Binary #2 annotations
BINARY #2
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Giada Beluiso
Colourist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Annalise Bissa
COVER: Binary turns to face a mysterious figure (presumably Goblin Queen).
PAGES 1-3. Flashback: Jean dies quarantining the Earth, and gives the Phoenix to Carol Danvers.
We were told last issue that Carol had been Binary for “almost ten years”, and this seems to confirm that she gets the Phoenix power (and the X-virus is released) a year into the future.
It’s fair enough that Phoenix wants to quarantine the X-virus on Earth. It’s not exactly obvious why she’s doing it on this scale when (at this point) the virus must be localised to a small area of North America. Nor does her barrier seem to be especially effective – we’ve seen teleportation between Earth and Arakko in X-Men: Book of Revelation #1 and Laura Kinney, Sabretooth #2, and aliens in Rogue Storm #1 and X-Vengers #1. Is it specifically a virus-filtering barrier? If she can do that, why not just purge the virus from Earth?
And why does setting up this barrier kill Jean? It can’t be because it exhausts the Phoenix, since it jumps to Carol as a new host. So the idea seems to be that some applications of the Phoenix’s power are so taxing that they’ll kill the host. Okay, except the regular Phoenix series had her casually stopping supernovas and fracturing reality, so why is this such a big deal? Or is something else supposed to be killing Jean, and if so, what?
At any rate: there’s presumably meant to be a parallel here between Jean trying to quarantine Earth and Carol trying to quarantine her home town; and Jean’s demise while trying to use the Phoenix to contain the X-virus more broadly explains why Carol hasn’t tried to do the same.
As in the previous issue, there are references here to Jean having chosen Carol as the new Phoenix. The flashback doesn’t really show that – Carol just seems to be hanging around trying to persuade Jean to stop – but we can maybe take it that Jean arranged for Carol to be there, and expected to die in the process of making her barrier.
PAGES 4-5. Binary fends off a Babel.
This is the tail end of the fight from the previous issue. The Babels were let through the dome by the Goblin Queen (the previous issue was slightly ambiguous about whether it was her or Jean, but this issue confirms it).
PAGES 6-9. Hank enlists allies for an assassination attempt.
The point of letting the Babels in seems to have been twofold. First, it lets Hank to argue that Carol’s powers are weakening, so that the (supposedly) trapped citizens of Beverly have a chance to get rid of her. Second, it provides a distraction so that Hank can get a bomb into Beverly through “the corridor”. We’re not clearly told what this is, but the previous issue also had a passing mention of Carol controlling what came into the bubble.
Okay, so let’s accept that you can sneak in and out of the dome when Carol is distracted. And let’s assume the dome is somehow dealing with the mechanics of purging the virus from anyone who goes outside. But where did the bomb come from?
PAGES 10-11. Carol has a vision of Jean.
The graffiti on the wall reads PRISONERS. I can’t read the one on the left of the panel.
We’ll come to Jean shortly.
PAGES 12-14. Binary survives the bombing.
We already saw the bombing from the perspective of Hank and his group in the opening flash forward of issue #1, running up to the line “She’s alive”.
Carol’s narrative is mainly devoted to telling us that she isn’t capable of using the Phoenix with the same subtlety as Jean (though her virus-filtering dome seems fairly impressive). To be fair, being a psychic does seem to help when using the Phoenix.
PAGES 15-16. Jean appears to Binary as the Phoenix.
This is consistent with Rise of the Powers of X, which established that in some sense Jean and Phoenix were always one and the same. That story leaves some awkward questions about what’s happening when Phoenix has other hosts, which has happened multiple times. The answer here seems to be that Jean remains part of the Phoenix Force even after her death.
Carol made clear in the previous issue that she knew the Phoenix wanted her to leave and give up on her project of saving Beverly, but Jean is bending over backwards here to praise Carol’s efforts – perhaps just to cheer her up, because Carol understandably feels that she’s achieved very little with the Phoenix Force.
PAGES 17-19. The Goblin Queen attacks.
Binary identifies her as “Jean”, but this is Madelyne Pryor, the Goblin Queen – aside from the costume, that thing she’s carrying is the Scythe of Sorrows, from Madelyne’s appearances in New Mutants and Magik. The idea seems to be that Madelyne wants to lay claim to the Phoenix Force herself, as someone with a greater connection to it – though whether that’s because she has an agenda for it or simply because she feels like the rightful host is unclear. It’s not spelled out how the bombing and the subversion actually contribute to this plan, but the idea must presumably be that shaking Carol’s self-belief makes the Phoenix Force easier to claim. Perhaps it also makes it easier for Jean to manifest, since no other reason is given for her doing so now.
The idea that shortly after the virus was released Jean felt the need to quarantine Earth from the rest of the universe because of the virus but ten years later, nobody even feels the need to evacuate New Orleans or Vancouver is too stupid for words.
“Okay, so let’s accept that you can sneak in and out of the dome when Carol is distracted. And let’s assume the dome is somehow dealing with the mechanics of purging the virus from anyone who goes outside. But where did the bomb come from?”
Hank says the bomb “was a gift from someone who understands the importance of freedom”. Presumably Maddie gave Hank the bomb.
Apparently Jean just took a nap for ten years instead of giving Carol useful advice.
Why doesn’t Carol recognize Maddie? Carol and Maddie teamed up against Doom in One World Under Doom 2-3 and Maddie was wearing the same costume in that story that she’s wearing at the end of the issue.
I wonder if Hank was telling the truth when he said that Maddie was helping them because she “understands the importance of freedom”. Does Maddie see Carol taking away the townspeople’s choice of whether or not to risk death with the virus as no different than how Sinister used her as a pawn?
“…so that the (supposedly) trapped citizens of Beverly…”
I’d say the citizens are objectively trapped. They want to leave, but they can’t. The intention may be benign, but they’re still being kept there.
It says something about Carol that she’s more authoritarian than the Queen of Limbo. Darkchilde keeps her subjects better informed to boot.
Why doesn’t Carol just move the town away from the X-virus area anyway? Given all the crap about how powerful the Phoenix is, surely she can pick it up and plonk it down in Washington or California any time.
Maybe Stephanie Phillips is trying to tell us something about the Phoenix Force, that it indulges their hidden/not-so-hidden desires.
In Jean’s case, she let her inner mean girl out and indulged her craving for broccoli.
For Scott, he gave in to his half-Oedipal urges and killed his father figure.
For Carol, it’s bringing out her inner authoritarian and desire to control everything that we saw in Civil War 2.
Carol’s power as Binary presents as red, so maybe she’s been Dark Binary this entire time.
@Michael: I definitely wouldn’t remember a person I met once during a very chaotic event ten years ago.
Speaking of this week’s Stephanie Phillips’s work, maybe it’s the fact that – as Paul said on the podcast – she starts well enough and then goes off the rails, but I’ve enjoyed She-Hulk #1.
Hickman bent over backwards to bring Sakaar back (okay, he just handwaved its destruction; the planet got a sequel, don’t ask), but now that the might-makes-right, war-torn, gladiator-obsessed planet is back, it should be fun to see how Jennifer navigates the place that was such a natural fit for Hulk.
Fingers crossed this one lives to its potential.
Off on a tangent, but I’ve just realised the logo is riffing on a Phoenix logo, just not the one from the book it’s replacing.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Phoenix_Force_Comic_Books?file=Phoenix_Resurrection_The_Return_of_Jean_Grey_Vol_1_1.jpg
I just got back from shopping in Beverly.
You’ll be happy to know I didn’t get any strange viruses.