{"id":11348,"date":"2025-08-28T22:51:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11348"},"modified":"2025-08-28T22:51:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T21:51:27","slug":"phoenix-14-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=11348","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix #14 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>PHOENIX #14<\/strong>
\nWriter: Stephanie Phillips<\/strong>
\nArtist: Roi Mercado<\/strong>
\nColour artist: Java Tartaglia<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Cory Petit<\/strong>
\nEditor: Annalise Bissa<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER:<\/strong> A symbolic image of Jean and Sara.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-4.\u00a0<\/strong>Sara and the In-Betweener.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last issue, we established that Sara was not in fact Jean’s real sister, but rather had been inadvertently created in issue #10 from Jean’s memories of Sara. According to Cable, Sara’s continued existence somehow guaranteed a future timeline which was a zombie wasteland, though quite why<\/em> wasn’t explained. The final scene of that issue saw Sara and her\u00a0followers Vex, Kel and Rho trying to follow Jean and Cable, and winding up in the right place but in the present day. The issue ended with the In-Betweener appearing, making the same claim that Sara leads to a ruinous future, and calling her “the one between reality and imagination”.<\/p>\n

This scene picks up from that cliffhanger, though Sara’s followers are nowhere to be seen (and aren’t mentioned anywhere in the issue). The In-Betweener has evidently taken her somewhere else, and we learn later that it’s the White Hot Room. The background is broadly the same as in the WHR scene in issue #11.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The In-Betweener offers an elliptical “explanation” broadly to the effect that Sara is a “shadow” cast by the Phoenix, though quite what that actually means isn’t desperately clear. Sara takes it to mean that she’s Jean’s creation, which we already knew. Jean, in the next scene, seems to draw the conclusion that Sara is<\/em> an aspect of her – presumably in the same sense that she and the Phoenix are the same thing (at least in some sense).<\/p>\n

Somewhat more informatively, the In-Betweener also tells us that Sara was “born of the White Hot Room”, which wasn’t directly asserted last issue. However, issue #11 did tell us that something was blocking Jean’s connection to the White Hot Room, and perhaps threatening the Room itself.<\/p>\n

The In-Betweener’s claim that Sara is both real and not real is rather more straightforward to make sense of: she isn’t the original Sara but she does exist now.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-6.\u00a0<\/strong>Phoenix senses<\/em> Sara.<\/em><\/p>\n

This picks up from Phoenix and Cable’s conversation last issue; obviously, the art is trying to convey the link between Sara and Jean by drawing them in the same pose. Phoenix refers to her attempt to visit the White Hot Room in issue #11.<\/p>\n

Not unreasonably, Cable assumes that Jean has resigned herself to the need to eliminate Sara – the previous issue seemed to suggest that he wanted Jean to reabsorb her in order to prevent some sort of catastrophic chain reaction, though everyone here acts as if that would be akin to killing her. However, even having the plot explained to her has not dissuaded Jean from her determination to keep her “sister” alive.<\/p>\n

PAGES 7-11.\u00a0<\/strong>Flashback: young Jean and Sara at Hallowe’en.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is apparently a real (and original) flashback, showing Sara taking Jean to the basement of an abandoned house where the occupants were murdered, so that they and two friends can try to contact the family with a ouija board – a story nobody else seems to take entirely seriously. For some reason the lights go out and the murdered mother apparently speaks through Jean.<\/p>\n

This is an odd scene, partly because it seems to show Jean having a psychic episode before the Annie Richardson incident which is normally taken to be the emergence of her powers (it must be before, because if it was after then Jean would either be catatonic or far too old). But it also doesn’t seem to have anything\u00a0to do with the rest of the plot beyond being another illustration of a sisterly bond. Maybe it’s building to something next issue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 12-16.\u00a0<\/strong>Phoenix fights the In-Betweener.<\/em><\/p>\n

Phoenix manages to travel to the White Hot Room. She couldn’t access it in issue #11, but then that seems to have been something to do with Sara, and as we’ll see later, Sara seems to have come round to the need for Jean to eliminate her. Also, a bunch of other cosmic entities want to bring Jean here – this may be why it’s described as a “fragment” of the White Hot Room. Or perhaps it’s a fragment because Sara is a fragment. Who knows?<\/p>\n

Obviously, this location manifests as the Grey family home, presumably because of its importance to both Jean and Sara. Whether that’s because it’s on their minds or because someone has chosen it for its psychological impact isn’t clear (but it seems more likely to be the former, because reminding Jean of her feelings about Sara hardly seems smart).<\/p>\n

Jean gives us a rather odd monologue to the effect that she’s always been afraid of her own power – not exactly an obvious reading of the character in past years, but perhaps driven by the fact that post-Krakoa, Jean apparently\u00a0is<\/em> Phoenix and always was, which requires a lot of earlier stories to be recast as a sort of self-denial.<\/p>\n

We’re back to the theme of a tension between Jean’s humanity and her cosmic aspect; the first arc brought up the idea that Jean was reasoning like a superhero rather than a cosmic entity and thus failing to look at the big picture (at least on the scale that her powers demanded). Here, she’s threatening to use her cosmic powers to do something incredibly ill-advised and dangerous because of her own emotional investment in it.<\/p>\n

Jean flags up that this is a single life – she still seems to be treating Sara as authentic – and frames it as trivial compared to the deaths that have already been associated with Phoenix. She cites the slaughter of the Grey family in\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> #468 and the genocide of the D’Bari in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #135, although it’s hardly the great moral argument she seems to think it is. The In-Betweener (and apparently the other cosmic entities) regard this as a refusal to maintain the cosmic balance and thus a dereliction of duty.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-20.\u00a0<\/strong>The other cosmic beings and former Phoenix hosts arrive.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sara has apparently been persuaded that she needs to be destroyed; Jean seems to acknowledge the need here, but says that she can’t do it.<\/p>\n

The cosmic entities show up in their human\u00a0redesigns from\u00a0G.O.D.S.<\/em> Eternity, Infinity, Order, Chaos, Oblivion and the Living Tribunal are all long-established and likely to be familiar to anyone reading this; if not, suffice to say that they represent exactly what you’d think they do. Eternity is supposed to be tied up in a lengthy storyline over in Storm<\/em> at the moment, so evidently this takes place either before or after that arc.<\/p>\n

The Preordained is a servant of the Living Tribunal and Oblivion, whose only previous appearance was in G.O.D.S.\u00a0<\/em>#6. Continuum is a servant of Eternity and Infinity; an alternate timeline version of him appeared in\u00a0G.O.D.S.\u00a0<\/em>#8, but technically this is the first appearance of the mainstream Continuum. These two characters are a step down the pecking order from the other cosmic characters seen here.<\/p>\n

The issue ends with the arrival of “all of the Phoenix hosts who have transcended the physical world, living or dead”. These characters are:<\/p>\n