Phoenix #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PHOENIX #4
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX:
Jean has volunteered to help out Captain Marvel, presumably as part of her ongoing efforts at rehabilitation. Instead, Carol invites her to a festival. Carol thinks Jean is overworking herself in an attempt to atone for something that wasn’t really her fault anyway. Carol argues that while Jean seems to have control of the Phoenix, she’s still afraid of it and needs to overcome that in order to really have control
GUEST STAR:
Captain Marvel is basically here to serve as a sounding board and warn Jean not to burn herself out. She mainly references rebuilding her own life after losing her identity to Rogue, but her concern about burnout and self-control might resonate more with her late-90s alcoholism storyline.
SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:
The Galactic Council – basically an intergalactic diplomatic talking shop – is mainly a Guardians of the Galaxy thing, though several of the diplomats also showed up in X-Men Red. Their base, the New Proscenium, appears here for the first time – the original Proscenium was another diplomatic conference centre, and was destroyed in the last run of Guardians.
The members here are:
- Nymbis Sternhoof, representing the Kymellians, whose only previous appearances were in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 6 #7-8 and SWORD vol 2 #6 (and is thus making her first appearance outside an Al Ewing comic).
- Mentacle, a Rigellian telepath who debuted in Avengers #676 and again was last seen in SWORD #6.
- Paibok the Power Skrull, representing the Kree/Skrull Empire, who was hanging around on the fringes of Arakko stories during the Krakoan era and was last seen in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #103.
- Smasher from the Shi’ar Empire, Cannonball’s wife
- Kuga, the Empress of the Zn’rx (the race that Power Pack called the Snarks), who became empress during SWORD vol 2 #5 thanks to the machinations of Abigail Brand.
VILLAINS / ANTAGONISTS:
Since Smasher is representing the Shi’ar Empire, presumably Gladiator is not actually a member of the Council. But as he’s still high up in the Empire, it seems unlikely that he’d be making this pitch without the Shi’ar government being on board to some degree. He’s arguing that Phoenix is too dangerous to be allowed to wander around lawlessly, which isn’t an entirely unreasonable point as far as it goes. However, Gladiator has been somewhat obsessive about Phoenix in the past, and the Shi’ar in general have tended to see Phoenix as a dangerous threat, even more than other alien races.
Gladiator has allied himself with Perrikus, who said last issue that his agenda was to deal with “others in this galaxy wielding powers that do not belong to them”, presumably meaning Phoenix.
Gorr the God-Butcher has been roped in by Perrikus to fight Phoenix, apparently in order to prove his point about her power levels. Gorr lures her to the Temple of Creation, which seems to be unrelated to the Quarry of Creation from last issue. Then he kills her in battle, only for her to pop back up, because she’s Phoenix.
Gorr is a villain from Jason Aaron’s Thor run, who was tied in to the symbiote mythos during King in Black. Much like Adani, Gorr is a disillusioned anti-religionist who resents gods for their treatment of the world; his definition of a god seems to be based on power level rather than follower count, and so he considers Jean to qualify. Gorr died in Thor: God of Thunder #11, which he refers to here and handwaves away, claiming that despite all appearances, his connection to his symbiote was made stronger than ever.
Adani shows up briefly as narrator to spell out the parallels between Gorr’s origin and her own back story – and claim that she won’t be making the same mistakes.
OTHER REFERENCES:
Page 4: “Throneworld II”. As the caption says, this is the current capital of the Kree/Skrull Alliance, introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021. It’s built in the ruins of the Kree homeworld Hala.
Page 5 panel 1: “collapsing black holes, dying suns, Asgardian zombie armies, lying fathers-in-law or generals trying to build Thanos an army”. Recapping the plot of issues #1-3, which apparently just took a week.
Page 6 panel 1: “a cosmic entity that took complete possession of your person and committed atrocities in your name”. The Dark Phoenix Saga is a little more complicated than that, since it was retconned in such a way as to try and maintain the idea that Dark Phoenix was in some sense still Jean. But it’s a fairly conventional reading that Jean wasn’t at fault in failing to control Phoenix at that point. (Ironically, the more later stories demonstrate that Jean can control it, the harder it becomes to make that argument…)
“Recovering from having my powers and memories taken and learning to control my Binary form…” Carol’s powers and memories were removed by Rogue in Avengers Annual #10. She became Binary in Uncanny X-Men #164.
Page 11 panel 3: “Terminating the entire human bloodline of the Phoenix”. Uncanny X-Men #466-467 (2005).
Paul, you keep misspelling Adani Adina.
A lot of people didn’t like the explanation Carol gave about the Phoenix being a separate entity from Jean, because the entire point of X-Men Forever was that the Phoenix was a part of Jean. Hence. the Pheonix’s “mother-me” remark. Although, Jean refers to “that part of me” in response to Carol’s statement, suggesting that the Phoenix is part of Jean.
Paibok claims that Gladiator was responsible for killing Jean’s family. But in X-Men: Emperor Vulcan, Rachel concluded that it was Araki who was responsible for killing the Greys.
Can someone explain to me how Gorr has All-Black back?When we last saw All-Black, it was in Dylan Brock’s possession. But Gorr claims to have merged with All-Black. So shouldn’t Gorr be Dylan’s slave? Or are there two All-Blacks?
You’re right, I’ll fix her name.
Dylan is definitely portrayed as still having All-Black in Venom, last mentioned by name in Venom 22 I believe, but visibly the same in Venom War 3 (though Dylan himself is back in his Codex form there).
So I guess the options are Phoenix #4 is taking place after Venom War, Gorr is delusional about merging with All-Black or someone has deceived Gorr (Perrikus seems the obvious candidate as we’re not getting a crossover with Venom).
I can’t help but feel like bringing in the Obsidian Order, Perrikus, and Gorr the God-Butcher is something of a comedown for all involved. I know the intent is to make this series feel like it’s taking place on an epic cosmic scale, but I just don’t -get- that feeling.
Also, I think I missed something. When did Jean and Carol ever become friends? I honestly can’t remember them ever significantly interacting.
When is the last time two established Marvel characters interacted without seeming like at least moderately good friends? Feels like once the Bendis style took over, everybody knew each other.
There was that crossover with Gerry Duggan’s X-Men about a year and a half ago. In real life dealing with life-or-death situations in deep space while threatened by the Brood would probably be something of a bonding experience.
In their case, yeah, I can see why it would be more like wednesday.
I’m a fan of Jean as a character, but just can’t get into this series. Maybe it’s because I’ve never enjoyed the cosmic stuff. I’m ready for Jean to go back home and be with Scott, even if it creates some deus ex machina problems for Jed McKay to solve.
“There was that crossover with Gerry Duggan’s X-Men”
Oh yeah. Something about the Brood? It was… not a memorable storyline.
It’s truly odd to see everyone talking about Dark Phoenix as if it came into existence entirely due to a lack of control on Jean’s part – wasn’t she brainwashed and manipulated into becoming that entity? You’d think Carol, of all people, would understand that (given her own, uh, experience with that Marcus nonsense) rather than frame the whole thing as a loss of bodily autonomy.
I’m with Diana on the reminder that Dark Phoenix was corrupted by the Hellfire Club’s machinations. And also technically the Phoenix subsumed under a copy of Jean’s personality so not necessarily equivalent to the original in terms of agency and resilience.
I know it happened when she was dead, but has Jean ever confronted the Shi’ar over slaughtering her entire extended family? I can’t remember if hey were being manipulated at the time or not, but I seem to recall no.
Or is this just one of those, “Okay, a sort-of portion of me destroyed your warships, you mostly ended my genetic bloodline, let’s call it even” situations?
People really talking like Jean-as-the-Phoenix committed an entire string of Thanos-level atrocities when all we ever saw was her destroying the asparagus people by eating their sun.
I mean… have we ever -seen- anything else specifically from that time frame? I presume the Phoenix did other bad shit BEFORE it possessed/inhabited/replaced her, otherwise the Shi’ar wouldn’t have had their feathers in a tizzy and had that dude with the big sword and um… stuff, (apparently the Rook’shir Dark Phoenix was really bad) but as Jean, the Phoenix was pretty much a hero until the D’Bari incident and Mastermind destabilizing her…
And heck, as Rachel, Phoenix was never anything but heroic.
Sure, eating a planet is a bad thing, but even if it -was- Jean, she’s nowhere near as guilty of Dark Phoenix crimes as people seem to think.
To be fair to Gladiator, the rules for Phoenix change from story to story. Jean and Rachel can usually be Phoenix just fine, whereas the Phoenix Five couldn’t even handle 20% without going batshit insane. It doesn’t make teaming up with a Dark God a less terrible idea, but he has reasons to be concerned.
I don’t know why the Shi’ar had such a fear of the Phoenix. It could just be based on a misunderstanding with their religion. They called the Phoenix “The End of All That Is” and believed their deity, the Hawk God, was the eternal enemy of the Phoenix. Their feelings about the Phoenix may be simply based in religious lore, and when the Dark Phoenix went mad by deciding to devour the D’Bari homeworld, it seemed to prove their beliefs.
As far as I remember, it was presented that the Phoenix Force had been corrupted by human emotions. It didn’t know how to deal with emotions like the negative ones experienced by humans, so after what was done to Jean by Mastermind, the Dark Phoenix was driven to madness. This made it sound like consuming the D’Bari planet was the first time the Phoenix had done anything to inspire fear.
Otherwise, the Phoenix just goes around destroying Dominions when they become problematic.
When Marvel did that retcon to Darkhawk that said his armor was actually Shi’ar and one of several, didn’t it also reveal the Fraternity of Raptors had some, either precognitive or psychohistory-type ability they’d used to guide the Shi’ar Empire from the shadows?
I guess they could have seen the Phoenix was going to oppose the Imperium at some point, and either didn’t see it was because their batshit crazy emperor was going to endanger the entire universe by unleashing a neutron galaxy (That’s what was in the M’Kraan Crystal, right?) due to the high unlikelihood of such a thing, or more likely, didn’t care why and just perceived the Phoenix as a threat that had to be accounted for.
To be clear, I’m perfectly fine with dumping every bit of that Fraternity of Raptors crap down a memory hole, but since it’s still in play as far as I know, it’s a possible explanation for the Shi’ar’s concern, if various Raptors were whispering in high-ranking officials’ ears for generations.
As far as all the characters knowing each other, I don’t mind that, especially for the ones who’ve experienced a lot of the planet-threatening dangers that tend to bring all hands on deck. I would like to see more of certain characters that can work together, but flat out don’t like each other. Say, Hawkeye or Psylocke can’t stop rolling their eyes at Namor’s self-important bluster. Or, I don’t know, Luke Cage is annoyed by Iceman or something.
You get it sometimes when characters have to deal with Deadpool or Moon Knight (though nobody seems to mind Wolverine who still periodically murders a lot of people and probably also smells terrible), and people get mad at each other for about 5 minutes during your Civil Wars and whatnot, but it usually seems like everybody’s buddy-buddy and there’s just no way they all get along.
@The Other Michael ,Luis Dantas- there was also X-men Unlimited 13, where Jean saves Carol from being possessed by the Inciters, who were trying to, um, incite her into killing billions of people. But again, at Marvel, heroes save other heroes from being mind-controlled all the time.
Also, Bendis retconned that Phoenix saved Jessica Jones when she was in a coma after the Purple Man’s manipulations. Carol later became friends with Jessica, so it’s possible Jean met Carol when Carol came to check on Jessica. But the problem is that Carol’s dialogue this issue makes it clear she doesn’t consider that Phoenix Jean.
Besides, Bendis’s Jessica Jones retcon doesn’t work. The idea is that the Purple Man had no idea how to find Daredevil so he sent Jessica to attack Avengers Mansion. The problem is that Carol is in her black costume and with the Avengers when Jessica attacks. And by that point, Purple Man already knew Daredevil was Matt Murdock.
Plus, Bendis has Nick Fury contact Professor X to get Jean to help Jessica. Which is weird because Fury didn’t meet any of the X-Men until Iron Man Annual 8 in 1986.
I can’t stand the way Bendis made it seem like everyone was always friends either. For much of their history, the X-Men were outcasts- the Avengers and Fantastic Four were friends but the X-Men, with the exception of Beast, often didn’t interact with them. The Avengers didn’t know where the Mansion was even located until Avengers 110. The original Secret Wars is a great example- Sue and Mockingbird were supporting each other when their husbands disappeared but Maddie was left to worry about Scott alone.
@Diana, M- this was a problem with female characters in Claremont’s run generally. They got a new personality as a result of being violated but it’s treated as what they really want. Tiger Tiger was transformed from a bank manager into a Dragon Lady by a white guy but the X-Men never really made an effort to restore her to her real personality. Maddie was tricked into becoming the Goblin Queen in what she thought was a dream but she never fully regained her original personality. Even Polaris’s actions when possessed by Malice were treated as her fault for a time.
@The Other Michael, MasterMahan- Rachel DID nearly destroy the universe during Secret Wars II.
What the Phoenix is, how dangerous it is, and how it connects to others (particularly Jean and Rachel) is retconned so often that you would think Marvel gets a tax rebate or something each time it happens. There is no squaring that multi-layered sometimes-circle. I’m surprised that there was not yet a story to make it explicit that there is a variety of Phoenices with various attributes that change along time and due to other circunstances.
But during the early 1980s, when Claremont first wrote about the Dark Phoenix, there was no talk of Phoenix being separate from Jean. Come to think of it, her plight was very similar to the current Beast situation. The Shiar Empire was willing to destroy Jean-as-Phoenix and the Kree and the Skrull backed them, due to some unclear mix of prophecy and pragmatic realpolitk.
To their defense, they were not lacking in justification. Phoenix had destroyed billions of people out of sheer need for feeding, and then destroyed a Shiar Destroyer with full crew almost without meaning to. Even Jean herself fully admitted that she could not risk attempting to contain the destructive impulses of the Phoenix for the rest of her life. Maybe it was just me, but I felt that there was a form of parallel with the idea of an arms race with nuclear weapons at play there. Only that Shiars, Kree and Skrull did not have the means to make their own Phoenices, let alone control them.
That was the original story. It was retconned out of itself with gusto and enthusiasm time and again, but that what it was. Now somehow Phoenix is a sun-abstainer being that for some reason needs a human host most of the time and has earned the respect of Dominions in some obscure, unshown way. I’m sure it will be something entirely different in two years time, five tops. Maybe it is the reason why several mutants have been having their powers malfunction and needs to transform into something else soon in order to restablish some form of balance.
Claremont on Phoenix:
“Phoenix is the Life-Bringer, but she is also the Destroyer. Phoenix brings both life and chaos. It is a creature, but a creature fundamentally consecrated to life. To be consecrated to life is to be consecrated to emotion, for better or worse, what Jean was transmuted into as Phoenix was a creature with every emotional sensation, every physical sensation, heightened to an almost infinite degree. And the physical capacity to gratify every emo- tion. It was a sexual thrill. It was the ultimate– to use a somewhat gross term, it was the quest for the cosmic orgasm. Her feeding on the planet on the star was an act of love, of self-love, of masturbation probably. She was on an extreme emotional high, and what happened towards the end– well, what Xavier did was reassert the control of her conscious mind, of her intellectual self over her emotional self.
Had Jean been her nice, normal self when the Phoenix reasserted herself, the power would have been tempered by Jean’s self. But the critical difference was that this transformation came after Mastermind had been playing with her head, had been unlocking all the moral inhibitors within her. So she acted, as Storm said in #135, not out of love, but out of lust. There’s a critical difference: the idea that love is the quest for physical sensation tempered by an emotional attachment– by a strong physical-emotional-mental attachment, whereas lust is just scratching an itch. It’s a thrill, a physical thrill, and nothing else.”
@Michael
Not saying that Brendis’ retcons make sense (I doubt it), but it is all but certain that Nick Fury had the means to contact Professor X way before 1986.
For instance, in 1969’s Avengers #60 he is in the celebration for Hank and Jan’s wedding and is shown in the same room with the original X-Men. In 1971’s Avengers #88 Professor Xavier is part of a very small group of scientists orienting experiments being made to contain the Hulk. 1963’s X-Men #2 show that FBI liason with the X-Men, Fred Duncan, was already being kept in the loop by Xavier himself. 1968’s X-Men #46 has Duncan asking the team to disband after Xavier’s apparent death, even.
We have to assume that the head of SHIELD would have access to at least as much information as the FBI had, even if indirectly.
At this point, with all we know of their history, the Shi’ar have no claim to any moral high ground. They were — and remain — an imperial, colonizing power. The occasional semi-benevolent ruler doesn’t erase that.
I’m not saying that Jean/Phoenix are blameless, far from it. But the Shi’ar freaking out about her isn’t strong evidence.
If I remember correctly, the X-Men also lived separately from the other heroes in the original Secret Wars. They were definitely outcasts.
—
In Bendis’ defense (something I never thought I’d write), Jean showing up in Alias felt really strange. Maybe that was just because the Avengers and X-Men still seemed separate at the time, but I recall Jean having to reassure Jessica that she was a friend instead of everyone just assuming it.
—
As for Claremont’s description of Jean-as-Phoenix: Ick. Sometimes it’s better not to hear from creators.
“As for Claremont’s description of Jean-as-Phoenix: Ick. Sometimes it’s better not to hear from creators.”
Hee-hee.
I mean… is it really surprising? The sexual stuff in Claremont’s stories is so obvious it barely qualifies as subtext.
I’m not even going to mention the tentacle fetish.
“If I remember correctly, the X-Men also lived separately from the other heroes in the original Secret Wars. They were definitely outcasts.”
If I recall correctly, the X-Men actually chose to separate themselves from the others, as opposed to waiting to be ostracized.
In Secret Wars, Jim Shooter wrote the mutants with an extreme siege mentality that seemed to assume any non-mutant was one step away from committing a hate crime, which is, shall we say, an unusual take.
Re: Claremont: not surprising, just unnecessary to elaborate on in such detail.
Re: Secret Wars: that’s super interesting. I don’t think I’ve read that series since it came out. Maybe it’s time to revisit.
The original Secret Wars had Xavier deciding out of nowhere that they better throw their lot with Magneto and the X-Men unexplainably agreeing.
It was weird. But I don’t particularly believe that it was Shooter’s idea instead of Claremont’s. Claremont certainly did not go out of his way to course correct later.
The more I think about it, the less sense that Jessica Jones flashback makes.
Strange was there when the Jessica Jones incident occurred. Why couldn’t he just go into Jessica’s mind himself?
Now it’s possible that the flashback takes place circa Captain America 238, when SHIELD’s ESP Division was out of commission. But even if that was the case, you’d think there would be at least one former member Nick could call in a favor from.
Also, in Fantastic Four 286, Reed, Sue, Cap and Hercules act like they know nothing of what happened to Marvel Girl after the attack by Steven Lang’s Sentinels. None of them seems to have heard of the Phoenix. I guess Nick and Jessica never mentioned which hero fixed her mind?
“Re: Claremont: not surprising, just unnecessary to elaborate on in such detail.”
Actually, I think it’s good that he did. I think if it were more widely known that Claremont’s intentions with Phoenix were to depict Jean as close as he could to “cosmic sex creature” as editorial and the code would allow, then Marvel might’ve dispensed with the Phoenix concept by now, and Jean would be back on earth where she belongs.
So, I’m trying to get that ball rolling. Spread the word.
No longer am I the woman you knew. Now and forever I am masturbating with exploding suns!
This seems to put to the lie the claim that Claremont only read the Thomas/Adams run before starting writing the book. We know he must have at least read the Drake/Windsor-Smith-Blastaar issue to understand that piece of Jean’s characterization.
Just wake me if Necrom shows up
I’m really not feeling post Krakoa, like at all.
But what really gets me is—ah yes, let’s have the Phoenix, the cosmic manifestation of pure psionic potential, fight Gorr with…..fists.
I mean come on. When TK can disassemble atom by atom your opponent….why are you punching them? It’s just so lazy writing I can’t with this entire From the Ashes launch
“When TK can disassemble atom by atom your opponent….why are you punching them?”
Sure, but that’s nothing new, is it? In most cases, your telepathic superheroes really ought to be able to end a fight before it even starts by putting their opponents to sleep. But then there’d be no fight, and we can’t have that. So, they shift to diamond form or use their ninja skills and just start swinging, even in instances when the writer hasn’t even bothered to throw in a plot reason for them to not use their telepathy (like enemies being conveniently immune or because they’re wearing one of those psionic scramblers that you can apparently pick up at any Best Buy in the Marvel Universe).
To be fair, why wouldn’t there be consumer-grade psionic scramblers in the Marvel Universe? They make as much sense in that context as police scanners.
Of course I understand that Jean has to die for the plot to happen, I think with a little more effort we could’ve had a pretty cool Phoenix v Gorr fight
I mean, one of Jean’s classic moves is creating telekinetic force shields—we could have a twist where Gorr’s new all black weapon can cut through psionic shields which takes Phoenix by surprise and a volley of all black daggers (a la Hela in Thor Ragnarok) takes her down.
Idk, just not fisticuffs man. Not for Phoenix IMO. didnt even make sense for her to bear Enigma by punching it
beat*
PS. Exodus starting to disassemble Selene bit by bit in Immortal Xmen before Storm intervenes remains one of the coolest Krakoa moments in my head
Not a very useful observation at this point, but I really wish this were written with a more ambitious, abstract and experimental approach to the concept of the Phoenix, and the storytelling possibilities it opens up.
Maybe I’m thinking of the way early Sandman is woven from and around Dream’s perspective, the gorgeous/slightly terrifying back up story from Classic X-Men where Phoenix approaches and talks to Jean’s decaying body, and something overall more uncomfortable, strange and atmospheric.
Space-punches and a quirky father in law could nor feel further from what I’d like a Phoenix comic to be, personally speaking. I’m more down for cosmic horror than I am for space-themed shenanigans – if that makes sense.
We’re also apparently wasting any opportunity to emotionally ground Jean in relation to Scott/Ororo/Logan/the X-Men at large, which feels like a huge mistske to me.
I just find tje series too overwhelmingly mundane and linear to convey anything about the Phoenix as this completely transcendent force or figure. And too deatched from Jean’s own world to feel especially rewarding as a Jean Grey story – even if it is a bit too early to tell.
Telepathy should always be an excuse for especially inventive visuals, and not the exact opposite.
And it’s not like we don’t have recent points of reference for tonally and narratively odder experiments: the whole Sinisterized timeline, the climax of X-Men forever, the entire terraforming of Mars…
I don’t know. I get that post-Krakoa the line is very much defined by it’s non-Krakoanness and this recognizable, cyclical appeal to a “back to basics” approach.
But if there’s an excellent title for some of that creative flair (and even exess) to carry over, it would very definitely be this one.
Jesus that’s barely legible. Sorry for all the typos partying in my sleepy head.
@Salloh: Yeah, this series just seems…bland. There’s no interesting hook regarding Jean’s characterization, the cosmic hierarchy stuff amounts to standard-issue superhero fights, and the development of Adani’s perspective isn’t making up for these problems.