lava Shower series.
  • However, you're most likely to see Volcano-series Psynergy in action in the first two games, because the main antagonists are from the aptly-named Mars Clan.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 9 features a boss with this exact name. His weapon is the Magma Bazooka. Despite the name, he's more of a standard fire-based villain than a fire/earth combo, and his Bazooka shoots run-of-the-mill fireballs (though quite powerful fireballs at that).
  • Mega Man X 4 has Magma Dragoon, who also used fire.
• The denizens of the planet Firim from Meteos can control the fiery planet's deep lava flows at will.
• Spire from Metroid Prime: Hunters. His body is made of stone, and his signature weapon is the Magmaul, a gun which fires blasts of magma.
• The elder dragon Zorah Magdaros from Monster Hunter: World can be succinctly described as a walking volcano.
• Mortal Kombat
  • Hotaru, the Mortal Kombat universe's resident Lawful Stupid, has this power.
  • Upon his return in Mortal Kombat X, Tremor is able to shoot molten rock in his Metallic variation.
• A few such enemies can be encountered in Fire Mountain in Mother 3, such as Magman◊ (a sentient mini-volcano that can generate Pyreflies), and Mrs. Lava◊ (a blob of lava that looks like an old woman, and has high-level fire attacks).
• No Straight Roads: The Final Boss Tatiana is one of these, as she demonstrates in her final phase. Her cracked white skin is actually a layer of igneous rock. This is also a clue as to her true identity.
• King Onyx from Odin Sphere normally appears as a red-skinned, white haired humanoid, but his true form is a massive minotaur made of lava.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has the Lava Guava, which erupts in an area then leaves a patch of lava that deals heavy Damage Over Time on the spot it was planted in.
• Pokémon:
  • The attacks Eruption, Lava Plume, Magma Storm and Earth Power: the first three are Fire-type attacks, and the last one is Ground-type.
  • The Pokémon Magmar is vaguely man-shaped, and is made of fire and magma.
  • The Pokémon Camerupt is a camel with two volcanoes as its humps. Needless to say, it can learn all three mentioned attacks.
  • Heatran, a salamander-like being made of steel and lava. It, too, can use all three moves (albeit unlike with Camerupt, Eruption is a special event move only for this Pokémon), and has the signature move "Magma Storm".
  • Groudon has this theme going on as well, even though it's normally a pure Ground-type (It gains a fire typing when it undergoes primal reversion). It's associated with land and the expansion of continents, thus, volcanic eruptions (its starting moveset when you capture it includes Eruption).
  • Slugma and Magcargo might be the best examples — being of the Fire/Rock typing, they're a slug and a snail made of magma.
• In Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2, in the pyramid stage, when Sparkster enters the pyramid, there are pits of lava. From one of them, a fire elemental emerges, and Sparkster must therefore defeat it before proceeding any further.
• Shovel Knight has Mole Knight who emphasizes on the "fired up dirt-disher" variety: while he has a red armor with a little flame on the top of his helmet, and while his area is a Lethal Lava Land with fire enemies, it's also an underground level where you have to dig deeper, and as a boss, his attacks consist of Fast Tunnelling, square rocks and lava projectiles.
• Singular Stone has Magma Miku, an insane half of Miku when her dormant crystal body was accidentally split in half. Her twintails is crimson red and has Volcanic Veins below her eyes. She tries to cause mass volcanic eruption across the entire planet, potentially destroying the world.
• Skylanders: One of the core Fire Skylanders is a lava monster named Eruptor, who can launch lava blobs, spread his body like an erupting volcano, and spit out massive magma balls. Later versions also have him combine this with Vomit Indiscretion Shot to either vomit massive streams of lava or barf up a large number of magma balls that turn into pools of magma once they hit the ground. However, he has no earth associations due to that being a separate element.
• In Vectorman 2, the boss of Stage 7: "Turn Up the Heat" is an anthropomorphic lava monster.
• One monster in Undertale, Vulkin, is a miniature volcano with legs. It wants to be a Helpful Mook, but sadly its belief that its magma has healing properties is entirely unfounded.
• War of the Monsters has Magmo, a four-armed being created out of magma and rock and utilizes both in its attacks.
• Firelords, Downloadable Content Neutral Heroes from Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, spawn lava monsters and have Volcano as an ultimate spell.
  • World of Warcraft has Ragnaros - a giant elemental Firelord made of fire, being summoned into Azeroth through a pool of magma and having some appropriate attacks. He is the Final Boss of the Molten Core raid.
  • Neltharion, aka Deathwing, was changed into a Magma Dragon due to the powers of the Demon Soul. His interior is white-hot magma which threatens to blow him apart, causing him to cover himself with special armor that helps contain his incalculable power. As shown in the Cataclysm cinematic, he constantly oozes lava from the cracks in his skin and seams of his armor.
  • A rare-spawn beast that came with Cataclysm is Terrorpene, a turtle that lives in lava and looks like a living volcano.◊ As a mob he has a powerful Fire Beam that does a lot of damage. He can also be tamed by Hunters.
  • Also from Cataclysm, Firelands bosses Lord Rhyolith and Baleroc also qualify, along with the return of Ragnaros as Final Boss (and this time he has legs and gets up on them in the second part of his Boss Battle).
• Wrath Unleashed has Fire Giant units in the Light Chaos army. Epothos, the Hero Unit of that army, also has magma powers in his arsenal.
• The Gularth in Xenoblade Chronicles X are walking titans made of lava and rock that use powerful fire-based attacks and are exclusive to Cauldros. To a lesser extent, the Millesaurs can be seen as walking volcanoes due to the large volcano-shaped port on their back, the obsidian-based materials they drop, and because some of their attacks launch blobs of fiery material.

Web Comics

• Captus Cinematic Universe: The leader of the Planetary Protectors, Rockie, is able to create lava both willingly and unwillingly depending on the situation.
• Grrl Power: Part of the funding for ARCHON come from an anonymous donor who, by his own admission, used his geokinesis to draw out several tons of pure gold from the Earth's core, which he then stashed in a vast cavern he created (and lives in part of the time) several miles below the crust. He is careful to never use very much of the gold, lest it draw too much attention or destabilize the economy, but he gave the agency a significant sum to show that he wasn't intending to give them any trouble.
• Sleepless Domain: Gwen and Sally, two of the magical girls of Team Alchemical, have powers over earth and fire, respectively. They can combine their powers to generate and control molten rock, in a Combination Attack they've named "Lava Whatever"^note Sally isn't very creative when it comes to naming things, and Gwen just doesn't care.

Web Original

• Dreamscape: Jenna can shoot balls of lava.
• How to Hero makes mention of robot lava monsters.
• In New Vindicators, misguided teen villain turned hero Felsic has the power to turn into a magma form.
• While Let's Play-ing Sonic Unleashed, the LPers jokingly reason that:
  1. Sonic's werehog form and stretchy arms are a result of him absorbing some of Dark Gaia's power.
  2. Dark Gaia lives under the Earth, where there is magma.
  3. Magma, a viscous fluid, is stretchy.
  4. Therefore, Sonic the Werehog is made of magma.
• Phoenixfire of the Whateley Universe. And her mom. And they can both form a huge sword of the stuff.
  • Unreliable Narrator Mephisto the Mentalist claimed that the reason so many super-spy organizations in the 1960s and 1970s had a Volcano Lair was because they could contract it out to a super-villain called Volcanax, who was a Devisor as well as having lava-control powers. He would just go to some distant point in the ocean, draw up a large amount of magma, and then once it was cooled enough he would install equipment to keep it from collapsing back down without him constantly maintaining it personally. Of course, being the product of Mad Science, the equipment itself was unstable and pretty easy for any intruder to wreck, which is why the islands would always explode just as the hero is getting away...
• DSBT InsaniT: Killer Monster can create Lava Pits to either attack or defend, and can make them burst in a pillar of lava. He also has powers over fire.

Western Animation

• Angel Wars: A demon named Discord has this aesthetic, and has the ability to encase angels and starships in obsidian. However, this is downplayed in that, apart from his World-Wrecking Wave ship-based weaponry, he mostly has sound-related abilities instead of fire- or heat-based abilities, at least when he's on foot.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, three past Avatars (including Kyoshi) have been seen bending magma or lava. Episode commentary revealed that this is a combination of Firebending and Earthbending.
  • Ghazan from The Legend of Korra is only an earthbender, but manages to superheat rock regardless, apparently substituting friction for firebending, then bend the resulting lava. This makes him the first character shown to bend lava who is not an Avatar. Bolin manages to bend existing lava in the season finale, and is shown in the following season to be able to make his own. A comment made by Toph suggests there are more who can do the same (whether or not she can do it is unknown), but it's still an incredibly rare talent.
    • The one-shot graphic novel Toph Beifong's Metalbending Academy reveals Toph encountered a young lavabender named Sun a couple of years after the original series. Sun's lavabending is powerful, but he can't fully control it, so Toph offers him a place in her academy so he can improve his earthbending.
• Heatblast, one of Ben's original alien forms in Ben 10.
• Volcana from the DC Animated Universe. Debuted in Superman: The Animated Series, returned in Justice League.
• From Dexter's Laboratory, the first installment of "Dial M For Monkey" has Monkey fight Magmanamous, a lava giant who just wants to go to sleep.
• The Lava Demons from the My Little Pony 'n Friends serial "Quest of the Princess Ponies".
• Moltar, originally one of Space Ghost's rogues gallery, rehired to direct Space Ghost Coast to Coast and later Toonami, although he doesn't use his powers in the latter two.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V", the major characters get superpowers by dressing up in the attires of previous allies of Mermaid Man. Squidward becomes Captain Magma, a superhero with a volcano on his head from which he can shoot fire and lava. Of course, considering the nature of the show, the lava ends up on SpongeBob and sets him on fire. Underwater.
  "Krakatoa!"
• Steven Universe's Obsidian, the fusion of Steven (and previously Rose), Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, is a towering eight-armed giant of a fusion who is, at the very least, about a dozen stories tall. They're also made of lava, with a cool black shell for skin and fiery fissure lines running along their body. They have giant fiery holes for eyes and two mouths, at least one of which opens to a magma chamber. When they summon their weapon, it's a hilt—and by sticking the hilt into the magma-filled mouth and withdrawing it, it becomes a blade of red-hot obsidian.
• In The Tick, Magmamen are the dreaded enemy of the Molemen.
• Lord Dominator from Wander over Yonder can shoot blasts of an elemental called "Volcanium X" from the arms of her armor. It has the consistency of lava, which bends to her will, but doesn't seem to actually be hot unless she wants it to be. She powers all her technology with it, and drains it from planet cores.

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"Krakatoa!"

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