Phoenix #13 annotations
PHOENIX #13
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
You know, I’m thinking maybe I’ll go back to the scene-by-scene format, especially now that the post-Krakoan books have been around long enough to build up a bit of continuity. As with the last time I did this, I’m going to use the story page numbers, since Kindle still can’t count.
Page 1. Flashback: Jean raises Nathan Summers.
This is an original (and largely generic) scene which takes place somewhere during the 1994 miniseries Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix. It’s attempting to set up Jean and Cable’s relationship without getting too far into the weeds of 90s continuity. For anyone not familiar, however:
Nathan is the child of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor, who was a clone of Jean. In X-Factor #68, Nathan is sent into the far future so that the Askani can save him from a techno-organic virus; after some back and forth, it turns out that he returns to the present day as Cable to try and avert that future timeline. In Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix, Scott and Jean are brought forward in time to that future and wind up spending several years raising Nathan as his adoptive parents, though Cable only discovers this later on.
PAGES 2-5. Cable fights Phoenix and Kel.
“That’s part of the fun, Redd.” Throughout the issue, Cable refers to Jean by the name she used as his adoptive mother – presumably to appeal to their family connection.
“When Sara found me, I was a resistance fighter… nothing more. Now? She unlocked my true powers…” This is recapping a flashback from the previous issue, in which Kel was a soldier in “the Thales Civil War” who found Sara when she plummeted from the sky. In that flashback, she touches his arm and he gains the ability to fire energy blasts. We don’t actually see Kel use his powers in the present day sections of that issue, and when he tries to use them here, they don’t work – to his evident confusion.
The story doesn’t make clear what’s going on here. It might be that the whole flashback was a fabrication (given what we’re told later on), but it could also be that Cable shot Sara at the end of the previous issue, and while she’s recovering, her effect on Kel fades.
PAGES 6-8. Cable takes Phoenix away.
Cable claims that Sara is a projection of Jean’s own memories, and later scenes seem to indicate that he’s telling the truth.
Sara evidently doesn’t believe this claim, and it seems we’re to take it that she genuinely recalls the version of events that she gave us last issue. Cable says in the next scene that she’s “not lying”.
“Get the twins.” The twins are evidently Vex and Rho, who accompany Sara and Kel in their next scene; we saw them with Kel in Sara’s origin flashback in the previous issue. We’re told later that Vex is a tracker and Rho a teleporter.
PAGES 9-15. Cable convinces Phoenix that Sara is fake.
Cable considers the key distinction between himself and Jean to be that he can set aside sentimentality, which is broadly fair enough – but a little ironic given that his last story was the Love and Chrome miniseries. Perhaps he’s learned his lesson from that story, where he was trying to mess with the timeline to save a woman he loved.
“We’re in the future… a future.” This version of the future seems to be a zombie wasteland. Jean’s immediate reaction is to dismiss it as one of the Marvel Universe’s many, many alternate futures, which is fair enough, because that’s how these things normally work. Cable claims that Sara makes this an inevitable future, though the mechanics of that are hazy at best.
“A psychic blast was sent throughout the universe that was so powerful even I could feel it in the future.” We saw Cable sense this in issue #11.
“I sent out a wave of psychic energy to keep the powers of the Dark Gods from spreading…” This is footnoted to issue #10, which was the issue where Sara first appeared. It would make more sense if it referred to issue #9, where Phoenix decides to draw the Shadow Realm to herself by “creat[ing] a fracture in reality so vast, it will draw the Shadow Realm’s energy to me like a predator smelling blood”. But Jean also said in issue #11 that the first message from Sara came “right after I released the Phoenix Force into the cosmos to stop the shadow realm from spreading”, so apparently the reference to #10 is correct.
At any rate, the claim here is that while fighting the Dark Gods, Jean “connected [herself] to the universe”, which in practice means a piece of her becoming separated from her and gaining an independent existence. This fragment is apparently her memory of her sister Sara, and becomes the Sara Grey that we’ve seen over the last two issues.
Since this is an event which time travellers can detect in the future, there’s no particular difficulty with the idea that Sara was brought into existence at some point in the past, though that would leave some awkward questions about how she took so long to make contact with Jean. It’s also possible that Sara and her back story were retroactively inserted upon her creation, changing the world which is now “Greyhaven”. That would fit with the end of issue #10, where Sara claims that “When I felt that blast of light, when I saw the great shape of the Phoenix in the sky, I knew I was right to never stop looking”. It makes a lot more sense for Sara to remember a previous search than for her to have actually carried it out and failed.
If Sara’s creation did simply transform a world to accord with her new backstory, then undoing it might be a problem, because last issue’s flashback described it as a war zone. It seems much improved in its current form. Sara also claimed that the people of Greyhaven had searched her out; if she’s retconned the world around her, then that begs questions about who these people are.
On being reunited with Sara in issue #11, Jean said that “I’ve reached for you so many times, Sara. But all I’ve found are memories, echoes, dreams”. That line becomes ironic with hindsight.
“You’d have me kill an innocent person…” Cable never actually says that he wants Jean to kill Sara, and as Jean points out, Cable himself evidently wasn’t shooting to kill at the end of last issue. He’s slightly evasive about why that was, suggesting that he didn’t want to risk turning Jean into Dark Phoenix. But he’s very clear that he wants Jean to take action about Sara, and the implication seems to be that he wants Jean to reabsorb Sara – simply killing her might not actually solve the problem.
“The White Hot Room was falling apart around me…” In issue #11, Phoenix finds that something is blocking her connection to the White Hot Room (the art shows some sort of fracture), or possibly attacking the White Hot Room itself. She then gets rescued by Sara and, as she acknowledges here, swiftly loses interest in the whole plotline.
“I ignored the inaccuracies in her story.” I covered this in some detail in the post for the previous issue. Suffice to say that Sara’s account of how she had wound up in outer space accorded with the broad strokes of established continuity but with serious timeline problems.
PAGES 16-19. Sara, Kel, Vex and Rho try to follow Jean.
The idea seems to be that Vex’s tracking powers have correctly identified Jean’s location, but failed to allow for the fact that Cable took her forwards in time.
The In-Betweener. This is one of Marvel’s 1970s cosmic abstract entities, with the character redesign he received in G.O.D.S.. He’s one of the weirder abstract characters, broadly embodying balance between opposites. He describes Sara as “between reality and imagination”, which is presumably why she’s of interest to him – that and her connection with Phoenix. He previously appeared among the cosmic entities accompanying Eternity in issue #5, but didn’t get any dialogue there.
I can’t shake the feeling that Marvel is suffering from an excess of events that somehow attempt to be both huge and inconsequential at once – and they now routinely happen simultaneously, no less.
This book has a plot involving a possible future and In-Betweener. Storm’s – if it does not turn out to be an extended fever dream or something, which would make more sense than the alternative – involves an indescritible deal between Storm and Eternity and flashforwards to what seems to be another alternate future. Both storylines will presumably be parked in less than two months due to “Age of Revelation”, which is _yet another_ alternate future. While “One World Under Doom” marches on. At the same time as “Spider-Verse versus Venomverse”, “Imperial”, and whatever history rewriting came from the last issue of Immortal Thor. And “Death of Silver Surfer”, despite he being shown alive presumably later in flashforwards in Storm’s book. And Miles Morales meeting people from the new Ultimate Universe in a mini-series besides his own ongoing. And a new Battleworld series that may be reintroducing the Crossgen characters. And Return to Planet Hulk. And Undead Iron Fist. And something that for some reason is being called “New Avengers”.
Plenty of huge deals happening together and politely going out of their ways not to notice each other. I sincerely believe that continuity was considerably easier to follow back in 1985 while “Crisis” was ongoing and overpowering all books.
“It might be that the whole flashback was a fabrication (given what we’re told later on), but it could also be that Cable shot Sara at the end of the previous issue, and while she’s recovering, her effect on Kel fades.”
I assumed that Jean was telepathically blocking Ken from using his powers, since she mentally paralyzes Cable a few panels later.
What was the point of spending most of last issue on a flashback if it turned out to be false?
A lot of readers didn’t like Jean slapping Cable. Yes, he suggested killing Sara but he was only in the position of possibly having to kill Sara to save the universe because Jean screwed up. Jean DOES have a temper- she telekinetically threw a mattress and balls of ice at Scott in Louise Simonson’s X-Factor- so it’s arguably not out of character. But a lot of readers didn’t like it.
What constitutes “a lot of readers” for a book like this? Where are they expressing their dislike of this development? I never see anyone aside from this comment section even acknowledge that this book exists.
I’ve often speculated that Michael (not me) is actually channeling the legions within his own psyche when he refers to the opinions of the masses. 🙂
@Matt Teri, the Other Michael- I’ saw people compiling on the internet about this. For example, look at this reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/xmen/comments/1m6zr4u/xmen_comics_new_releases_for_july_23_2025/
Look under Phoenix 13. You can find a couple of people complaining, for example.
Or look at this thread:
https://community.cbr.com/threads/phoenix-13-spoilers-and-reviews.180477/
You can find Daken9 complaining.
Just wanted to chime in and say I much prefer the page-by-page annotations to the character-by-character. This format feels like the Omega-level footnote while the other is too close to a summary.
“The story doesn’t make clear what’s going on here” is a rather nice summation of this series, innit
“I’ve often speculated that Michael (not me) is actually channeling the legions within his own psyche when he refers to the opinions of the masses. ”
He certainly does it frequently enough for that to sound almost plausible. He did it in the last X-Axis column. “A lot of fans were angry that Magik…” He did it the day before that in the Age of Revelations #0 annotations. “A lot of readers didn’t like that Xorn…”
I don’t know. Even if Michael really is keeping a running tally of actual opinions somewhere or another, frequently beginning criticisms with “A lot of people…” just comes off as someone wanting to throw additional weight behind what is their own personal opinion.
A lot of people see it that way.
Okay, so should I say “Some people on the internet were complaining…”? Would you prefer that? Or “A nonzero number of people on the internet didn’t like this”?
Maybe present something as your personal perspective sometimes, or give a tiny bit of context for how you gauged the reaction and/or how widespread it seems to be.
Or just present your take without bothering with perceptions or statements of preponderance. We are not talking about famine challenge policy here. It is ok to have a perception or opinion and state it without having confirmation and widespread support.
I think.
@Michael – What Luis said. Just speak for yourself. You shouldn’t need backup when presenting your opinion.
@Luis – Thanks for the backup.
@Michael: If you insist on framing your opinions as some kind of consensus, show your receipts. Who are “some people on the Internet”? Where? Reddit? CBR? The John Byrne forums? Otherwise it just looks like puffery.
Hey, I think we all value this website and community as a place where we don’t have the usual shouting matches. Can we avoid a pile on and just agree to citing sources more?
For what it’s worth, I’m terminally on X where you do find (to me!) some very outlandish but apparently broadly supported views. So I find it interesting when that’s brought in sometimes by one of our commentators. How the comic is received by regulars here may be very different to the wider audience, who are also very vocal and influence Marvel editorial and creatives, for better or worse.
As for Phoenix (and Storm), I worry that concerns about character development and plot are lost a bit by readers looking for that one cool or empowering panel.
As for this series, I still think Jean is lost among all this cosmic nonsense. I’m not sure what the “out” is for keeping Sara (now also part of the cosmic milieu!) alive. Jean gives up phoenix-y things (again?!).
I am half expecting the shiar to show up and do another end of greys..
Michael posts like Trump… more and more people are saying. He also mentions Storm almost drowning the team weekly.
Evilgus-The Greys being referred to, in this instance, are the ones responsible for alien abductions though.
Holding out hope for a Sara Grey/Mike Murdock team-up series.
“Hey, I think we all value this website and community as a place where we don’t have the usual shouting matches. Can we avoid a pile on and just agree to citing sources more?”
That seems like very good advice to me. And different forums will give you different ideas of what people are saying – all of which, in practice, can often be different from what the sales figures seem to suggest.
[…] #13. (Annotations here.) And, in […]
In fairness, given the sales numbers of superhero comics these days, three random people on two different message boards probably does constitute “a lot”. 😉