{"id":10444,"date":"2024-10-11T21:58:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T20:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10444"},"modified":"2024-10-11T23:54:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T22:54:44","slug":"phoenix-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=10444","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/91sXIKhYvdL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10445 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/91sXIKhYvdL._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/91sXIKhYvdL._AC_UY436_QL65_-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/91sXIKhYvdL._AC_UY436_QL65_.jpg 284w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><strong>PHOENIX #4<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Writer: Stephanie Phillips<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Artist: Alessandro Miracolo<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Colour artist: David Curiel<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Letterer: Cory Petit<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Editor: Annalise Bissa<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>PHOENIX:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t really her fault anyway. Carol argues that while Jean seems to have control of the Phoenix, she&#8217;s still afraid of it and needs to overcome that in order to really have control<\/p>\n<p><strong>GUEST STAR: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Captain Marvel<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SUPPORTING CHARACTERS:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Galactic Council <\/strong>&#8211; basically an intergalactic diplomatic talking shop &#8211; is mainly a <em>Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em> thing, though several of the diplomats also showed up in <em>X-Men Red<\/em>. Their base, the New Proscenium, appears here for the first time &#8211; the original Proscenium was another diplomatic conference centre, and was destroyed in the last run of <em>Guardians<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The members here are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Nymbis Sternhoof<\/strong>, representing the Kymellians, whose only previous appearances were in <em>Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em> vol 6 #7-8 and <em>SWORD<\/em> vol 2 #6 (and is thus making her first appearance outside an Al Ewing comic).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mentacle<\/strong>, a Rigellian telepath who debuted in <em>Avengers<\/em> #676 and again was last seen in <em>SWORD<\/em> #6.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Paibok the Power Skrull<\/strong>, representing the Kree\/Skrull Empire, who was hanging around on the fringes of Arakko stories during the Krakoan era and was last seen in <em>X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em> #103.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Smasher<\/strong> from the Shi&#8217;ar Empire, Cannonball&#8217;s wife<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kuga<\/strong>, the Empress of the Zn&#8217;rx (the race that <em>Power Pack<\/em> called the Snarks), who became empress during <em>SWORD<\/em> vol 2 #5 thanks to the machinations of Abigail Brand.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>VILLAINS \/ ANTAGONISTS:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Since Smasher is representing the Shi&#8217;ar Empire, presumably <strong>Gladiator<\/strong> is not actually a member of the Council. But as he&#8217;s still high up in the Empire, it seems unlikely that he&#8217;d be making this pitch without the Shi&#8217;ar government being on board to some degree. He&#8217;s arguing that Phoenix is too dangerous to be allowed to wander around lawlessly, which isn&#8217;t an entirely unreasonable point as far as it goes. However, Gladiator has been somewhat obsessive about Phoenix in the past, and the Shi&#8217;ar in general have tended to see Phoenix as a dangerous threat, even more than other alien races.<\/p>\n<p>Gladiator has allied himself with <strong>Perrikus<\/strong>, who said last issue that his agenda was to deal with &#8220;others in this galaxy wielding powers that do not belong to them&#8221;, presumably meaning Phoenix.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gorr the God-Butcher<\/strong> 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 <em>seems<\/em> 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&#8217;s Phoenix.<\/p>\n<p>Gorr is a villain from Jason Aaron&#8217;s <em>Thor<\/em> run, who was tied in to the symbiote mythos during <em>King in Black<\/em>. 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 <em>Thor: God of Thunder<\/em> #11, which he refers to here and handwaves away, claiming that despite all appearances, his connection to his symbiote was made stronger than ever.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Adani<\/strong> shows up briefly as narrator to spell out the parallels between Gorr&#8217;s origin and her own back story &#8211; and claim that she won&#8217;t be making the same mistakes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>OTHER REFERENCES:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Page 4: &#8220;Throneworld II&#8221;.<\/strong> As the caption says, this is the current capital of the Kree\/Skrull Alliance, introduced in <em>Guardians of the Galaxy<\/em> in 2021. It&#8217;s built in the ruins of the Kree homeworld Hala.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Page 5 panel 1: &#8220;collapsing black holes, dying suns, Asgardian zombie armies, lying fathers-in-law or generals trying to build Thanos an army&#8221;. <\/strong>Recapping the plot of issues #1-3, which apparently just took a week.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Page 6 panel 1: &#8220;a cosmic entity that took complete possession of your person and committed atrocities in your name&#8221;. <\/strong>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&#8217;s a fairly conventional reading that Jean wasn&#8217;t at fault in failing to control Phoenix at that point. (Ironically, the more later stories demonstrate that Jean <em>can<\/em> control it, the harder it becomes to make that argument&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Recovering from having my powers and memories taken and learning to control my Binary form&#8230;&#8221; <\/strong>Carol&#8217;s powers and memories were removed by Rogue in <em>Avengers Annual<\/em> #10. She became Binary in <em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #164.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Page 11 panel 3: &#8220;Terminating the entire human bloodline of the Phoenix&#8221;.<\/strong> <em>Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #466-467 (2005).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10444"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10449,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10444\/revisions\/10449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}